Cashews

Rezi wrote: »

Late S1, Early S2. That was best time. From Glas to Kraken. After that everything just sort-of fell off.

Late S2 was significantly better than Early S2. Kraken and Lakoria, SG, and CMI were freaking terrible. Most of the raid bosses in S2 were trash until Anwynn. Honestly every single boss released in S3 except Braha has been superb in my opinion, but they release way too slowly and there's not enough of them.

In my opinion the thing "killing" the game the most is the CONSTANT buffing of characters and dumbing down of content. I don't need Glas back to 40 minute raids or Keaghan almost timing out, but I certainly don't want them taking 10 seconds. There's no game there. Ignition was fine, Revolution was overkill. I was ecstatic when they improved the distance on Lann's Nimble Dash, but extremely disappointed when they doubled his invulnerability frames.

I could forgive every questionable decision they made in Rise if they made the game exist again before level 90. Keep normal how it is now for legitimately new players who don't know what they're doing, and re-add hard mode how it used to be. It's such a simple f***ing concept.

Rezi wrote: »

Prototypemind wrote: »

That said, you can find at least nightly groups for all S3 content, so you're good if that's your aim.

I just find it amazing that S3 addicts think that's the point of Vindi, despite the many years Vindi existed before S3 came out. Hero raids for S1/S2 existed because the original developers didn't want old content to be forgotten at endgame; endgame was designed around the notion that you were supposed to go back to previous areas. If anything, RISE's focus on S3 just shows how much this game has lost its original design, and I for one don't think that's a good thing. But then again, I always preferred XE's reliance on skills over statfests like RISE, so perhaps I'm just preaching to a vacuum.

Even before Rise, old content was still "forgotten" at endgame, it just wasn't entirely dead. People only ran hero mode Rocheste raids when there was an event going on for running multiple raid bosses, or they wanted to get some quick seals. Of course there's people that liked doing the bosses for the sake of doing the bosses (myself included), but there was never a need to do that, and I personally don't think there was ever a very large portion of the players that fit that bill. Outside of those events I could have sat in a Hero Glas room or a Hero Colru for like 10 minutes and not had anyone join. You could never really increase your progression by going back and visiting these raids, so the focus was always on S3. If the old director truly wanted to have people revisit previous areas, then he would've made them drop more worthwhile things. If I recall correctly, hero Colhen/Rocheste didn't even drop anything different than normal/hard.

That being said, it's entirely stupid that they removed the option. If people want to run hero mode Colhen or Rocheste raids, then let them. New players can still do what they always did: avoid it; and veterans that actually want to go back and do these raids to have fun can do so without killing the boss in 5 seconds. There was absolutely 0 point in the overhaul they did of the difficulty system. New players weren't going to do Hero mode anyway. Honestly, if they undid the difficulty changes and the additional damage changes, Rise would actually be pretty darn good in my opinion. Oh, and if the game wasn't 7 years old with a dwindling player base.

Prototypemind wrote: »

Aequipondium wrote: »

It's not that she's bad, those others you mentioned are just too strong. If anything everyone else should be nerfed instead of buffing Lynn.

You don't fix garbage by bringing everyone else down. Her dodge is still broken, the timing for her marks sucks, and her SP moves are poo; bad character is bad and you should feel badly for wanting everyone else to suffer as those who play her do.

Her dodge is fine and the timing for her marks is also fine. It's a neat and unique concept (for this game anyway), and in most instances it would separate a "good Lynn" from a "bad Lynn." It's only problematic when you have a crappy connection. The real problem is that there's no reason to even have to do this in the first place, when you can play literally any other character with half the effort for double the reward.

They dumbed everyone else down and didn't give Lynn the same treatment. They actually "smartened her up" by rewarding gold marks more and making them pretty much mandatory for respectable damage.

Controller001 wrote: »

right now you MUST have atleast 50+ speed just to be on LOW geared side.

I don't have and have never had more than 50 speed on any of my characters, and one of them is a Delia. Never had more than 40 until I tried 11 and 12 with the event runes semi-recently. I do just fine and always have. It really is incredibly easy to gear a character now, including alts. You get free gear all the way through level 80 and by the time you actually need to get your own gear, you'll probably have enough seals to do so (or at least get most of it done).

Everyone that thinks it isn't incredibly easy to gear characters is talking about getting stats that are unnecessary for everything but Neamhain (or golds in Ein Lacher I guess). And then at that point yes, min-maxing is basically impossible without incredible luck or dropping tons of money. So it is a problem when people reach a rather easy end-game, and then think, "Well there's still room to grow, may as well try for it," and get punished because their weapon booms. Then they get discouraged and quit either for good or for a while.

Cessa wrote: »

I've been playing this game for over 6 years.
There is no practical "way to make money" in Vindictus.

All you can do is get drops and sell them in the marketplace.

There is, but it usually involves mundane tasks such as mindless farming or mining ore veins and restarting, which let's be honest: no one plays this game for that. There are much better games to play if you like farming simulators.

That being said, it certainly is an option for people that don't mind it. Otherwise, just simply playing the game by doing raids and what not is your best (and really only) bet.