Post 1.20.4 thoughts on Wynncraft

Now you see, I am a very new player (comparing to y'all) so my opinion doesnt mean anything, so dont get angry (I am saying this so that I cannot be criticized)

Spoiler: Bad rant (pls dont look)

IMO, quest right now are-
Utter Useless Dogcrap
Like Jesus Christ for the main focus of your game they are pretty useless. Early game quests rewards are useless, mid game too. Quests are only worth doing when you've completed 85-90% of the game. Hours of questing could give you xp that you could get in 10-20 minutes of grinding on the best grindspot/forgery. Literally no one on their second and after play throughs does quests for these reason.So make quests have better xp rewards Also, I hate it that you have to use the wiki 15 times a mintue to do most quests.Pls make quest not undo able if the wiki is down. Also, fuck fetch quests,all my homies hate fetch quests

 

>”i think they should put less focus on the main focus of the game”

 

I'm saying they shouldn't be the main focus because it doesn't make sense in a game like this

 

Hi!

I just wanted to say that we have been reading all the answers on this thread. We have been talking at great length about the feedback we have received in this thread internally and an official response will be made at a later time on the subjects discussed.

In the meantime, i would really like to remind you that we are all people passionate about the game, we literally spend all our day thinking, talking and making Wynncraft. For a lot of us it really is like that. I have been here 7 years, spent thousands and thousands hours on the game and i'm definitely not the only one. We really appreciate your passion for the game and will always read and value feedback, though i want to remind people to be respectful of each other and not devolve into incendiary targeted comments so the thread can continue providing us with your state of mind about the game and give us valuable feedback.

We will continue reading this thread and discuss it internally until an official response is formulated. Thank you all for your feedback!

 

why? this isnt hypixel skyblock
the main thing that draws new players is (from personal experience) the unique quests that arent just “fetch 4 things for this guy”
even admins say that the game is mostly story-driven, there’s a lot of lore in the game (compared to minecraft MMORPGs) and the way they apply that lore to the game is through story quests
otherwise they’d have written all that lore for no reason, this is a story game not a “grind your way to the top” kinda game, and so its necessary for quests to be the main content the game offers

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oh hey hamsburger replied

 

Wynncraft is literally an MMORPG, how do quests not make sense in a game like this? This isn't a guild battle focused game, nor is it focused on lootrunning or classbuilds. Those are all extra mechanics to make the game more than just a compilation of quests and to offer replayability once you finish all currently ingame quests.

One thing that's great about Wynn's quests is that most if not all other minecraft MMORPG server quests are ''go kill these enemies and come back for a mediocre reward'' but Wynn has actual story and more to the quests than just ''go do this''.

What would your idea of good gameplay be then?

 

For me, my concern relies mainly on the most recent patch only. I think 1.20 was a pretty solid update for wynn, but some areas still need a little work (bugs in raids, guild balancing). I was really excited when I saw the 1.20.4 announcement, and emerald pouches. I Instantly started thinking about what other things could have been added.

Mythics are also a nice add, but for me it isn't as interesting as content, just because they are a part of the update we can't get our hands on right away, stuck behind an RNG wall, or huge lump sum.
I also love new major IDs, but once again, it's only one and it's for shaman. I mainly play mage so this is kinda a bust as well.

Time Rift buff was rlly the most important thing this change, and it didn't really need it imo.

The health potions are also really cool, and nerfing stat pots was really needed. Maybe a price reduction for stat pots would be alright for this.

One of the biggest reworks was guilds, but I can't really say much about it as I am not in a big guild. All I can say is wars are super annoying and not fun when your team of 2-3 people can take a few terrs, when 4+ guilds come back to fight you off. We shouldn't punish alliances, since that's a big thing in the guild system, but something needs to change in order for small guilds to even have a chance. (And before people just say make a bigger guild/join one, I prefer being in a more community style, small friend group guild. I shouldn't be virtually left out of content for that reason.)



So after the main changes, we get the others at the bottom, which deeply hurt.

First unleveled was destroyed. To be honest, it was a glitch and should be fixed, but we need some other opportunities as well. I really believe that people started looking for efficient loot running and mob grinding solely because of a lack of options in rodo sky. The area is too undersaturated and people were willing to fly around the map to get more loot, if need be (at least this was my reasoning).

Then we see that emeralds stopped dropping as much, pretty much debunking the whole pouch update. Seeing a new feature, but it's versatility dropped severely, is a let down for sure. I get this is for balancing eco, but it made even the coolest part of this patch seem a little less useful.

Then of course, balance changes. I don't know all of them yet, but a huge majority were nerfs this time around, especially to flappis and def accessories. I agree these balances make the game more fair, and challenging. The problem is that people do not like seeing their builds get completely destroyed every few months. There isn't really a way to combat this, as balancing needs to happen, but maybe we can find a more fun way to make this possible. Still a massive gap between legendary and mythic items for the most part, maybe we should try to close the gap a little? I am not saying I know how to balance, but maybe a new approach would shed some more happiness when item kills occur.



TL;DR: New changes looked really promising, but it did not add much to the game, except some disappointment in the majority of players. Nothing really stuck out in 1.20.4 like "oh wow, I can't wait to log into Wynn again and see the new patch!" Not every patch needs to have a ton of new content, but the things added should be a healthy mix of balancing, and new little things for players to experience in a new, fun way.

Thank you for everyone before me talking about this and Travis for making the post, I really think it's good for us to just talk about how we feel about changes.

 

Thank you for the response! I'm glad to hear you're all looking into our feedback.

 

This kinda addresses something I've been wanting to say in response to this thread the whole time: The content team aren't seperate from the community.

That's been a pretty big theme in this thread, a sort of "Them vs. Us" mentality, as if there's a massive barrier between the people who play and make the game, when the truth is the content team is made up almost purely of people who were players of the game.

With the exception of the owners, and some of the developers, everyone in the content team is someone who was previously in the community and played the game. They aren't system designers hired on with no knowledge of the game previously, or writers brought on from some external recruiting website.

I'm not saying to have lower expectations of them or anything, I'm only saying that this isn't some them vs. us situation like it is for most games. The players of Wynn, and the people who make Wynn are the same people.

 

I don't think anyone has an "Us vs Them" mentality when it comes to specific individuals on these teams who are happy to join in the conversation, when people say they're disappointed with "The Devs" or some specific team, it's with the fact that the individuals on that team aren't representing the team they're a part of when they say stuff, they're representing themselves like everyone else and that's where the divide comes in. There is a barrier between the players and the people who make the game, its just not on an individual level, it's on a managerial level where the fear of commitment is so strong it took 8 years of complaints about a massive lack of transparency and a popular and extremely critical thread for us to get what is quite possibly the most political response I've ever seen;

"We will continue reading this thread and discuss it internally until an official response is formulated. Thank you all for your feedback!"

And you know what? If this thread actually does get made and takes a reasonable critical look at the issues their game has and what they plan on doing about it, if anything, that'll be swell but I guess I'm not as optimistic as you. There are important issues which really need answers and I'm 99% sure nothing controversial like the fundamental issues the item system, with crafting/professions and meta issues relating to communication are going to be addressed.

It's also about time for a 1.21 announcement assuming they're following the pattern from the past few updates, I don't think it's too far fetched to assume their official response is just going to be the 1.21 reveal which will happen to have some of the minor issues outlined here, especially the obvious quest issues, resolved. I will be genuinely shocked if they actually address anything said here specifically, preferably using quotes since that's how a response should work, because never in the history of the game have they ever attempted to address community concerns in the way Hams suggested.

 

Can't thank you enough Hams.

And, can't stress this enough!!

Will be waiting to hear from community managers/Salted. Thanks for the continued feedback Wynn community.

 

Just please don't immediately lock the thread after making an official response. Whenever it happens to threads similar to these, I'm not sure if it really helps

 

Just going to once again preface this by saying that I'm writing this as a player who cares about Wynn, not as a representative of the CT as a whole (Hams is working on a post for people who are waiting on an "official" response though, be sure to look out for that when it's posted!) nor of the Item Team as a whole. Now that that's absolutely clear-

Sorry, I thought you were talking about the time that a very large dupe occurred at the end of last year (as you did mention "dupe" in the example you gave), which while perhaps people could've been informed a little sooner by a moderator or admin, made sense to initially not be talked about as is likely standard whenever any dupe happens- and when people asked about it, Salted responded quite quickly and all was fine.

The 1.18 trade market fiasco (and, on larger scale, the extremely bad tension between community and staff as a whole) was really fucked up and I still remember how wronged we all felt back then, with complaints at the address of ct members often falling on deaf ears or resulted in discussion that came down to "not our fault that you're not enjoying the update", a lot of previously existing content having been nerfed (various moneymakers, leveling methods, loot chests locations switched up, etc.) with only professions as new piece of content leaving little for players that didn't care about them. For those that weren't around back then, there were some serious issues and as far as I've been active on Wynn easily was the worst period in terms of just.. being a player and having criticism, I guess. Do note that after specific threads, not dissimilar from the one we're currently in, there was directly stated to have a drive to work in improving transparency, and in my opinion, with both 1.19 and 1.20 betas having active and often checked feedback threads and ct members other than IMs also being more active in the general community and engaging in discussions. I'm hoping that the somewhat provocative stance you're taking is because you're getting vibes from that time again (though I can't say we're currently anywhere even close to that mess), but rest assured, transparency is always being worked on improving. If you're ever interested in discussing more in regards to items specifically in the future, I (and other IMs) try to frequent several places around Wynn other than the forums, such as the official class builds channel in the Discord, the "Item Discussion" thread in there, dedicated class builds channels in various community discord servers (I can't promise to be everywhere at once though, especially if there's little activity), and maybe even in-game.

Seems to be a lot of personal opinions, as I myself really like when a game presents a lot of things to explore or check out right off the bat. The miniboss is honestly pretty cool, but I do think that it sets a bad precedent for discoveries (a non-quest NPC arguing you to get into one of the discovery-related towers probably works better) and like several other very early game things sets up for a reoccurring design thing that ends up never coming back. I do ado have to say that the change of early game levels was just really uncalled for- quests that suddenly start halfway across Wynn, a new town that breaks lore and basic worldbuilding, and players now getting actual whiplash from walking right instead of left without any indicator that they're not actually supposed to be exploring that way. Changing the quest level for getting horses was nice, though.

join me now in trying to convince the builders that most new things DO look like SE/EO and that they really shouldn't do that

Like I've said before, I think durability is essential to allowing crafteds to work- due to the amount of freedom you get with ingredients to minmax on items and then minmax on builds, they're pretty much inherently overpowered. And that's fine, because they're limited by something external from those stats- the durability system, preventing you from infinitely using them and ascending past intended strength (which, if I've understood correctly, is something you do acknowledge to be important). This way, crafteds can both be an alternative to mythics (which, like you said, are already far past the scope of any normal items) and yet still remain within reasonable boundaries. My earlier grievances with durability still apply, but I'll mention that I do definitely agree that there's an unfair reward scheme for being able to use crafted items- but I firmly believe that this is an issue that nearly entirely lies with profession leveling and not crafting.

I agree. And with exception of some skill points items and maybe some extremely well-rounded items such as Capricorn- they are.

Not really, but this goes back to a singular design decision once made for Wynn that I at least find incredibly important: allowing for every player, even the ones that don't have a single piece of interest in minmaxing or kitting themselves out well, or the ones that don't want to even begin crafting regardless of professions effort, or the ones that simply don't want to go to the hassle of having a build they have to maintain through stopping by blacksmiths and hoarding scrap, to be able to experience everything in the game. Hence, a set like morph exists- a set to clearly indicate players to use it together, mainly just fairly tanky which in Wynn means being able to handle nearly all quest combat, to allow those players to experience all the quests and other not necessarily endgame content. Does that mean that quite a few player take the easy way out the game gives them? Yeah, they do. But morph is balanced to just be able to take you through most content, not excel at it and generally not for all content. We hope that players end up interested in class building, but we don't want to force them into having to get a full understanding of high meta building if they've experienced enough of items to get to level 100 and still decide that they prefer morph over an actual build.

Which leads for your big argument that I won't take all the quotes from for the sake of keeping this response readable, but:

From both your repeated urging to burn the entire item system to the ground and your only suggestion of a sort-of replacement being 5 endgame mono-elemental sets, I get the idea that you prefer a very basic, two, maybe three options endgame build meta, where the "best build" can be directly discussed and is one or the other, maybe a system more similar to Hypixel Skyblock "use x to grind y, use a to grind b, this set does more damage to dogs, this set to zombies, this set to dungeon mobs etc etc" where the build you use is directly and unquestionably for that activity in both being the best for it and noticably being worse than other options for other activities. They're, at least in my eyes, fine systems but they're very limited, very closed, with very little opportunity to make something interesting, creative, or different. Wynns item system on the contrary, aims to not limit players in either having a "best build" scenario, but went for a very open approach that in essence comes down to only two factors: requirements, and identifications. Everything else sprouts from there, and while I'm fully willing to recognize that in certain aspects class building complexity has gone far to the point of being unrecognizable for people just getting into it, I'm also of the opinion (basing off of quite a lot of interactions I've had in the class builds channel) that making a "simple" build that's already improving on morph is fairly easy, and that just becomes a stepping stone for further being able to play and tinker with the item system.

I would also like to clarify that I had nothing to do with the creation of the current item system (using system in the basic sense- I have had some influence on very specific parts of the system in the sense of adjusting what identifications do exactly), I'm not defending it "because I am an Item Maker and would defend it as otherwise you would admit to not doing a good job"- I genuinely love Wynns item system, I consider it to be by far its greatest strength, and it's a large part of why I became an IM (not the other way around). While it's obviously far from perfect still, I just find it hard to believe that it is "by far the biggest issue with the game", sorry. If possible, I'd like you to give concrete reasons as to why you think it's bad, as aside from just stating it's bad you give some inconsistent feedback of
- crafteds should always be better than "normal" items
- crafteds shouldn't always be better than normal items, but the effort required to get them forces them in that spot
- mythics shouldn't always be better than non-mythics regardless of the effort required to get them
- there's a lack of engagement in the current item system
- there's too many options in the current item system which makes it confusing and cluttered
because like I said before, I do care about feedback and when someone has such a different opinion from me I at least want to see why that's the case.

Anyway, to tie up a few questions not answered by anyone else:
- Mythics are kind of a fucked up design decision (even if they ended up having a positive impact for endgame content and the economy), and as a result of their rarity they're practically forced to almost unquestionably the best at what they do. There's always some adjusting appropriate for them, up or down, but whereas unique/rare/legendary have good reason and should be closer to eachother over the entire game, mythics will never even be eligible for that.
- Yeah, Wynns combat is incredibly offense-based, which is a result of the singleplayer-focused game design. I really want tanking to gain more options in the future with somethig like a proper aggro system and whatnot, but once again Wynns choice to allow for the worse players to also be able to defeat challenges simply through high levels of tanking it creates a "high required tankiness" principle and makes offense the most important stat. Could be a little less one-sided, but when is offense not the preferred focus in a game?
- We actually do try to keep things like major IDs fresh and give them new uses, but this isn't always applicable unfortunately. Cavalryman has a poorly functional damage penalty which means that a "proper" endgame item with it on would almost certainly end up too powerful, hence it being limited through being on item with (for endgame standards) near to no other ids.
- uh, i wanted to go without explicitly mentioning it but i hope you are aware the "us vs them mentality" has both an us and a them, thanks



Anyway, I likely forgot to name a few things, feel free to ask or point them out respectfully. I can't say I'm personally able to affect much in the larger part of Wynn but there are a few things I could do something about, and outside of that I can certainly try.

 

First I want to address that thread because I think the ideas there are relevant (not the post, the comments). I want to be clear, I do not expect anything from the people working on this game in terms of professionalism, quality or frequency. That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to at least want the people working on the game to be somewhat active in the community. The item team are actually decent about that since they have the somewhat regular discussions but that's about where the communication ends unless something like the Cinfras rebuild happens and I think that's an issue. I really don't see why there can't be minor feature polls or content discussion threads every other month, it'll be good for the community since it'll give people a feeling like their contributions are actually being read and considered and if a lot of these posts are being read anyways, it would probably make the job of trying to find good feedback easier since it'll all be centralized onto monthly threads which can be found easily. I'm also quite familiar with reading and writing posts, I know it's really not that hard to post a couple pictures, say something like "This time we want to hear your feedback on dungeons" and entertain a reply to posts saying it's a concern they already have and are trying to resolve, if it's a good idea they need time to think about or if it's a bad idea for xyz reason. If we can't know what's coming in future patches at all, I as an individual would at least like to know that my priorities are at least slightly aligned with those of the people making the game and all it takes is a simple discussion every once in a while to get on the same page. If you think my ideas are bad I'm fine with that but I would at least like to know why and I'm sure others feel the exact same way.

With that out of the way, onto the fun part :)

I was referring to the massive dupe which took place last year, and I strongly, strongly disagree that it was handled well and that there was a timely response. The dupe happened during the DXP weekend, nobody knew what the hell was going on, the forums were basically on fire with people asking for a rollback and about a week later, salted commented on a single thread with something like 15 pages of argument about the merits of a rollback saying there wouldn't be one (which was the right call) before locking the thread leading it to fall off the front page almost immediately because there's was about a billion other threads discussing the issue.

If you want to argue it was handled well, go for it I guess, but in my mind the proper response would have been to have a post about it in the extremely underused news section and instead of the trade market saying "the market will be back soon" they should have linked to said news post explaining why they're down, what happened and when they can be expected to come back. I don't think asking for the most basic level of communication is too much, especially when something fails so catastrophically. I'm not saying anyone is at fault, but I feel like that's a fair assessment of the situation.

This is mostly an issue with the community managers though, I honestly don't expect somebody from the item team to be worrying about stuff like this.

I didn't even think about all the issues with the 1.18 TM either, so I guess that should just go on the ever growing list of times when simply communicating would have solved a lot of problems/quelled unrest/alleviated confusion. Again, I'll be sending that list to the CM once I find out who they actually are... feels like kind of an issue that I don't know who they are since they don't really appear to do all that much managing.

I'm not even complaining that everything looks like EO, I mean, that's kind of an issue as well, my main issue is all the clutter. Cinfras got the bulk of the complaints about that which resulted in a massive street cleaning and a lamp being added in the center of town which is kind of confusing to me since it looks horrible there but whatever. The point is, I think the emerald trail is way, way to cluttered. I get that exploration is good and encouraging it is good, but I disagree that the new build accomplishes that goal. Having a big open area lets you see where you're going, the new area is just claustrophobic and honestly, it just looks dirty. I get there's an ongoing war so it looks fortified, but it doesn't really look like a fantasy war is going on, it looks like a real war which is something I just don't like the look of.

I should probably be more clear about this, my doubling down on durability was for three reasons; first, you said that I was asking for crafted items to be treated differently which is the opposite of what I want, two, because that's the only way to resolve the artificial issue that is crafted item SP not counting towards SP requirements which is what the actual issue is and three, because micromanaging durability isn't fun, it's tedious. I would rather have weaker items without durability because at least then using the items I made won't be a pain in the ass.

Maybe removing durability is too much, in my "burn it all down" perspective it makes sense, but since that' but micromanagement shouldn't be a requirement, it should be a choice and if I were to make a realistic suggestion I think the way to do that is to reduce the durability penalty from 100% to 25% or even 20% and make SP unaffected by durability so it can start counting towards using items. That alone would increase the usability of crafted items by a stupid amount without really making them any stronger from a meta perspective,

I also agree the leveling system is an issue. the amount of time and effort it takes to get to the point where you can start making useful stuff is comical, but I also think there's a fundamental inbalance between the skills in terms of use too. The skills in which you craft equipment will almost always be inferior to those where you don't because even though consumables get used up, they don't need to be god tier with expensive items to even stand chance of being decent, they're just pure buffs so even a basic +10% damage potion will be good in the endgame. I'm not really sure what to do about that or if it's even an issue, but I think it's important to point out.

I think that's a novel idea on paper, but in practice it's not that simple. The current system has a really high skill ceiling which is great but the skill floor is way, way to high to be reasonable because it's not self evident whatsoever what items work together or if your build has a massive issue. There is no intuition you can possibly use to just know what would work well and what wouldn't and because every item, especially high level ones, have so many stats it's essentially impossible to compare the merits of two pieces of armor without a calculator. I would explain the resolution to those issues, but I have a feeling it'll be better suited as a response to the next part. One thing I will say is that if you're aware people who are lazy are choosing morph I still think it would make sense to have 5 mono-elemental "morph" style sets with big set bonuses at 2, 4 and 8 so people who want to be lazy can at least be lazy in style. I also think giving lazy players like me more room to comfortably experiment with easy builds might encourage us to try out the more complex system because as it is right now, you're either using full morph and are making zero choices or are making 8 choices, one for each slot and I feel like there's room for a middle step where you chose 2 or 3 elements and build around the set bonuses. If you're ever going to do that, it would be absolutely splendid if you used dyed leather armor for it, partly because it exposes lazy people which is funny and a staple of morph, partly because it looks cool and mostly because dyed leather is criminally underused with high level gear.

That's not what I'm looking for at all, Skyblocks system of having specific sets for specific tasks is honestly just lazy. Ideally, I would want something between how it is now and what Genshin impact has where sets are integral to how you make builds because they're the source of most of your power and your playstyle, a system where items start off with very few sub stats and you get more through chosen upgrades to pieces of equipment (like what powders do but not just for elemental damage) and a system where the attack/defense balance is worked out more evenly so PVP can actually work. As for burning the system down, yeah, that is what I'm asking for, but I'm definitely not asking for babies first MMO. I also have no expectations of the system being burnt to the ground, the only reason why I ever talk about the massive changes I want made is because I think they help show the direction I want the path of the build system to go, even if it never makes it to my ideal destination.

I want to elaborate on the Genshin point a little since to me it makes sense but to someone who isn't familiar it might not make much sense. To me, Genshins design is kind of brilliant. It looks simple at face value, but it's surprisingly complex while still managing to be completely intuitive. There are 4 basic roles for characters, Main DPS (most of their damage is done while on field), Sub DPS (most is done off field), Support (Mostly shielders, healers and attack boosters) and there are a few Nukers which is like main DPS but they're on field for as long as a Sub DPS. There aren't a lot of roles, but basically every character can be built into at least 2 and about half can be 3 so most characters have more then one optimal build to run. Beyond that, every character has 5 artifact slots which are basically armor slots where you can equip what are essentially set items but they only get bonuses if you have 2 or 4 of the set. These bonuses are extremely important to how a character plays, but they're also extremely easy to understand and so as long as you know how you want to use a character, even if you're using a slightly sub optimal set up you're still doing just fine. The choice is in how you play the character and the items to make that happen are easy to find since the fundamentals are so simple.

Obviously Genshin has the whole switching characters thing going for it which is where most of the complexity comes from since it's not just about one loadout, it's about 4 load outs, 4 kits and how they all work together, but there are some ideas that I think are transferable into something like the "morph" style armors I suggested earlier.

There's actually a secret third factor which I think is ignored a lot and that's comprehension. You can't use an item in a build if you don't understand how to use it and without an already existing understanding of what types of builds you can make, you stand no chance of ever understanding how to use the item effectively. Some items, third eye for example, are extremely easy to understand because it's almost entirely positives and it's extremely clear that's it's made for a spell build which is generally an easy build to make because its forgiving but anything with more complex stats like -attack speed or poison are much less intuitive and if you don't know exactly what you're doing you're never going to stand a chance of making an effective build capitalizing on them because unless they're in an optimal build, they're more of a hindered then a help. I guess the larger point about morph is that if you consider it the base line, it shouldn't be hard to make a build better then it which I don't believe to be the case.

Normal items shouldn't exist outside of shops. To anyone who wants to boo me, just know I'll be sleeping well tonight knowing I'm objectively right and before you ask, no, I won't elaborate further.

Of course you like the system, you joined the item team because you want to make more cool items, not burn it to the ground. The same reason why you wanted to join the team is the reason why I have no interest in every trying to join the item team, or any other team for that matter. If you're looking for someone to go on a purge and burn it all to the ground, or more reasonably somebody to consult with regarding mini-purge style changes I would be happy to help out.

As for the items being the games greatest strength, maybe that's the case for you, but I think most people are here for the exploration, the novelty and those who have been here as long as me are here for the community. I joined the game for the first time when I was 13 back in May 2014 (I think) and joined the forums just over 5 years ago. For me, I've been with this game for 7 and a half years, during that time I went through most of middle school, all of high school with it and almost all of University, in a year and a half I'll have graduated three times while involved with this game. This game has been a part of my life for an entire third of it, the only thing I've been involved with longer is Scouting. Why am I saying all of that? Because I think it's comical that despite all the time I've spent with this game, I still don't care about the item system. Even as I'm writing this, I'm actually having to force myself to care, not that that's your fault, I'm in accounting and I don't play games to do what is essentially my job outside of work and school. That probably calls a lot of my issues with into question, all I have to say to that is that I've complained about every other aspect of this game and its design in great detail in the past 5 years, it's only fair that items got their fair shake down from me too.

1. I agree and understand, but at the same time I don't see why the rarity issue can't be resolved by adding in "Mythic lite" items which are effectively the same as mythics and fill the exact same roles without doing as much damage, maybe 20% less. Make these items come from insanely long and hard quests, from dungeons or from discoveries, make them untradable with fixed stats and boom, problem solved, crisis averted, at least a little. If the official stance on mythics is that they need to stay at the top though, I think that's really unfortunate since it basically means the weapons that dominate the meta will rarely if ever change.

2. I think offense should absolutely be the priority, but that should only be the focus when playing alone. I'm really not sure what the best way to do this is, but maybe by adding at least a few new endgame weapons per class which change out some of all your spells for party buffs which scale based on your stats instead of being fixed like escape and warscream could at least make support somewhat viable in raids. Since raids are only 4 people, all you would need to be able to do is buff each other player by over 33% for it to be meta and you could limit the number of players by having the upkeep of the buffs cost mana. I guess it wouldn't be fun to be the support but I think there could be fun had in running back and forth between your team. During CC specifically there's basically always a spell mage spamming heal at the starting platform anyways so I don't see how that's anymore engaging than a buffer would be.

3. Right, what I want is for the penalty to be reduced, I agree the ID is really good and there's no need for a second pair of better boots, I just want to be able to make a reasonably good build which involves them and a horse. I also kind have an issue with them being a level 60 item with stats that high since last I checked they don't say the damage decrease on them and they kind of feel like a trap but that's a separate issue. Also, if them being too good with endgame items is really that big of an issue, I think the best fix would be to make the major ID a set bonus and have the riding boots and maybe a riding helmet or riding pants to round out the set. I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that there's no way to make them both usable in the endgame and also not completely broken and since they're one of the coolest and most interesting items in the game I think it's a real shame more effort isn't being put into developing the idea.

You know what, I know I've gone on about sets a lot but if balance really is that much of an issue, how about a full, 8 piece (or better yet, 4 piece armor only) endgame armor set which is entirely balanced around the riding bonus. Call it the Calvary set, make it good for archers and warriors and boom, I promise you'll never hear from me again since I'll be too busy killing stuff on my horse to have the time to talk shit on the forums. I don't know about you, but that sounds like an offer that's just way too good to pass up to me.

Adding this on, it might be a stretch but if you're writing lore I think the story of a Corkian electromage who was crazy enough to ride into combat wearing just his riding boots would be fun.

4. Yes because I never said there wasn't one, I disagreed on who the "Us" and "Them" were. The fact that you started your response by clarifying that you're not making arguments on behalf of the item team is the exact problem I was pointing to since it means the item team hasn't commented on any of these issues. Despite saying I'm quite against them as a collective, I'm quite happy to be having a discussion with a part of that team. That was the entire point of my reply. When I said

"I don't think anyone has an "Us vs Them" mentality when it comes to specific individuals on these teams who are happy to join in the conversation, when people say they're disappointed with "The Devs" or some specific team, it's with the fact that the individuals on that team aren't representing the team they're a part of when they say stuff, they're representing themselves like everyone else and that's where the divide comes in."

I thought it was extremely clear that I thought there was an "Us" and "Them" and my issue was with the fact that Jayden was using the comments made by you and other team members which specifically draw a line to try and blur it.

As for my call out, in my post I was talking about this thread and I think I'm the only one who's threw shade at an individual and in my defense, I still think it was warranted considering I didn't say those things because you were on the item team (I did point that out but only because you asked to hear feedback which isn't something an individual would really do), I said it because I felt you misrepresented my point and failed to reply in any capacity in a reasonable amount of time. The fact that you liked the comment of somebody who disagreed with my response and went radio silent for a day felt like a pretty clear sign at the time that you were tapping out of the argument.

I also want to know about the item teams back door conversations with individual members of the community because I made a big deal about how I thought the team was being overly influenced by players with a vested interest in things not changing and last night it was made extremely clear to me that my concerns were valid when I was told you would have preferred to avoid a flame war by having this discussion in private among other things which you can elaborate on if you want. Not bringing this up to throw shade, I genuinely think it could be an issue and some public assurance that it's not would be nice.

I want to end on a positive note, so I just wanted to point out that for true balance you need order and chaos, yin and yang, and I'm on board with the idea that my burn it all down outlook is quite chaotic. Despite all my issues with it, I do genuinely like this game and honestly believe it's impressive that it hasn't fallen apart after being out for so long. When I said the game has bad balance, I should have said it had boring balance instead, which sounds bad but considering all the items you have to work with, it's quite the achievement that the word "balance" can be used to describe what you have going on at all.

 

I don't want to force it on anyone, but maybe it would be a good idea to start using spoilers?
These replies get longer and longer and the thread is starting to look like big walls of text.

 

Spoiler: Emerald Trail

I'm actually kinda cerious what you mean by this? I think the new build style would be described as cleaner by most, at the very least, less messy.

If your talking about the ruins in the front of Ragni, those were added in 1.16, so not enterily relevant.

The only other thing I can think of is the Walls and stairs around the item identifier, which case, I agree. They really don't do much besides distract, and take away from exploration.
Contrary to what most may believe, exploration is brought about by a lack of places rather then a abundance. This is because our brains start mushing everything into static, and therefore stuff generates less interest.

Spoiler: Alt Morph Sets

I hope this doesn't sound rude, but this is the first thing you've said that I agree with.
Its a good little gem of an idea that I think will be lost in the rest of your arguements, so I'm highlighting it.

Like, honestly I have a love hate realtionship with Morph, because I think having a between set until people can get their real set is a cool idea, but let's be honest, the set started as a gimmicky set of items where the idea is the set kinda... Levels with you? And therefore its not as good as it could be at being a between set.

Like, what does having every peace being at different levels actually do beyond make the set harder to obtain, and less obvious to new players?

That being said, having one set for every element, or shit, even just 3 sets, one for Tank, Support, and DPS is a kinda cool idea.
Make them all worse then anything having an actual build of any kind, but good enough to beat out using random items together, and I like it.

I only responseded to two things because I'm going to bed, and I don't feel like staying up all night.

 

Spoilers make things far harder to read. They're almost never helpful in cases like this. The purpose of spoilers is to pick and choose specific items from a long list as reference - in a thread like this, the point is to read the whole thing.

 

I think I've been fairly clear that I think the emerald trail is messy, if you want my detailed thoughts I have a link in my banner to my review, there's a section on the builds which I think covers my thoughts.

As for the morph thing being the only thing you agree with, first of course I don't take offense, we're on a forum and disagreement is what makes it fun, second I really don't understand how since agreeing there's a need for something like that is essentially agreeing with my central premise that the build system is overly complicated and not beginner friendly which is bad considering most of the people who join the server are just that, beginners. Almost every single thing I've said so far and about 2/3rds of that last comment are clearly visible issues caused by that premise or disagreements about Barts interpretation of things I previously said, so I don't really get that. None of my comments on this thread were made for the purpose of suggesting solutions, if I wanted to do that I would be making suggestions. It's not productive to be critical without providing something, if you disagree with what my solutions are I don't care because my only goal is to push my central idea that the item system isn't in a good place and if you disagree with that premise then we should have a discussion on why.

I feel like I've been really clear on that fact so it's odd that people keep nitpicking on the solutions. If anyone wants to argue about solutions, the first step is usually agreeing there's a problem in the first place and that's something most people are still unwilling to admit or concede to. It's really stating to feel like people (not you) thing they can discredit the existence of problem by arguing against solutions but that's not really how that works...

As for morph being something that grows with you, I guess it's cool but for the elemental sets I want them to be strictly endgame items, all level 95+, if they're going to add set items to lower levels I would rather have new sets to fill out the gap between adventures at 50 and morph at 100.

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Based

 

ye

 

Yeah, that makes sense.
It was just an idea while I was scrolling through all that.

Not necessarily. E.g. for me the ongoing discussion on builds and crafteds are not really important or interesting, so I just scroll past it.