v0.10 First impressions

Just have mettle be universal like dodge, just with a 3 second stun effect so they cannot move as I have suggested elsewhere. Works on everything, so no reason to crossclass but still slightly worse than the more mobile dodge. Problem solved.

When you say "stun" effect do you mean that they cannot use skills like the current version or just that they cannot move, like a pin?
 
We're more of a business
Yes, it is a business. But unlike all other businesses, this one has decided that the feedback of its customers (or as Tevas put very properly - investors) doesn't matter. The company takes a stand on something, and 98% of a core group of its customers (and I'm going with each class equals a core), after testing out the results of that stand, come back and say "this was a terrible idea, you totally shouldn't do it", and then the company proceeds to NOT ONLY approve what everyone is complaining about, but to go further on making it bad even worse.


We, the ownership, have typically stayed away from interacting directly with these forums
Why? Your player base has a huge presence on the forums, and I don't mean just your chapter, but all others as well. You're designing rules that effect all the locations, not just your own, and by staying away and not interacting with the players you are simply ignoring them. That results in things like either players not having faith in the owners to do a good job, or players just not giving a damn about what happens because they're talking to the void.

Relics – This proposal was one of my ideas, and I am saddened to see that so many of you do not feel that they live up to your expectations.
I liked the idea behind it, I just think (as others have pointed out) that it could be better. A minute in combat is a huge amount of time. Yes, as you pointed out, that already exists for refitting armor, but that doesn't diminish the negative value of that time amount. A fighter knows that he's going to loose that time fixing his armor (or 30 sec if he's lucky to be a master smith/have one available), and I know plenty that just don't reset during the fight, because loosing that 60 seconds is just too detrimental. Now the healer is loosing 60 seconds on a use of a skill that's frankly got everyone going "meh"

Paragon Paths – I know this isn't in the play test packet any longer, but this was also my brain child.
Personally, I loved the idea of Paragon Paths. Yeah, they needed balancing, but that doesn't mean they should have been taken out. And everyone else can go ahead and bitch about that, this was something that's badly needed and needs to be fixed and implemented.

Mettle – I am actually surprised that folks think this isn't strong enough. Do not forget that in the wording of the ability it allows the player to spend a second use of Mettle to drop that count down to three seconds. 10 seconds (or three seconds) to get a resist to pretty much any status effect seemed super great to me.
I said it earlier. I like the idea of Mettle. For me personally, it falls a bit flat due to the 10 sec timing and feeling like its only useful with a double-use. That right away makes me think "good idea, bad design." As Tevas pointed out, 5 second loss of action due to Disarm is already a thing, making it a 5 second loss to match Disarm is a more polished design.

Multiple Rollouts – It has come up in this forum before that we should roll out the magic item changes and then roll out the other rules changes after we have seen how the MI changes work. To be particularly blunt: this is not going to happen.
This right here is my biggest issue with the entire testing process. This didn't start out with the idea of "lets build a new rules system." If it did, then by all means, keep plugging away. But if the intent was "we have these problems, lets figure out a way to fix them" then multiple roll-outs is absolutely the best approach to, not only fix the issues that you originally intended, but also not to completely throw the entire system out of order by allowing conflicting and sometimes completely unnecessary changes.
 
Yes, it is a business. But unlike all other businesses, this one has decided that the feedback of its customers (or as Tevas put very properly - investors) doesn't matter. The company takes a stand on something, and 98% of a core group of its customers (and I'm going with each class equals a core), after testing out the results of that stand, come back and say "this was a terrible idea, you totally shouldn't do it", and then the company proceeds to NOT ONLY approve what everyone is complaining about, but to go further on making it bad even worse.

I think that's just the feeling on the forums. From what I've heard, the actual feedback from the playtests differs.
 
I think that's just the feeling on the forums. From what I've heard, the actual feedback from the playtests differs.

From a purely unbiased data analysis perspective, I have to say that Tulbor’s statements are correct in spirit. The feedback received from the playtesters aligns with his perspectives. Unfortunately the 0.9 feedback form does not include a section that asks what class someone primarily plays, so I cannot directly link the feedback to “X class said Y”, and therefore cannot directly validate his percentages. Specifically from the standpoint of Fighter changes, looking primarily at two significant ones in particular, it appears that the majority of respondents are opposed to the changes.

On a scale of 1 to 5, respondents gave increased Backstab and Weapon Proficiency costs a 2.45 average score. In this scaling, a 1 indicates disagreement with the change, a score of 3 marks indifference, and a 5 represents agreement.

54.83% of respondents felt that they preferred the Prepare to Die skills as they currently exist under 1.3 rules.


From a personal standpoint, through individual discussions I have had with Fighters who have participated in playtesting, I have found their views and Tulbor’s comments to be particularly consistent.

((Edit to average score due to field in Excel not summing))
 
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@Tevas, are those stats from the playtests across chapters, or just from SF?
 
Why? Your player base has a huge presence on the forums, and I don't mean just your chapter, but all others as well. You're designing rules that effect all the locations, not just your own, and by staying away and not interacting with the players you are simply ignoring them. That results in things like either players not having faith in the owners to do a good job, or players just not giving a damn about what happens because they're talking to the void.


There has been a distinct impression that the powers that be are hostile to rules feedback here for a long while. There's a reason we don't have a rules discussion forum anymore.

That may or may not be accurate, I don't know their minds, but the impression is certainly there.
 
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There has been a distinct impression that the powers that bee are hostile to rules feedback here for a long while. There's a reason we don't have a rules discussion forum anymore.

That may or may not be accurate, I don't know their minds, but the impression is certainly there.

I do not think that is impression that is a fact. We have been told that we are only allowed to comment on very small amount of things they have approved and they do not want comments on anything else. Now with saying that I do notice they did take feedback with some of these new rules changes like taking away flurry rule. But in general it is seems like they only /allow discussion to be like this "we love most of it, but here are a few tweeks." If we say something is completely out balance or over powered or under powered they just seem to ignore us. Even if we present multiple examples of it happening. Also when we ask if our goal was to make it easier for new people "how does this change help that, it is just to complicated" and they complete ignore that feedback.
 
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I thought that was because the rules feedback tends to get hostile...

That is likely. It's easy to read in hostility given the lack of tone in text posting and sharp criticism of something that's a labor of love.

To be clear, I'm referring to the forums in general. Tevas et al have been very good about being responsive to feedback in the playtest discussion.
 
Tevas, for the record, is not actually a chapter owner or member of ARC, and as a playtest coordinator, had gosh darn better be responsive to playtest feedback (this is a joke, we are friends, picture a deadpan tone of voice but a sarcastic eyebrow lift and maybe a heart emoji).
 
I picture the broken one. It’s mine. You broke it.
It's OK, she plays a Stone Elf, she can fix it.

Anyway...
If nothing else, I'd love to hear from owners and/or ARC about how they are incorporating our playtest feedback into the process, rather than trying to guess and extrapolate based on what gets changed between packets.
 
I think that's just the feeling on the forums. From what I've heard, the actual feedback from the playtests differs.
I can only speak for my own chapter and that which I see on the forums, right? I only travel to Seattle and even that very rarely cause I don't have funds for it. But every fighter that I know locally, and every fighter except for Durnic and maybe 1 or 2 others on the forum, have voiced their problems with this. So sure, maybe the number is more like 75-80%. MAYBE it's 55-60, I don't know, but it is still an incredible amount of feedback from a company's customer base that was not only been ignored but was gone against. Companies fold for way less then that.
 
I can only speak for my own chapter and that which I see on the forums, right? I only travel to Seattle and even that very rarely cause I don't have funds for it. But every fighter that I know locally, and every fighter except for Durnic and maybe 1 or 2 others on the forum, have voiced their problems with this. So sure, maybe the number is more like 75-80%. MAYBE it's 55-60, I don't know, but it is still an incredible amount of feedback from a company's customer base that was not only been ignored but was gone against. Companies fold for way less then that.

This is consistent with Denver as well. Some Fighters locally only think the changes are really bad rather than "makes the class unplayable bad" and some celestial casters think the changes are fine, but overall the impression is overwhelmingly negative.
 
I don't think the fighter changes make fighter unplayable, though I feel the changes to Disarm/Shatter make shields a devastating vulnerability, and I feel that it pushes fighter-players towards Scouts, not out of a sense of "attracted to Scout builds" but out of a sense of "Well, I guess it's the only way I can mathematically progress my character effectively."

You don't need to be a min-maxer to recognize that Scouts are going to see more play than is likely intended.
 
I agree the change to disarm and shatter makes shields really really bad. Also now you can pop a magic armor by hitting a shield with a disarm strike adds more exceptions, not less. It is just going to make for confusion.

This change also is not any more logical then the current method. Tapping a shield on the front causes you to drop it? How is that any better then hitting there body to drop it?

And yes once you hit a soft cap of progression moving into scout seems far more attractive and option, esp getting dodges to make up for loss of other defenses.
 
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