Necrochild

I'm particularly interested in the framerate improvements, I've got a friend who hasn't played in a good year because each patch reduces performance more and more.

On my rig I recently built can run most newer games maxed out and this game chugs at times, so I can see where he's coming from.

At least they stuck to their promise of simply making new additional weapons instead of new characters.

What they didn't say is that they would make a 3rd weapon for Evie and consider it a new character.

Question2 wrote: »

Funny, because when roch/drags was end game, the game population was far higher than it is now even though level 60 gear was easy to obtain and roch/drags werent hard.

Titan, Thor, Ingkells and Glas were all quite challenging for the gear, multipliers, and invincibility frames we had at the time.

Dragons and Keaghan as well when they first came out, though, it wasn't too long after that things started getting more easy mode, higher multipliers and doubled HP pools for everyone!

The game pop took a nose dive when s2 was released. Why? s2 was too hard, drag mats werent in seal shop yet, and most people got their level 80 gear by buying boxes. As people kept doing s2 raids and getting burnt out, more and more quit because "why bother, i wont get drops anyway". When level 80 mats were put into the seal shop, I was actually able to convince some of them to come back because they could use seals to progress their gear.

Not really, the game's pop was at a huge low point right before season 2 due to how long it took to get season 2. People gradually trickled back. It didn't help that Kraken and Lakoria were some of the crappiest raids to date. I agree with the guy who said that content droughts are the cancer that eats away at Vindictus's population (paraphrased).

Everytime the game has gotten easier by improving the seal shop, the game pop has actually risen because people tried coming back. Everytime the game has gotten harder, people have responded by giving up and playing other games instead.

I feel that things were perfect with TD, and that wasn't heavily seal shop driven. Nighthawk was accessible and farmable, which is important. This gave players something that they could sell to other players looking to gear up at reasonable prices. Level 80 gear was your expensive end game items, while level 70 gear was accessible and viable in 80 raids. You could farm mats needed for both in TD, which encouraged more active play. I feel like the seal shop should be more of an event similar to the enchant scroll events. The population booms when that sort of thing happens, but invariably peters out, leaving us to where we are today. Might as well not tank the economy while you're at it.

Look at all the relatively hard parts of the game. Neam obviously comes to mind. When Neam came out, I predicted that most people would give up and stop trying after a month or so. Turns out I was right. When Neam first came out, I saw several Neam practice parties evey single day. After a month, that dropped to zero. And the number of parties that actually do successful runs now is 1, and they usually dont even have a full party. (Figures for your server will differ obviously).

Nature of the beast, neam was made to appease a more hardcore group of the population which obviously isn't everyone. You have to throw them a bone every now and then.

Look at the revamped royal raids. They used to be super easy, and people sometimes did them for titles/easy seals whenever people megaphoned for it. Now, people dont touch them because the bosses have insanely high HP and it takes 20+ minutes to kill for terrible rewards, and thats with at least 6 very well geared players carrying. And thats assuming the servers dont turn into a slideshow. If the servers do turn into a slide show, enjoy your 30+ minutes of boredom.

The servers sucking **** is the main reason I don't touch these.

There are still people in full level 90 OJ enchanted gear who refuse to touch Nifleheim because "too hard" or "ceebs". That should tell you all you need to know about how much the population likes difficult things. I have seen people with +15 level 90s refuse to do s3 dailies because "it is too hard". That says a lot.

I don't know what to say here. I guess +15 90s are too accessible now.

For every hardcore player who wants something to be difficult, there are probably at least 10 who wants it easier. How many people have you seen quit the game because "this is too hard" vs "this too easy"? Pretty much every veteran has lost count of the number of people who have quit because they couldnt progress in gear, couldnt get drops, couldnt even get to +8 after using 10 runes, etc, etc. I can only remember two guys who quit because they complained it was too easy...ironically they are now playing again, and aren't enjoying Neam.

Difficulty in content and difficulty in grind are apples and oranges.

Oh sure you hear about people quitting because they got good gear and feel they have nothing else to aim for. What they dont tell you is that they still can improve their gear, but cant be bothered to do so. Most of those are attack capped for s3, but arent stat capped, and dont want to try. Why? "Ceebs". Sure they can use material synthesis to stat cap...but again..."ceebs". When it takes more than a week's worth of s3 dailies to get enough mats for one major stat increase, most people simply cannot be bothered.

From the people I've gotten close to in my guild I've learned that endgame goals vary widely. Not everyone is a perfectionist, especially when you cannot realistically notice the difference in 89 speed and 93 speed, yet the cost to achieve a little bit more speed and still retaining the rest of your stats at cap are tremendous when it involves gear swapping to get there. Some people feel that their current stats are acceptable for their goals, and feel that the benefits of grinding for better gear are at a plateau. This is an understandable assessment, as the cost of your time vs the benefits starts winding down.

I find myself repeating the same conversation everytime a new piece of gear is released. When Eoch earrings came out, I had people tell me they didnt want to play because they had good gear and felt there was nothning left to do, even though they didnt have the new earrings. When I asked them why they didnt want to get the new earrings, they just said "ceebs" "i wont get the rare drop anyway" "too hard". Same thing happened with the level 85 belt. Its not that they have nothing left to do, its that they have nothing EASY left to do.

I'm guilty of this. For me personally, it's because I know the prices are going to eventually tank and the benefits of it over say, an 85 belt over my already crit infused peridot belt are minimal. I'll get it eventually, but I'm not in a huge hurry especially since I'll have to change around a lot of my gear to actually benefit from that extra balance, seeing that I'm already crit/balance capped.

They could run Eochaid/Abomination to get the essence...but because its REALLY rare....they cant be bothered. Where are they now? Playing other games. When/If we get eoch/abo essences in the seal shop, they will probably come back to make it with seals. But they wont touch the raids because they cant be bothered to do them, and in the meantime they wont play the game because they ran out of easy stuff to do.

I do Eochaid/Abom sparingly because they simply are not fun runs. I like Eochaid to an extent, he's fun to solo with chainblades, but Abom has crappy mechanics and it's just something we do if somebody needs to finish up some runs for the title. In my opinion the only good raid that has come out in Season 3 is Lord Glas, and I would go up against him even if he didn't drop anything.

Cassie because my character is a cringy catgrill.

Member when there was more endgame raids, and they came in multiples instead of one every six months?