Tweet
The game is so gear dependent because theres not as much "casual content" as the past. My friend complained about this and I agree.
Equalized modes like:
Chaos RIft/Jealous Atrium/Dark Banquet
Rumble Mode, Protect, domination, other forms of group pvp besides respawn and FFA
Semi-Equalized:
Ladder
Guild Rumble
And standard PVE had a whole spectrum of difficulties to suit your time commitment and gear level:
- Solo nests
- dailies/dungeon grinding (you had easy mode 8-town grinding where you completed infinite quests for gold, and harder ABYSS/CHAOS mode that dropped important mats like gem cores, it was fair because these modes were basically as hard as HC NESTS if you weren't geared)
- 4-man nests
-2 man Dragon Expedition (when it's just you and a friend, skill/exp somewhat required)
-Dark Banquet HC (same as above)
-6-man Trial Nests (when you cant be bothered finding 8 men but still want the group teamwork experience)
Progression:
-Solo nest achievements
-The Achievement Point shop which gave incentive to actually... achieve stuff
-Party achievements
-Guild Achievements
Game design is too focused on gear and "DMG rewards" rather than taking advantage of DN's game mechanics.
Current equalized content is too easy (hero's battlefield, treasure dungeon actually used to kill you if you weren't careful)
The fact that GDN Time Attack was designed with such absurd requirements shows this. Sure, you can get a party together, then what? Do you spend all your time grinding for gear instead of practicing the raid, or spend your time practicing the raid instead of gearing? Yes, there is a correlation between dedication/expertise and gear, but its not as important as it seems.
Game hasnt always been perfect. 80 cap had massive discrimination and party comp restrictions. 90 cap t5 revamp was almost great, except they deleted all the old content that built this game over the years and made ladder irrelevant, and reduced the number of orange pvp rooms. At least Daidalos nest was cool. The only good thing about T5 was the debuff stacking system, it was unique enough, warranted party comp an important consideration AND it meant that most of your damage was dependent on Party Play, not how fat your wallet is and this "ME ME MY DPS" attitude that is universally adopted.
It was very disappointing to hear they removed Debuff Stacking in 93 cap and introduced more OP costume at the same time. I ate it up. I hated the message i was sending.
You can see how despite the cool awakenings, 93 cap was very lackluster.
- Rune Dragon Abyss had 1/10th the HP of HC and a 40 min timer. This is completely opposite of the traditional raid 60 min HC timer, and normal having 1/2 the HP of HC. Where is the intermediate raid between nests and HC? Yeah, thats what abyss was supposed to be. Instead, RUDN abyss had LESS HP than IDN Abyss. This says a lot about the gear gap and/or intentions of the devs.
- Pandered Abyss to super casual to the point where clearing it in 30 min is not an indicator of whether you can attempt HC - Make the timer 40 min so you actually need enough dps to skip mechanics than actually do mechanics.
- AND​ of course, add pointless difficulty by introducing COMPLETELY NEW mechs in HC that you cannot practice in Abyss. Im not talking about the typical "hc debuffs more and has 3 differences," im actually talking about hc-exclusive mechs that are completely new, and there's 7 HC Exclusive MECHS in RuneHC. Ridiculous.
Old dungeons had "hot-time" achievements that randomly appeared and you could get some extra gold, mats, or even titles.
I suspect the gold goblin dungeon, jelly dungeon, and slayer mode are supposed to give the randomization that players crave, because people LOVE small unexpected random events that make the game engaging. This is good.
TBH as a vet I'm still waiting to see the features of the game RETURNED. The features that encourage running content (achievements), encourage partying (achievements, debuff stacking), fill the gaps in playerbase playtime and commitment (varying difficulties of dungeons; 6-man = entry level raid, equalized content). These aren't even new features. They already exist in the game's coding. Seriously.
Equalized modes like:
Chaos RIft/Jealous Atrium/Dark Banquet
Rumble Mode, Protect, domination, other forms of group pvp besides respawn and FFA
Semi-Equalized:
Ladder
Guild Rumble
And standard PVE had a whole spectrum of difficulties to suit your time commitment and gear level:
- Solo nests
- dailies/dungeon grinding (you had easy mode 8-town grinding where you completed infinite quests for gold, and harder ABYSS/CHAOS mode that dropped important mats like gem cores, it was fair because these modes were basically as hard as HC NESTS if you weren't geared)
- 4-man nests
-2 man Dragon Expedition (when it's just you and a friend, skill/exp somewhat required)
-Dark Banquet HC (same as above)
-6-man Trial Nests (when you cant be bothered finding 8 men but still want the group teamwork experience)
Progression:
-Solo nest achievements
-The Achievement Point shop which gave incentive to actually... achieve stuff
-Party achievements
-Guild Achievements
Game design is too focused on gear and "DMG rewards" rather than taking advantage of DN's game mechanics.
Current equalized content is too easy (hero's battlefield, treasure dungeon actually used to kill you if you weren't careful)
The fact that GDN Time Attack was designed with such absurd requirements shows this. Sure, you can get a party together, then what? Do you spend all your time grinding for gear instead of practicing the raid, or spend your time practicing the raid instead of gearing? Yes, there is a correlation between dedication/expertise and gear, but its not as important as it seems.
Game hasnt always been perfect. 80 cap had massive discrimination and party comp restrictions. 90 cap t5 revamp was almost great, except they deleted all the old content that built this game over the years and made ladder irrelevant, and reduced the number of orange pvp rooms. At least Daidalos nest was cool. The only good thing about T5 was the debuff stacking system, it was unique enough, warranted party comp an important consideration AND it meant that most of your damage was dependent on Party Play, not how fat your wallet is and this "ME ME MY DPS" attitude that is universally adopted.
It was very disappointing to hear they removed Debuff Stacking in 93 cap and introduced more OP costume at the same time. I ate it up. I hated the message i was sending.
You can see how despite the cool awakenings, 93 cap was very lackluster.
- Rune Dragon Abyss had 1/10th the HP of HC and a 40 min timer. This is completely opposite of the traditional raid 60 min HC timer, and normal having 1/2 the HP of HC. Where is the intermediate raid between nests and HC? Yeah, thats what abyss was supposed to be. Instead, RUDN abyss had LESS HP than IDN Abyss. This says a lot about the gear gap and/or intentions of the devs.
- Pandered Abyss to super casual to the point where clearing it in 30 min is not an indicator of whether you can attempt HC - Make the timer 40 min so you actually need enough dps to skip mechanics than actually do mechanics.
- AND​ of course, add pointless difficulty by introducing COMPLETELY NEW mechs in HC that you cannot practice in Abyss. Im not talking about the typical "hc debuffs more and has 3 differences," im actually talking about hc-exclusive mechs that are completely new, and there's 7 HC Exclusive MECHS in RuneHC. Ridiculous.
Old dungeons had "hot-time" achievements that randomly appeared and you could get some extra gold, mats, or even titles.
I suspect the gold goblin dungeon, jelly dungeon, and slayer mode are supposed to give the randomization that players crave, because people LOVE small unexpected random events that make the game engaging. This is good.
TBH as a vet I'm still waiting to see the features of the game RETURNED. The features that encourage running content (achievements), encourage partying (achievements, debuff stacking), fill the gaps in playerbase playtime and commitment (varying difficulties of dungeons; 6-man = entry level raid, equalized content). These aren't even new features. They already exist in the game's coding. Seriously.
Comment