I think that the community is too salty to be able to work constructively with FC and not get stroppy if they did something the community hasn’t signed off on. Given the number of individuals who are convinced that they personally speak for the community, that’s too much of a minefield to be able to really get much done.
There’s also cautionary tales about listening to a community. Wildstar listened and many people were really pumped by the idea of 40 man raids, attunement missions and focusing on end game content. Unfortunately for them, it turned out that people were thinking nostalgically, and whilst they produced some great dungeons, raids and other endgame stuff, it turned out that there wasn’t actually a sustainable population of people willing to log on for that content and keep the title going (RIP Wildstar). I’m not saying that it couldn’t work at all, but it adds a massive element of risk that has no guarantees regarding game success.
The global passives page has been suggested repeatedly since SWL beta, pretty much because it was in TSW. It’s hard to see how it would really do much other than homogenise builds, with passives either not being worth using or becoming integral to every build. Current passives are either ability linked or weapon gimmick linked, having any kind of DPS increase from an unlinked passive would be OP as it’ll boost everything, unless they’re dramatically smaller increases (like the signets). If they’re that much worse, then no-one will pick them (so people would complain that the new passives are worthless). The only real way it’d work would be to have a single passive page with stuff like Agitator and Subtlety, which then just ends up feeling very meh.
Page with universal non-dps passive would be enough. Even agitator/subtlety would be enough. Even agitator gadget would be great. Passives that give boost protection, hate, mobility, healing, HP, shields etc would be great because there is trade off - you need to sacrifice passive slot.
The Manticore X27 Agitator gadget could just be changed from being a taunt to generating extra hate plus a taunt.
The problem with tanking from passives would be the potential lack of defensive cds. Tanks currently don’t have the ability to take multiple hits without a def cd up, so tanking with other weapons wouldn’t work without rebalancing boss damage scaling.
everytime i’ve seen people try go give ideas in the discord channel, (me included) there’s always the same people saying “no, because X”
I got the feeling they just don’t want anything to change and the game t stay in this state forever.
Not just that but almost nobody on these forums is prepared to accept that the development bottleneck probably isn’t ideas. It really doesn’t seem likely that the dev team are sitting on a huge pile of cash, paralysed by indecision and all we need is for a few brave souls from the forum to make their voice heard and get things moving again.
To be clear, I’m not saying suggestions are bad - suggestions are great. Agitating to have the game designed by committee because you can’t accept that your suggestions aren’t legally binding is less great however.
Agents are a much better fit for providing threat modifiers, the gadget slot is too important.
That could be just down to there being a small group of people who are active on the forums and really know a lot about the game mechanics.
Often, suggested changes have interactions which may have been unconsidered, or massively increase the effort required for a fix. I put up a post a little while ago about whether or not purges could to some degree neutralise the OPness of sustain tanking.
I knew that it wasn’t a fully formed idea, and the people who know the systems were quick to point out the flaws in the idea.
It wasn’t because they don’t want the game to change, it was them pointing out that it wasn’t actually going to fix the issue, because of factors that I’d just not considered.
That may not be the case for all of them, (I can’t speak for them, because I don’t know their opinions on everything,) but I know most of them are up for real improvements in the game, and they give lots of useful data to the developers. For example, look at the number of bug reports that Jimmy generates on discord
but most of the suggestions I’ve seen don’t have anything to do with specific mechanics, but of ways to have new content on the game.
Anyway, maybe I should just stop having hopes for this game. the silence from FC and lack of new real content is pretty crystal clear on their intentions with the game.
There’s something we can agree on. An Agitator and a Subtlety agent would be a nice addition.
Or they could add a 6th passive slot. There’s currently only 5 passives, and that’s fine as the basic attack usually doesn’t have a directly associated passive, so one “universal” passive slot could work.
The lack of real content could be due to many different reasons, and not all of them are bad. Maybe Congo is taking longer to come out because they really want to do it right. Maybe they haven’t ported over the other dungeons and raids because they are endlessly testing them to make sure they’re balanced right and bug-free. Probably not, but we can hope.
It’s the lack of communication that bothers me the most. Not just about new content, as in the above examples they can’t really announce their plans to have it done by a certain time, but communication in general needs to improve. Giving a general idea of what they’re working on would be nice, but I’m sure there’s arguments against even that.
A sixth passive slot requires a bunch of extra work to actually add and test and potentially causes balance issues. It also requires a bunch of extra work to actually come up with a lot more passives (because going to all the extra effort for two passives is pointless) and would, in all likelihood, just be used for more dps by the majority of players. New agents require very little work in comparison and are way more likely to be used because they give two bonuses and so could be like “+x% damage, -y% threat”.
Oh I agree that agents are by far the better, and easier to implement, solution. I just threw out the 6th passive slot to go along with the pipe-dream of them adding a bunch of new passives to the game. If they are going to add more passives, which I agree would be a lot more work than it seems at first, an extra slot would be nice.
An extra slot would be nice, but it’d skew all the balancing so far. At some point early on, (I can’t remember when though,) the devs mentioned that the restriction in passive slots was a much thought over decision. I’d guess that giving us another slot would raise the damage of pure DPS more than they’re happy with.
Adding more passives would be good for build diversity (probably), but tanks having to sacrifice a slot for agitator would reduce their damage potential. I suspect that agitator would make up for it, but it’d take a fair bit of balancing so that tanks did actually still have to work to hold aggro, not just be an insane aggro magnet with no effort.
There’s no doubt the problem is lack of resources.
My hope is to involve the community in some organised, phased fashion. This should be done with the goal of reducing dev resources required during multiple stages of content development. Of course it needs to be treated as an experiment and investment, which idk how much Funcom is willing to do.
I’d like to repeat what I said in my first reply to this thread. I’m actually ok with the current dev team, the pace of things, and the current extended outreach that Funcom has taken with the community. From what I read,the Fey Ley Line gadget and the repair box for OD were created based on community feedback. And I think those items really extend the playability of OD. But I’d like to see Funcom move more in this direction, particularly in creating story content.
It’s sad to think the community is too salty at this stage.
I dont recall if the repair Kit was based on players suggesting it, or if it was just Balanced based on the feedback. I can confirm that the ley line was added when the testers asked for a ‘forward teleporting gadget, that doesnt need a target’ due to melee builds strugling with moving quick enough around the field.
if we’re lacking new content, and we do have a add on that allows us to create content for others to play, including cutscenes, an easy solution would be to make it known, since most people have never heard of it.
They could make contests for custom quests, and stuff like that, and even might be able to add the winning ones as a real mission later, but i doubt they care enough to do it.
Yes, the main problem is a lack of resources, so the resources should be allocated to address the more pressing issues. That’s where community feedback would come in handy. Was the Rosenbrawl a good use of dev time? I know a lot of people have enjoyed it, but if asked directly, how many of the players would have chosen to have that added to the game over work being done on new story content or balancing issues? I honestly don’t know and neither does Funcom, because no one bothered to ask.
Adding a new mission for the missing museum items was a good idea, but locking it behind RNG wasn’t. A quick poll could have shown that that wasn’t the best approach. The devs see the game from their point of view, we see it from ours. Those two viewpoints don’t always line up, so more communication could help reach a compromise.
The playerbase is definitely salty right now, but I think the solution is more outreach from Funcom, not less. There’s a big problem in the gaming and entertainment industry right now where negative reactions from fans is treated by even more negativity from those in charge. You can argue they have a right to react however they want, but that doesn’t make the situation better and it’s not good for business.
It looks like it was the best approach. People are farming bags now day in day out hoping for box drop . Of course FC would not be FC if they didn’t forget to put same box in cash shop :sarcasm:
What could they possibly say about the april 1st patch that wouldn’t be met with incandescent rage from certain players? It was a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do as an april fool’s lark but some people are palpably furious because they mistakenly believe that the way game development works is the players call 100% of the shots 100% of the time and the devs had better ask how high when told to jump.
. Of course FC would not be FC if they didn’t forget to put same box in cash shop :sarcasm: