Ah sh*t, here we go again.
Seriously though. The blog is intended to get you all thinking about Ranged combat generally. There's no outlandish proposals this time. And we finish up with a survey which asks how you feel about the ranged meta, the blowpipe, the T-Bow, a couple of buffs (like crystal bow etc).
Read the blog, and whether you hate the proposal (and us), like it, you're unsure, angry, confused etc. Fill the survey!
Hey Sween, when I Agree with "The Toxic Blowpipe should be less effective against mid and high-defence targets." the next question is "Why don't you think the Toxic Blowpipe should be less effective against mid and high-defence targets".
Seems contradictory since I just agreed it should be less effective?
I'll check the survey logic now, thanks for flagging
One of the first questions asked if I agree or disagree with something. I pressed agree and it prompted me next to explain why I disagree. Exact opposite happens when I press disagree.
I'll check the survey logic now, thanks for flagging
[deleted]
We're looking into this now, tyvm for raising it to us. :)
No problem, happy to help
Should be fixed now, logic was backwards on two Qs. Sorry about that!
One of the first questions asked if I agree or disagree with something. I pressed agree and it prompted me next to explain why I disagree. Exact opposite happens when I press disagree.
Should be fixed now, logic was backwards on two Qs. Sorry about that!
The survey is messed up. Upon agreeing that the blowpipe should be less effective against high-defence mobs, it then asks me why I disagree.
Should be fixed now, logic was backwards on two Qs. Sorry about that!
Typo in the paragraph before the “the current ranged meta”
“Together, we’ll be able to find solution that we can all be happy with.”
Between find and solution I think there should be an “a”
Thanks for the heads up! This has been changed now. :)
I feel some of the questions in the survey could have had an "Either / not fussed" option to them, like the enhanced crystal weapon seed or the new crossbow.
As for thoughts on the rebalance, weaker things like Karils / Crystal bow should be buffed to be more usable. The blowpipe should be nerfed, but not nerfed into the ground like the previous proposal. There were plenty good middle grounds suggested by the community that seem to have been ignored.
Hey there! Appreciate the feedback. The main aim of the survey is to collate the community's feedback as this Newpost does not provide our solution to the problems outlined yet. So for the points you raised about Karil's, would it be possible to ask you to pop that into the Survey we linked in the Newspost? There's no specific section for Karil's, but there is a line of questioning that asks "Should crossbows be stronger than they are currently?", the follow up question is "If crossbows are buffed, how should the buff be applied?" and then there's an "Other" section where you can put your feedback on Karil's specifically. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, hopefully we can work together on the best way forward. :)
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What questions were repeating for you?
The Inferno would become slightly harder.
The Inferno would become SIGNIFICANTLY harder* FTFY.
We're talking about a ~20% DPS nerf. The Inferno is already an extremely challenging and punishing minigame. Almost every player finishes their first successful run with basically no brews/restores left. Making people stretch their supplies even further is a horrible idea.
If the Blowpipe is dealing less damage, then monsters are taking longer to die. This would become a problem when reaching TzKal-Zukm, as taking down the Jal-MejJak’s quickly is very beneficial. There were also concerns raised about the increased difficulty of defeating sets of Jal-Xil and Jal-Zek during the TzKal-Zuk phase, and that the triple JalTok-Jads taking longer to kill.
Okay so you guys acknowledge that it is significantly harder. So you'd be willing to nerf the mobs defence & hitpoints so it's roughly the same difficulty, right?
It was suggested that we could reduce the stats of affected creatures accordingly. But again, applying this kind of change across the entire game is something we’d like to avoid.
....Oh
However, we can certainly look case-by-case and adjust bosses and creatures where necessary.
Inferno is a piece of content that MUST be rebalanced around a post-nerf blowpipe. If you do not rebalance, more and more players will turn to the services market and buy their infernal cape via GP or IRL money.
In this blog we've not said how much of a DPS loss it'd be, and the DPS loss against various creatures depends on the creature itself.
Our previous proposals did make it clear that the DPS loss was going to be significant against tanky creatures (like Jads) or when using lower-tier darts.
We did admit in this blog that the previous proposal was so flawed because it was such a drastic DPS loss, and unless you had a T-bow there wasn't really another alternative. The blowpipe would have remained the go-to weapon, but it'd be worse.
This blog has a survey which asks you about how you'd want us to go about filling this DPS-loss void.
The biggest factor for making the Inferno harder is the sets during Zuk where only having a limited time to deal DPS means just barely missing becomes more frequent and matters a lot more - and we may want to look at making tweaks specifically to those situations if necessary.
But we're more interested in just hearing your thoughts about the current Ranged meta at this moment in time. Your comment was really useful, and we'd love it if you could take the survey!
Maybe there should be a different question for the Karil Crossbow? It's very unique compared to the normal crossbows, doesn't make sense to me to bunch them all togheter.
Point taken on board for the future. :)
Since there's no specific section for Karil's, we're asking players to put this feedback in the "Other" section for Crossbows and we'll take it on board from there. There is a line of questioning that asks "Should crossbows be stronger than they are currently?", the follow up question is "If crossbows are buffed, how should the buff be applied?" and then there's an "Other" section where we're asking players to put their feedback on Karil's specifically if you want to.
Question regarding the Survey
There are a few questions that ask players to select if they would prefer receiving new items from existing content or future content.
Was it a concious choice to make it so you had to select one or the other? I would have liked to express that it might be beneficial for items to come from a combination of sources (i.e. some existing, some new) rather than forced to pick one or the other.
This is a really good bit of feedback for the next survey we give players, thank you very much for letting us know this. In future we can probably even offer a way of ranking this so players can choose which source they want most. We'll keep this in mind for the next round of feedback with regards to ERB! :)
I really like this blog. I'm glad you guys took a step back and addressed our feedback in depth, whatever was going on behind the scenes that was just pushing the changes through and not giving you time to individually talk about our topics I hope that it doesn't happen again.
The current proposals still feel a bit off but now that we know you guys are willing to talk about it I am sure the debate will be a lot more productive
Appreciate the feedback! The discussion that takes place from this along with the survey will help to give us a better understanding. :)
Thank you for the great summary. You guys really nailed what I think a lot of us on the Reddit and in the game were saying about what was wrong with the old changes.
I'll mention that I wish I could have picked two answers for a couple of a the questions on the survey. Like, I think that existing crossbows should be buffed AND a new one should be introduced because they should rightfully be the best choice against high defence targets but are not. Buffing existing ones is needed as well as having a better t75 one dropped from new content.
But also I know after your asked the question of "what should we do with existing" crossbows you asked "should we add a new t75?" so maybe that is how you're covering both cases
Appreciate your input! This is a really good bit of feedback for the next survey we give players, thank you very much for letting us know this. In future we can probably even offer a way of ranking this so players can choose which source they want most. :)
[Karil's Crossbow] attacks from a significantly shorter range than a Rune Crossbow.
You say this in the blog, but Karil's Crossbow actually has an 8 tile attack range, one higher than the Rune Crossbow.
We've now removed that from the list. Thanks :)
I wouldve liked a bigger focus on the dart scaling. I think thats where a fair compromise lies. Make low tier darts (addy and below) significantly worse for bossing and use against high defence monsters but keep the dps the same for rune and above.
Making the dps worse for vasa, muta, olm etc just severely punishes poor players and irons dry for a twisted bow/dhcb and makes the content less enjoyable. Having to grind stats for rune/amethyst darts justifies keeping that dps the same IMO.
Thank you for this feedback. As we mentioned, the proposal/solution isn't in this newspost (that will come after we hear your thoughts). So make sure to pop this in the Survey if you haven't already done so! :)
This is a much more clear and detailed overview of what needs to be changed and why. I am very happy to see the responses to player feedback.
My only suggestion is that the survey is kind of wonky. The article mentions several gaps and underpowered weapons -- but the survey only asked me about Crystal equipment and crossbows as a whole. Despite being mentioned in the article, there was no mention of Karils/Heavy Ballista/Twisted Bows/or Magic Bows in the survey.
Thanks so much for your feedback, we'll use this to improve the survey in our next round of feedback. :D It's difficult to predict every weapon that players will want to specifically talk about (and we didn't want to bloat out the survey too much), however we do understand Karil's would have benefitted from its own section and it was a missed opportunity there.
Since there's no specific section for Karil's, we're asking players to put this feedback in the "Other" section for Crossbows and we'll take it on board from there. There is a line of questioning that asks "Should crossbows be stronger than they are currently?", the follow up question is "If crossbows are buffed, how should the buff be applied?" and then there's an "Other" section where we're asking players to put their feedback on Karil's specifically if you want to.
I'm just curious as to how you can fill the gap for t75 in the range meta if you were to adjust the blowpipe.
There's a specific question within the survey that tackles this very subject. So let us know what your thoughts are! :)
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