The Games State

Haven't played for almost 2 years and i'm curious how the game is doing on certain parts.

 

Hard to choose one option for me.

PvP is trash, because of cheaters and the fact that the impact of your strength in PvE on the PvP gameplay is close to 0.

PvE is not that bad, but it isn't good either. It's very grindy, quite repetitive too. There is no straight progression path for new players. Many players left: while Grimmag and Heredur have enough players to be able to find a group most times or to play some PvP for daily, it's visible that less players play the game than before.

We have parallel worlds, we have scaling normal dungeons, we have events pretty often. We have new updates, we have transmogrification now. The problem is, when an event comes - it's extremely grindy and repetitive... same goes for pve leaderboards. We don't have enough inventory space due to lots of stuff that we have to keep, and it makes farming even more tedious. There is no difference between farming inf3 with stats good for inf3 and farming painful with stats good for painful... yet they keep stacking more modes, probably will continue in the future... and they're "solving" the whole problem by putting additional progress bars with mode requirements to all the events... but it's even worse, because it makes the events more tedious, while not giving good reason to improve your character.

Why to improve your character?
To be stronger in PvP? Nope, only base values work in PvP.
To beat some PvE challenges? Unless you take beating 'shroom mobs on inf3 as the game's aim, there are none you could really strive for.
To be able to farm the same map but labelled with a higher roman numeral? That's not a good reason.
To be able to finish more progress bars that don't give anything unique or interesting anyways? Nope.
For the sake of it? Why, if you're not going to see it in any way other than some numbers, though?

On top of that, sets are still unbalanced, classes are not really balanced (taking sets into account, especially), 1h is not balanced vs 2h...

Anyways, if you want just play for some time and see for yourself. Maybe the current state of the game is your cup of tea... and maybe it's going to be improved soon in some way. I'm waiting for the Winter Solstice. Maybe the solstice will mark the change of the tides in the game, too.

 

I went with the full on garbage choice, even though I still play the game.

I'm a casual player since 2013. Every time I start to feel like my toon is making progress, BP rolls our another nerf. I also abandoned my Ranger on Tegan for a Steam Mechanic on Grimmag.

I hated PVP from the start because of the Twinks. BP got rid of them (kinda), and promised massive improvements, so I started doing PVP dailies. Until they made it gearless, with broken new modes (e.g., 8 player free-for-all, since shelved), and my nascent skills were negated by players who could farm for high base-stat items, leaving me at a constant disadvantage again.

Events have definitely deteriorated, devolving further and further into grinding / botting. At my toon's strength, and my work / life schedule, I struggle to complete the Normal progress bar … partially out of lack of time, partially out of tedium.

Crafting has been insanely unkind to me, though I confess I made a few mistakes along the way. But, as a relatively new player on Grimmag, I hadn't built up a ton of Gold (which has actually become a precious commodity; one of many in a crowded field of junk for which we need to farm), and burned it up before I crafted more than one or two 3-gold line pieces of equipment (none of which I'm using, yet).

Farming is endless: Gold, potion crafting ingredients (healing sphere drop rate was radically reduced a year or so ago; potions drop occasionally, but not frequently enough to keep me supplied with even the basic healing potions), crafting raw materials for gear, cores for more sophisticated crafting modes (I'm still far away from core crafting, but I know I'll need it, eventually), andermant (quite a joke there; sometimes I go several days in a row without a single drop, and even forget that it's in the loot lists), amphora keys, chest keys (to eventually get the recipes for higher level gem crafting), realm fragments (almost all events require trading with Thabo for entrances), etc. Oh, yeah; most events require farming for X to craft Y to get entrance to M2 to farm for Z to craft … etc.

Drop rates are atrocious (at least at lower difficulty modes). Potions, andermant, gold lines on gear, platinum lines on gear, parallel world unique set items, event keys, event progress, event uniques, runes (my main toon has a total value of +8 Ancient Wisdom runes … would be more, but we can only have 5 in sockets across all of our gear, so we have to craft up well before it should be necessary, and lose value along the way). Oh and gems rarely drop in the modes I can access (Normal through maybe Fatal). And Premium/Deluxe cube drop rates (at least in my experience with the occasional free 3-day passes) are low (for me, about 1 per hour … yes, you or your buddy may have better luck). And gems drops from the cubes have been nerfed as well.

We have to farm the Great Desert for basic junk and Daily Quests. We have to farm scaling dungeons to get consumable crafting materials (I get on average less than enough material to craft a single Common healing potion per dungeon run, so I have to farm on Painful instead of Excruciating or Fatal in order to avoid using any potions so that later I can try to survive a Parallel Dungeon Painful run). We have to farm scaling dungeon bosses for a few key consumable components. We have to farm Parallel World bosses for unique sets (and PW bosses have been buffed, so weaker players can barely solo them on Painful, unless you've got the right consumable buff running at the time). We have to farm for event requirements before and during the events. We have to farm 5 different ways from Sunday within events.

Materi have lost their value as BP removed the traders from the aftermath of a boss fight; you can't buy useful unique sets any longer.

Still, I'm here because maybe, just maybe, one day something fantastic will drop and my toon will be noticeably stronger and I'll finally be able to step up to Excruciating boss fights again in Parallel World. Some day.

 

If we assume the 45lv period as 100points, the current game does not deserve more than 50. That's my opinion though. There are too many things to write but many players have already been writing those on feedback threads. And as far as I see developers just don't care. Today my premium account has ended. And I have never played a day without premium for more than 5 years. But service of this company to their players doesn't deserve any payment in my eyes. So I'm not planning to pay even 1cent as long as it goes on like this.

 

So, so far i'm getting 3 things
1. The games still generally the same except pvp has further fallen apart(Not a big deal to me since i barely played it)
2. There has been updates but they just altered pve and made it feel more grindy
3. Its the same game but seems to be taking the wrong approach

Going to continue to get opinions

Yes I can try myself because its free, but the reason i'm asking this is for how i approach in continuing to play. Invest in my lvl 55 more or just mess around and create characters and lvl up(Was thinking about making challenges for myself to make it more difficult)
When i last played items are way to strong for leveling, it used be kind of difficult at points whicn made getting stronger feel more fun, but it got so easy (first 40lvls) that you get by ok with magic items. Thats a problem
Is the current game still the same with its stupidly easy to lvl with just magic or less?

 

I have an alt-toon Ranger at level 41 with a mixture of 3 Magic, 2 Extraordinary, 1 Legendary, 5 of the Antique Atlantis set, and the Bow of Destruction from Myrdosch. Struggles a bit on Painful scaling dungeons, but he's just an alt, so I don't care.

But the answer to your question is, yes: Just play whatever falls in your lap along the way, there's no strategy or serious farming until you've hit max level (55). You may need a few attempts or even need to farm experience for a day in order to bump up a level to get past Sigri, Gorga, Destructor, or later Balor, but no real drama.

Depending on how long ago you last played, you may need to catch up on the various crafting quests (check back in Kingshill for the beginning of gem and consumables crafting questlines; I can't remember for certain, but I think the cloak crafting begins in Resistance Command Center [after you've randomly dropped your first piece of Yarn]), but there's not much new with the pre-max level game.

 

I do not play this as often as I used too due to work and family commitments.
What annoys me when I do try to log in and play is the lag and the amount of bugs that never get fixed.
I have no clue if the game is so close to dying that the owners/developers are trying to make it a cash game.
But the content of the game once you reach end game is absolute garbage,I have so many better things to do than farm the same maps over and over.
Oh so the game is easy huh guys ????
We will make it harder and see who wants to pay to keep going at T7 !!!
So the event is a boring grind fest ????
Here is an idea we will make Cloaks that you HAVE to buy with money for those who want to continue spending !!!!
I get this is a business but if your product is shit only the dumb people will continue to invest in it.
Sorry the game is getting to the point of not even bothering to log in any more .

 

Voted for last option, garbage is way too strong in my opinion for current state altough has some potential

There is just not enough activities to discover. It was very repetitive earlier but many features were introduced that should shallow that repetitivness... Well, on paper. True is most of them became just very minor things due to bad implementation which is repeating issue. Bp has decent ideas but when it comes for balancing and putting them on live server they just fail with whatever they have in sleeve. Their work is mostly wasted and game due to inflation in stats and craft becames even more repetitive as it was earlier.

I also really don't like solo/group balance. Group is such joke mode that i have no idea how people can play those xd It should be AT LEAST 3x harder for any sort of balance.

 

The correct vote could be the last one, but as an encouragement towards developers I voted for garbage.

Some potential is still there, the graphic is not too outdated or obsolete, the combat system still appreciable even in light of the latest titles on the market, what's too bad is the slowness in developing any news worthy of the name - not to mention new maps, environments, enemies - in a word: new content.

I really believe it will end up boring even the most compulsive gambler here around.

 

I never saw 1 good set on this game, all they do " 1/4 parts bonus set 50 dmg depend on character level" or Hp. they don't have any creativity to make any good sets.

I can't see why they didn't change all this system.
PvP Tree sucks
Exp Tree sucks
Group Tree Sucks
Wisdom Tree sucks

If u stop just a little bit and see how many players have on Agathon 2019 u should know that 80% players hate the way the game are right now.

 

Wisdom tree is actually one of very few great improvements over past year. Idk why you don't like it.

Group tree sucks though because even without it group has way easier time to grind. It's nice feature but harmful in todays balance. If they would make all monsters x2,5-x3 hp when playing in group than it would start make sense. Right now group just destroys DSO as it shortens in great way time between start at 55 and achieving needed equipment so players get into loop of craft way to soon which makes the game very uninspiring. If you play solo from very start it's totally different story though and it gets together pretty nicely.

Sets are great issue. We are getting new unique but vast majority of them is total crap so nothing really changes. There should be more good sets/uniques based on augmented cores as well. Would refresh need of playing on ordinary maps which again makes content in natural way.

 

Don't take this as advertising other games.
A guy from PoE team talks about the game's design. He's self-reflecting, as he talks about things they did wrong as well as things they, in his opinion, did well.

This GDC talk should serve as a "study" material.

[video removed]

For the record, I'm not a fan of PoE. I played it, but not much. It's not really my cup of tea, but considering how popular of an ARPG it is, there must be something they really do right.

A huge positive about it to me is that the game doesn't treat you like a stupid pile of garbage. You are not required to grind or pay like in DSO, because you cannot purchase anything for real money that has a gameplay impact, with the exception of stash slots.

But then there's more: Random generation of dungeons, frequent content expansions, huge skill tree, many possible builds that you can switch between, ...
If I only looked at these ^ in DSO:

- No random generation of anything;
- Last content expansion in February 2017 - it was quite small and too many people hated it;
- No skill tree - just some bonuses;
- Quite a few possible builds, but there's a meta build that hammers everything else + no easy way to make and switch between multiple builds.

Anyway, I voted "Its fine just repetitive due to lack of more good content".
Because repetitiveness is the biggest problem in DSO. Not only repetitiveness in the grind, but also in actual playing your class - it's just 3 skills that you use all the bloody time. Also dungeons - as there is no random generation, e.g. Q3 will always be the same. Devs could at least use random generation for the Secret Lairs which are dungeons where randomness of the platforms could be easier to do.
But no, this is not enough - not only DSO requires you to grind by design, it requires more and more of grind unnecessarily, as getting valuable items is put behind an artificial grind wall (or pay wall).

 

Really nice point, poe should be for bp crib with mechanics. I'm actually bigger fan than DSO. I played decent amount of time and was under big impression how well mechanics are implemented there. Starting from enchantments on items through skill tree, variety of gameplay and builds, randomness, balance, gears - almost everything is better implemented than in DSO. What's funniest DSO has as high or even higher potential but it's constantly wasted.
They just do everything right - even if idea is very mediocore they always finding best way to implement it. It's pretty opposite to DSO.

 

I actually played PoE quite a bit, but definitely prefer dso for gameplay. I like the skills way more and feels more fluid.
I don't like randomly generated maps with filling maps part just makes traveling difficult.
DSO doesn't have that now right?

 

No, it doesn't, but IMHO it should, of course nothing about "filling map parts".

Read this, for reference.

 

That's one of the things I actually hated about PoE: The weird flipping of the maps. What was on the right hand side is now on the left. I never understood how that made any sense if it was a map of a forest, for example. Forests don't shift like that in real life. That made no sense and was super confusing.

But if you randomly generate dungeons like DSO's Deeps of Demise or Secret Lairs, that's a different story. Those dungeons are composed of platforms which makes them feel somewhat abstract. However, I'm afraid simple randomly different layout of the same looking platforms would not be enough. Devs would have to add more to make it feel less repetitive. Perhaps different things to interact with that would randomly spawn on the platforms.
Right now, no map in DSO is randomly generated.

For some reason movement in DSO feels better to me. I don't know why. It seems to respond to clicking in a better way. Despite getting stuck sometimes here and there. Movement has a lot to do with combat, so I would say that's a plus combat wise.

As for skills, they are cool. And they have mostly really nice visual effects. I must admit, while I said I seem to be stuck with like 3 skills that I spam over and over (ranger: Thorns, Net, EA), it's not really true. I actually use my entire hotbar of skills. Yet for some reason, after so much time spent in DSO, it's like the same thing.
Perhaps if it was easier to switch to completely different gear that is built around completely different skill usage, the monotonous action would receive some fresh air. Or maybe some skill modifiers could change the way skills work, significantly.

I admit that playing as a ranger in PoE was a bit dull. I had 2 bow related skills I would just spam everywhere, and the rest were some passives mostly. In fact, and maybe this was my own fault that I didn't know what I was doing, PoE's combat felt worse than DSO's.
On the other hand, in PoE you feel like there's so many options, and by using your stupid 2 skills you're like merely scratching the surface of what you can be. But maybe it's just an illusion, Idk.

And group play is much better in DSO, imo. If nothing else, at last you get your own drop.

Despite my advocating of DSO above, those are details mostly at which I think DSO is better.
Considering the big things that matter more, you've summed it up well. DSO seems to be wasting its potential. It can relatively easily be so much better.

 

There definitely should be some randomly generated dungeons in DSO or at least sort of liars. DSO has taken idea of those from poe and than made them as dull as possible. Why do we need to have token passes with guaranteed liar after every boss fight. Can't they be some unique, randomly generated staff in dungeons... With some unique rewards possible as you can't grind them constantly this way.

They implemented cloaks which was pretty nice though they of course had to move best cloak into rng department. Anyway it's not the point - point is there is very soon no usefullness for yarn. Couldn't they just make possible to utilize those after making cloak? For example by making it craftable into totally random unique of same item genre by sth like x golden yarn + legend item of y tier + gold + maybe sth extra.. We don't have jesters as we can't but we could have fun this way. I'm sure that for everybody there would be some jackpot.

It's strikes me there are very few changes in DSO that are trying resolve themselves. Almost always we ending up with tone of garbage we can't imagine using. Dev.is never making system that would utilize those resources in any useful way which makes it stable long term benefit. Honestly it blows my mind. It's like getting 75% sale after 1 purchase and refusing to buy 2-ng thing every single freaking time xd

 

Ok, thanks for all your replies. I decided i should just mess around and not invest anymore with endgame and money.

DSO seems to be failing at keeping players interested . From when i was playing the only real exciting thing for the first couple times was seasonal events, PW got overly grindy. What I mean by overly grindy is the trade off of time for getting stronger didn't feel satisfying enough .

I want to keep this thread to further discuss though, developers might get a better idea what to do because they seem to be confused what the game needs. A lot of the negative changes are do to to much complaing over something likd pvp being unbalanced. The developers seem to of thought it was worse then what it was and decided to go an extreme route for that.
That keeps happening.