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Before I complain about things and list suggestions, I want to say I love this game and have played it for a very long time. Over the years the game has seen many great improvements and changes. BUT along with that we have made terrible changes which have effectively ruined entire content pieces or areas of the game. I made a list of everything I feel is in dire need of attention in this game.
Essentials list for improving Albion Online:
1: Black zone & Hideouts
Everyone agrees, hideouts have changed the game for worse. Not only have they created safe instances every few feet in the BZ but they are not even balanced properly for small guilds. First off add a channel to enter them. Remove the safety net from what is meant to be the most dangerous area of the game. Next, make them only usable by the owning guild AND make Territories better for alliances. A Territory should be BETTER than a hideout. While we are at it make a special crafting station only able to be constructed in hideouts. Low Cost to build, low Cost to upkeep, VERY limited stamina. This way a small guild can actually afford to have crafting stations in their hideouts.
2: 2v2 Hellgates
THIS is by far the most egregious change that the game has ever seen. Where do I even start. To put it simply, we have effectively patched out the sandbox from 2v2 gates. 2v2s need to be a place where players can bring their favorite weapons and duke it out for $$$.
First off, remove the lava. No matter what anyone says, we will never be able to balance 2v2 builds to work in a tight space. Right now healers are clearly the only decent option save a few cheese 1 shot combos. (Which barely work and even when it does, it's not a fun and engaging fight) If they nerf healers enough for double dps to compete, healer comps will always lose. When it comes to finding the golden manageable amount of DPS that healers can handle there will always be a critical mass number where they simply cannot keep up. (Or like we current have, always keep up)
We used to see LITERALLY hundreds of different fun comps in 2v2. Healer DPS, Double DPS, CC DPS, Kite Comps, and Rat Comps. For this to become viable again, people need to be able to run away and leave if they need. It is a necessary evil to the style of this game.
Next, loosen the IP cap. NO ONE is bringing more than 5.1 into 2v2 gates. HOW. f*ckING. BORING. Combine this with the base IP Requirement they have effectively REMOVED all of the hard work we put into our specs. IP in 2v2 is currently balanced like an equalized testing environment. This is completely against the spirit of the game.
On top of this, crowd control is effective useless in there due to the IP restrictions. To understand why this is completely off from the typical balance of Albion, consider this hypothetical: 2 full DPS teams are fighting each other. The fight is generally the same whether they are both in full 8.3 or in flat 4. BUT if 1 of those teams is a CC/dps comp, suddenly when you are both in flat 4 the stuns are SECONDS less than what they are in full 8.3. The fight is completely different in 8.3 compared to flat 4.
Next remove Maps. We lost a core small scale activity from the red and black zones when we deleted the static entrances. Reds were an absolute sh*t show(WHICH TONS OF PEOPLE LOVED) and BZ was fairly quiet. Mist locations were completely free. This was good, it created open world action. Now that is simply gone. I have run about 300 new 2v2 gates, and never once had to fight or run from someone on my way in. Just have us queue inside the city if this is how we are going to get into Hellgates.
3: Rep System
This one is simple. For starters, reduce the rep loss, and split it between the party better. After that, we NEED fun activities to correct rep. GAINING REP SHOULD NOT BE PUNISHMENT. Why are we being punished for being the aggressors in a pvp game??? Here is what we do. Add activities with potential pvp to rep gain. Let us gain rep in conditional flag areas in the royals. (Astalot/Camlan) The group areas are ones we already have and honestly we should have more conditional flag zones. (Maybe the Arcane Alter things for more soloish content????)
Also add rep gain to faction outposts. NO ONE will complain that red gankers can add to the faction outpost PvP scene. Use things like this to drive other forms of content.
Along with this add an item we can use to gain rep. This item should be farmable in the black zone and in the mists. That way some can roam around in PvP oriented areas farming them OR they can simply dump money in order to fix it.
4: Dungeon Diving
FOR. THE. LOVE. OF. GOD. BRING. BACK. SOLO. DUNGEON. DIVING.
Here is how it works and how we make it solo oriented. Make solo dungeons not close. (duh) Next, Alert all occupants inside if there are MORE THAN 2 people inside the dungeon. Now to prevent groups from abusing this: Any same Alliance or Party counts as 1 person. On top of this, if multiple players are killing mobs in the same dungeon, they also count as 1 person. That way you cannot bring 2+ to be immediately alerted of an intruder. This will also encourage full clears of dungeons, lest a ganker comes in and starts killing mobs so his friend can then join.
This obviously doesn't stop groups from doing solos to outnumber gankers, but gankers never really complained about finding groups running solos.
5: Mist Improvements
The mists are decent. But there is room for improvement. Firstly we need less T4 Mob content in the mists. Why on earth does it even go that low??? It should be mostly mid tier content, some high tier and some low tier.
Next we need the mists to stop trying to eject us from the space. Let us roam the roads without running through the overworld. Basically just add more road to road connections. Let us feel like we're going deep into the mists.
If we are possibly getting deep into the mists we need some logistics to handle this. Here are 2 nifty ideas. For hideouts, we need slow moving horse and buggy mounts with larger inventory slots to haul things properly as a guild. Right now hauling things out of hideouts is a long and boring back and forth minigame which honestly deters me from wanting to run things from our mist hideout.
Next for the roamers. There should be semi rare neutral postal service mobs. While roaming around you can find these and trade them items + a fee to send items back to your personal island. This way the roads gameplay isn't 70% walking back and forth to a bank.
6: Market Improvements
Multisell.
7: City Improvements
Make multiple "Town square" areas to help spread us out. This would also create a spread of decent real estate. Honestly simple as that. Honestly I really have no suggestions on town plot improvements beyond that. The system kinda blows and it will be hard to balance them. Someone prob has a good idea for this, but I don't.
8: Crystal GvG Improvements
Give us and Oceanic GvG time. We have an 11 hour gap in the day with no GvG times. This is consistent EVERY DAY. Anyone who games during this 11 hour period simply has no way to partake in this activity.
9: GAME BALANCE
Can we stop making sweeping massive balance changes??? SMALL ADJUSTMENTS. I could list the f*ck ups of the past but there's just too many to count. Everything is 40% this, or 60% that. Honestly we just increased healing sickness duration by 310%, and nerfed Cultist Hood by over 50%. Who on earth thinks these are good ideas?????
While we are at it can we please stop deleting items in the name of corrupted dungeons? I miss using healing pots and cultist robes in the open world. NO ONE complained about the balance of these items in the open world. We nerfed them into complete obscurity. (Along with a few other items)
Is this tooltip so hard?
Healing potion:
Heals for 30% of the users max HP
(In corrupted Dungeons)
Heals the 18% of the users max HP
If you cannot understand this tooltip, then you're probably too stupid to have installed the game. I believe we can handle this level of complexity.
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