I think you are right in that people are clinging to their own interpretation of what will “fix it”. The only thing I think I have for you in feedback is I would love more detail on what the intentions of these changes are. You do a stellar job at explaining the intention of new content but the updates to current content could use work on what the intention was for the change itself.
For instance, a comparison.
update 3.0. You reworked the ENTIRE attribute system on top of introducing sorcery. You gave a great reason for this that we could all relate to. In previous CE, we were not the stars of story. We were heavily dependent on thralls to tackle NPCs and that isn’t your vision of what CE is about. While people did gripe, the majority of folks totally were on the same page with in and accepted the changes. I can remember this in your dev stream from last year no problem
Update 4.0 You reworked combat and the stamina changes. I had to rewatch the dev stream to get an understanding of what the intent was and then find out that you wanted stamina drain to pause spam attacking and while that may have worked for PVE, it definitely had the exact opposite effect on PVP (but that was due to one particular perk) but I digress. It wasn’t memorable . Also I found it interesting that these were part of the larger aspect of AI improvements that I missed in that first dev stream for the age. That makes sense that we are seeing the our characters appear to get limited while the NPC’s appear much differently. But once again, I didn’t take notice back for AoW then but can very easily tell you the reasons for the attribute changes in AoS even if it’s been well over a year.
Maybe I’m rambling here. But there is a difference in how AoS and AoW are coming out. Maybe it’s because AoS was done and dropped at chapter 1 for the most part as far as attributes go while AoW combat is being piecemealed to where we lost track of your intent when you did the age’s first dev stream but it is different. It could be chalked up to AoS was developed for years and AoW was developed in a year. I don’t know but I think I can speak for everyone here in that we have noticed a difference in how these two ages are being implemented.
If I can give you one suggestion that would help me is that you type up an Age intention memo and post it publicly so that we can all refer back to it.
Also just as on exPVPer I would say you need to fix the perk exploits over tweaking the weapons. You can’t tell me that rolling thrust was designed for bows. The name has thrust in it and should be limited to melee only (and that gets rid of bow meta). Also I would make a subsequent roll after the rolling thrust attack to have the same stamina drain as the attack had added to the subsequent roll so your droideka spear holders aren’t meta anymore. Last stand? No one can tell me that its purpose was to tactically retreat to a war pyramid to hide and heal. It should limit your mobility since the name implies you are making a last stand…not a last “run away”. finally the quick footed perk is about logistics, not combat. Make it so it is only active in the same sense as passive healing meaning if you get hit, it turns off for a second or two. These are the perks that PVP abuses and most of the calls to action against bows or spears or whatnot can actually be addressed with adjusting these perks slightly so that they are god level perks but retain the core purpose of them.