It takes all types 
2.0 thoughts-
I have played pretty much every solo class except artisan with dips into other trees (my fighter has 90ish points into rogue for example) ranging in ability from level 25-45
In the chapters I have played in it is not irregular for me to soak up a major amount of healing/get dropped by NPC skills and abilities over time. It may not be immediate, and working with a team makes it that much harder, but it is a semi regular occurrence.
2.0 combat can be fun, but what I keep hearing in my travels is the same thing, effectivity/efficiency of build. From my talks with players, the biggest complaints come from stacked defenses on monsters, or outright ability to negate interactions (immune to all nonX). From an efficiency standpoint a high level scout with stacked back attacks and crit attacks is a monster on the field, but it is due to the fact that other characters build is being ignored by what is, again in my opinion, unnecessarily overly stacked defensive cards. There are so many tools out there now to make the fights better in the side of the NPCs, and some of them are going to get churned through, but instead of 3-5 instant negation defenses, alternating those to things like resolute, or mettle, intercepts on nameless crunchies, using the reduced and alternate calls where appropriate, swarm, massive, minimal, extra lives, timed waves, etc. You can create a better environment for the players who have invested into purchasing skills and spells outside of raw repetitive damage. It is hard though, and it takes work keeping the NPCs spirits up, making sure they have the energy to go, and finding ways to actually reward your players who NPC in a meaningful manner (which the log boost helped, but we can honestly probably do more if NPC numbers are still dragging). That being said, we could probably also use a national Education/Analyst whose purpose is to gather and analyze then unbiasedly report what would help us turn those corners via surveys, newsletters, educational forums, etc.
I remember in some of my earliest games looking at the most powerful characters around and seeing that as a goal/challenge for me to get to that "level" of play. The mods I went on at lower level were generally scaled to what we could handle, and really only once or twice did we get steamrolled or feel useless. It created a sense of community and mentorship that I sought out to be better. My other friends that I started with saw that gap as too much of a challenge to ever close in on and so they left for other games where they found other challenging phenomena. For me if there was a top tier and then just grind to kit like in a MMO, I would have probably left the game too. Alliance has, again in my opinion, always been about community and social engagement. I dont think resets, or caps solve any of the actual issues of knowledge, education, accountability, or personnel gaps.
I believe we could achieve a better result for moving 2.0 forward through easing back some of the cards (less build negation effects), increasing NPC numbers, and creating a community based around education/mentorship for both IG and OOG Knowledge/skills.
That being said, all of these opinions are still relatively localized for me as every game I have been to is run wildly different from every other game I have been to. Outside of common language it is very important to understand that each chapter is it's very own an unique puzzle box, and it honestly is amazing in the amount of freedom and control each chapter has to run content towards its individual playership. I once heard someone say "Scope determines solutions", and that has always stuck with me especially in regards to Alliance.
2.0 thoughts-
I have played pretty much every solo class except artisan with dips into other trees (my fighter has 90ish points into rogue for example) ranging in ability from level 25-45
In the chapters I have played in it is not irregular for me to soak up a major amount of healing/get dropped by NPC skills and abilities over time. It may not be immediate, and working with a team makes it that much harder, but it is a semi regular occurrence.
2.0 combat can be fun, but what I keep hearing in my travels is the same thing, effectivity/efficiency of build. From my talks with players, the biggest complaints come from stacked defenses on monsters, or outright ability to negate interactions (immune to all nonX). From an efficiency standpoint a high level scout with stacked back attacks and crit attacks is a monster on the field, but it is due to the fact that other characters build is being ignored by what is, again in my opinion, unnecessarily overly stacked defensive cards. There are so many tools out there now to make the fights better in the side of the NPCs, and some of them are going to get churned through, but instead of 3-5 instant negation defenses, alternating those to things like resolute, or mettle, intercepts on nameless crunchies, using the reduced and alternate calls where appropriate, swarm, massive, minimal, extra lives, timed waves, etc. You can create a better environment for the players who have invested into purchasing skills and spells outside of raw repetitive damage. It is hard though, and it takes work keeping the NPCs spirits up, making sure they have the energy to go, and finding ways to actually reward your players who NPC in a meaningful manner (which the log boost helped, but we can honestly probably do more if NPC numbers are still dragging). That being said, we could probably also use a national Education/Analyst whose purpose is to gather and analyze then unbiasedly report what would help us turn those corners via surveys, newsletters, educational forums, etc.
I remember in some of my earliest games looking at the most powerful characters around and seeing that as a goal/challenge for me to get to that "level" of play. The mods I went on at lower level were generally scaled to what we could handle, and really only once or twice did we get steamrolled or feel useless. It created a sense of community and mentorship that I sought out to be better. My other friends that I started with saw that gap as too much of a challenge to ever close in on and so they left for other games where they found other challenging phenomena. For me if there was a top tier and then just grind to kit like in a MMO, I would have probably left the game too. Alliance has, again in my opinion, always been about community and social engagement. I dont think resets, or caps solve any of the actual issues of knowledge, education, accountability, or personnel gaps.
I believe we could achieve a better result for moving 2.0 forward through easing back some of the cards (less build negation effects), increasing NPC numbers, and creating a community based around education/mentorship for both IG and OOG Knowledge/skills.
That being said, all of these opinions are still relatively localized for me as every game I have been to is run wildly different from every other game I have been to. Outside of common language it is very important to understand that each chapter is it's very own an unique puzzle box, and it honestly is amazing in the amount of freedom and control each chapter has to run content towards its individual playership. I once heard someone say "Scope determines solutions", and that has always stuck with me especially in regards to Alliance.
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