Long-term motivation in DSO

When did the Duria set change? It was level 20-30.

If you're paying attention to what gear to equip, maybe if you are lucky you could get to level 45 without dying.

Most brand new players (myself when first new included) had some issues with Sigris, Temple, and Atlantis above water. Especially before I learned the ins and outs. My test character is at 30 and hasn't come close to dying.

If I started a new character today, knowing what I know now, yeah I could probably make it to 45 easily. But I also know how to put up with the boring maps while searching for the gear.

A true new player sees how easy it is to level along with the boring maps and more often than not sees everyone here on the forum telling everyone to get to 50 as fast as possible.

For pvp only from lvl 4 up, that would require a ton of patience. I don't know many newer players who would put up with the onslaught of twinks, but maybe it is possible.

Most people (myself included) are a tad impatient. While I don't need major gains every day to be happy, some certainly do. Over the last couple of years, DSO has made the regular maps even easier than it used to be and still people complain.

Look at the power cloak quest threads. Can you imagine if players still had to spend 6+ months getting the pieces?

The reason they complain is because that is the first really tough quest. Up to that point, most quests can be finished in hours.

DSO sets players up to expect leveling fast and clearing maps fast. Then when they hit the wall, they start complaining.

Just try to find a thread about any early quest being too hard.

DSO even made that ice minion quest around level 34 easier, because everyone wants to finish quickly.

All this leads to the ultimate issue. The easier you make the beginning, the more complaining you get at the end when nothing comes easy.

 

R163:

 

It's a bit weird you're the one that came up with a thread about long-term motivation when you were, and still are, one of the main detractors of a feature that had a lot of us hyped and motivated to continue, @Rhysingstar already provided a lot of different points of view, yet I have some stuff to add...

First of all, the infamous Crafting -0.002, I decided to stay away of the discussion as much as possible to avoid rage-quitting though I read all of the post, let me give you the point of view of a character that's been level 50 for 6 months, and buys just premium since then..., the nice crafting (2.0.2 I think it was), got me excited about finally crafting one or two quite good items to improve my character further, and despite I had to melt a whole inventory page of items which were useless for crafting 2.0, I was still hopeful and willing to grind to get what I wanted, considering it got me 4-5 months of heavy farming (I'm 98% PvE player) to get a 2H weapon that outclasses Bearach's by far and a 1H weapon that also outclasses Arachna's (both tier 3), what's my motivation for crafting -0.002?, with the rate of grinding required I'm gonna get better gear by the PRNG's hand than from the workbench.

Which lead us to another point, you people watched a Spieletrend video, looked at Baragain's preparations and at Trakilaki's resources, then, how many of us do you think have all these?, did you actually used that info to give feedback thinking in the vast majority?.

Spieletrend does this for a living dude, it's obvious he's gonna invest more money than someone like me willingly would in a lifetime, our gems, gear and other stuff can't compete already. Then we have Baragain and Trakilaki, the german babies used a screenshot from Traki's craftings to give biased feedback without considering this dudes' resources, saved from months ago to craft those uber items, do you know how many of us have that many gold, anders or materials ready despite being under preparations as well and farming fatal PWs like crazy since Crafting 2.0 was announced?, anyway, you and them managed to screw up Crafting 2.0 and guess what?, Trakilaki is still crafting uber items, I'm pretty sure Spieletrend will, Baragain will and some others that have a lot of time ahead of us, not only the resources, so what happens with us mortals?, yes, we're still lagging behind, now even more, to a point where Crafting -0.002 is completely inconsequential for me in the short-mid term, thus, a failed long-term motivation, by the time I craft something "decent" as you say, the level cap's gonna be increased and I'd have wasted a lot of months.

I dunno if this is your case, but this primal fear comes from getting egos crushed in the arena, guess what?, it's already broken, crafting 2.0 would have been a great oportunity for a lot of people to improve, real heavy payers are already unbeatable in the arena, the nice version of crafting 2.0 could have closed the gap a little bit, and gave people long-term motivation to reduce the gap a little bit, now it's gone for good, and things are worse than before, props for that.

It's easy for some to speak from the point of view of the old player, the spender, the pro, but yet again they fail to see the whole picture, it's the "this class is OP" discussion with a different skin, "this feature is OP, nerf it please so that only the already OP can benefit from it", what about us who have jobs?, life?, couples? (despite my couple plays with me), the only person I've seen more oftenly speaking for everyone's sake is Rhysingstar, and of course there's a lot of others like Baragain and Trakilaki, but the toxicity prevails above the good intentions of some, your developer POV, as Trakilaki said, is good for none other than them, we already have a hard time dealing with their wrong decisions to also have people here with their same mindset.

We're dealing with severe issues, lack of population in Agathon, Tegan and Balor, bug fixes prioritized in the wrong order, famished releases with little quality of life improvements and plagued with new bugs, miserable drop rates of decent items, unbalanced and grindy events with little and sometimes useless rewards (I'm looking at you, DtUs and Bearach pet), dying moon events, useless unique sets (and even so, non-dropping), useless Gnob's casino, and so on, yet some people have the nerve of focusing their attention and voices on crushing anything good that is coming to the game because of their egos.

Long-term motivation you say?:

I could dig more, but there you have a small sample of what a bad decision makes to long-term motivation.

Too long already, be back later, perhaps...

 

The simple truth is no, most did not consider anyone but themselves and those who are already OP.

I've got an okay DK. My stats have been published here on the forum many times. I'm about 1/3 of the way to what most players would begin to consider being almost OP.

I have about 2500 in gold and despite the many hours of farming in preparation for 2.0 I have not found a single weapon with any gold line in the enchantments.

If we would have gotten the good version, maybe in a couple of weeks I could have seen a decent improvement even without the gold lines.

However, since some players were so worried that a handful of truly heavy spending or truly OP players might also improve, the rest of us get punished once again.

I suggested several times that those wanting the crafting nerf go farm the regular maps or just painful to see what it is like for so many other players, but of course they couldn't be bothered. They were too busy screaming about the sky falling.

As the gap between the heavy payers / OP players and the rest of us grows even further (and it will), the truth will be plain for everyone to see.

Then we will all know exactly who to thank.

 

From my p.o.v. the crafting 2.0 discussion and how it went the direction it did is in fact offtopic here.
I also don't really want to defend my p.o.v. any further, we have had enough of this.
So I will only try to set a few things straight.

1. I am an average / casual player myself. If I go solo, I only farm normal painful maps usually, rarely bosses.
Personally, for my own chars, I would have liked unlimited reverting, of course.

2. I was never afraid of OP players getting even stronger, nor were PvP concerns the reason for my calls for a nerf.

Rather, I am absolutely convinced that unlimited reverting would have seduced many players to invest substantial amounts of real money for crafting, with the result of soon-to-come boredom for them and frustration for others.
So, I only asked for the nerf because I am trying to see more than my personal benefit.

We will, fortunately, never know if these fears were justified or not. If yes, there would have been no way to undo the effects - BP can't take items away from players that already have them, as we saw with those lowlevel crit weapon adornments...
On the other hand, it would still be possible to make crafting gradually EASIER again.

3. For the records:
I asked for influence of inputs on the crafting result here in the German creative corner, on January 5th 2015.
I asked old producer Rick Talrok about it here, on March 1st 2015.
I proposed a detailed design sketch (for enchantment inheritance) here, on January 11th 2016.
And when Greg an Haruki presented on twitch a design that included some revert function, I immediately said I was worried that this would be OP, here (February 19th, 2016 ) and here (March 13th, 2016) - long, long before version 2.0.1 (only 1 input back) was presented in the feedback threads, or 2.0.2 (all inputs restored) on the test server.

I cannot judge how much my original ideas have really influenced this feature.
But I know that for me it's "my baby", and I'm very glad that my concerns seem to have been taken into account as well.
If you see it as we protesters (or pro-testers?? ) "ruined" something for you that you were waiting for so long, maybe you should also take into account who was actually advocating the feature and trying to give it a useful and sustainable(!) form. (yes, ME! )
Some people blame me for sounding like a developer here. Well, you know what? I DO feel like I was involved in the feature design - which is also why I still think it's good, at least for now.
Maybe we should have led this discussion back in February/March, but I DID voice my concerns back then... did you?

4. I am still convinced that crafting 2.0 benefits casual players more than "power users", because it is way easier for them to improve their stats by a given percentage.
If I have 50% of a maximum value and improve it to 60%, I have increased my stat by 20% of the initial value. Somebody who already has 80% would have to go to 96% to reach the same relative increase and felt benefit.
Also increasing the absolute value is way easier, e.g. from 50 to 60% than from 80 to 90%. This is why I say the gap will be narrowing, not widening.

Personally, I will take screenshots of my gear and stats now and document over the next few weeks how much I can improve with crafting 2.0 in its current form. You can either join me in my efforts or wait for the results of everyone in a few weeks...
Whatever you do, make sure you have FUN! (yes, I'm serious...)

 

Most of us are not talking about you when we express our feelings about this nerf. Yes I have seen you mentioned by some, and I do not believe that was needed. I have also read your posts on the German forum and you were not among those who thought the sky was falling.

It also was not only the German players who were complaining.

It is no secret that I do not like crap 2.0 and it will take significantly longer for me and many others to improve with this system. It is slightly better than the complete random we had, but not enough to make a difference, nor enough for me to be happy about it.

You were very clear in opinion and I for one respect that.

I've personally tried to express other areas within the game beyond 2.0 that could improve the engagement and enjoyment of most players.

However, 2.0 is part of the game and if we are going to talk about ways to improve the game it must remain part of the conversation.

 

I'm really blown away by this, despite the fact I respect that you're a decent contributor and had put an effort in things like the "most desired community features" threads, in which I participated at least voting in the polls, what you just said above is one of the most pretentious things I'd ever read in these forums. Next are you going to say that the community features' order is based on your polls and not on the survey made by the devs via e-mail?

Have you seen me bragging about my concerns being paraphrased and taken into account in Twitch streams?, have you seen Baragain, Trakilaki, Silverseas, BigPapa, Rhysingstar or anyone else do the same?, there was one release (can't remember which one exactly) that had at least 7 features I had adressed in this forum in the past, yet you didn't see me calling it "my baby" or coming here and claiming part of the credit for it.

Also, the fact that you mention "pro-testers" makes it crystal clear you're aware of the difference between them and the vast majority of players, but hey, despite of what you say, I can't put all the blame/credit on you, as said above, you were not the only one complaining nor the Germans either, still, no matter how reasoned or well delivered a detrimental opinion is given, that doesn't and didn't make it less detrimental for the aforementioned feature, but here's the most accurately predicted final result:

Also:

And don't get me wrong, I'm not against you and it's not personal, as I said before, I appreciatted your positive and constructive contributions, but this time, you're defending a feature that brought discontent to the vast majority of the players, even some payers, one that made someone as stubborn as Baragain consider going into Hiatus, and the opinions I quoted above, and you're defending it as fiercely as if you developed and implemented it yourself, but you're just defending the indefensible, a feature that diminished or plain killed the long-term motivation for a lot of people (am I enough on topic?).

As for the rest, other did a better job quoting several issues or improvements that could set the wheel going for DSO's long-term motivation, if there's anything I need to add, I'll be back, perhaps..., cheers!

 

(wave)
Just to show my presence ...
I am reading the forum every day ... but not replying and making comments because I am "Red Phase" pissed off and avoid breaking the forum rules .
I have lot of things to say ... but I will do it only when my Ultimate Anger is gone.

Just using the forum guide:

Just to avoid confusion and misunderstanding


P.S -

 

Let me re-phrase it: I have developed a very clear idea of crafting 2.0 for myself, since 1.5 years ago.
This idea never contained any revert mechanism, and I still don't think the feature absolutely needs one. The fact that I always had such a clear vision of it is one of the reasons why I still believe that the current solution (which is very similar to my ideas in many ways) is not so bad as many describe it here.
People have been accusing the ones calling for a nerf of not understanding the feature, of not having tested it, of just emotionally reacting to a few screenshots. For me that is not true, I have been following my vision all the way through.
When I say it's like "my baby" I don't mean it's exclusively mine, but that I am in fact emotionally attached to it! Which is why I defend it and feel sorry if people don't like it. Please try to understand that.

BTW, I have been opening some 600 cubes tonight and spending netto 800 Gold (almost all this char had) on crafting attempts, basically in vain.
None of my stats has improved yet. So what? I hope to see results in 2 months, not in 2 hours. I am still very happy with the system, it is very transparent.
Other users have already said that they managed to improve their base damage by 300 in one day, just by crafting a slightly better weapon.

Well yeah, it is part of the game now!
Of course it is legitimate to ask for further adaptations.
I actually didn't ask for input items to be destroyed, but for a restriction of re-rolls which would otherwise only be limited by resources that can be bought for real money (andermant and gold). I could imagine other solutions for this, e.g. a limit to how often you can revert per day, or some farmable currency for crafting/reverting (which would actually bring us somewhere close to the old CoT system...).

But on a bigger scale, here, in this thread, I'd be more interested in that question of how "necessary"/"meaningful" continuous improvement of character stats is - which is the main reason for the importance attributed to crafting 2.0.

I have some hypotheses for you:

1) If you continuously improve your stats and no new challenges are introduced, the game becomes too easy and boring.

2) If you continuously improve your stats and new challenges keep being introduced (to put it in an extreme way: Monster HP, armor and damage directly scales with group HP, armor and damage), then your improvement is in vain, it is "eaten up".
It's like inflation in the economy: Even if your salary nominally increases, your actual buying power doesn't change.
On the other hand this means that stagnation leads to an effective loss.
Your daily game experience (apart from watching some numbers growing (*)) would basically be the same if neither stats nor challenges increased.

3) If you mainly improve your stats not for PvE but PvP, you will either keep facing the same opponents that develop with the same pace as you do. Or you will encounter different opponents that have stats similar to your new/current ones. However, that doesn't really change your game experience unless you belong to the top ~0.5 % PvP players. There will always be people who are stronger and others who are weaker.

4) As long as there is an upper limit for specific stats (technically or by gear available), there is no way to prevent diminishing returns, meaning that it will become exponentially harder to reach any further improvement after any given step. Your improvement will ALWAYS slow down the further you get, thus becoming less rewarding.

I feel I'm getting too tired for writing a more elaborate text, so I might re-start from this point thursday evening.

(*) If I feel like watching some numbers growing, I only need to look at my data download volume while the DSO Client is active. No need to play the game actively...

 

Likewise. Today was spent building building blocks for the future and I don't expect to get what I'm looking for anytime in the next several weeks. The best two "ingredients" I was able to craft today was a 2/3 exo torso with 19.36% damage. Now, in another month (or two or three), I'll make a second one of those and will be able to start working on trying for a 3/4 legendary which is when it might actually become usable. I also managed to make a 19.31% set of 2/4 legendary speed gloves that will hopefully one day be used to make a 3/4 legendary. This system will allow for improvements, but it will be painfully slow. I'm looking at this like crafting gems, only with an element of luck involved. I get drops of gems while farming, but at my level of development, it takes months for me to make a gem large enough to put into my build and have any improvement.

Let me be clear:
I am still beyond upset about the nerf, but when the devs hand you lemons (inside a plastic bag, inside of a box, inside of a crate, inside of a safe, inside a shipping container, on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic), you need to be willing to work to make lemon-aid. If the past is any indicator, they won't change their minds, so the sooner I adapt, the sooner I'll stop being upset over something that I supposedly use to de-stress.

 

Why is it one or the other? Why can't the dev's manage to do to both?

Currently DSO spends months building maps or creating events that we finish in days. If they were to actually put some thought into this, the challenge would be built in.

If they gave us quests to complete for some minor reward like gems, gops, etc. that offered us something to do beyond simply farming one map only, player interest would continue.

New quests like group raids would also engage players.

How about adding boss kills? Something useful like the original thought of 999 Sargon kills, before they in their infinite wisdom took Sargon away to punish those of us who liked the idea.

How about something like, X number of runs in regular map mode opens up harder map mode. X number in harder map gets you fatal mode.

Progress doesn't have to come in leaps and bounds, just in a timely manner. Spending a year or more running Q3 is not fun, but there is nothing left for most end game players.

Give us something, anything to look forward to. Give us a reason to engage with the game.

See above for creating interesting challenges and quests and events.

Pvp is a mess. Once again DSO poorly copied other games without long term thought on how to keep balance and encourage players.

However, like pve, there has to be some reward for the effort. We used to get special talents/skills/rewards. Then they decided to simply take all that away.

Even if all players went into the arena naked, some with superior fighting tactics would win over others.

Now think if they could have boosted the lower powered people quickly (like with the good 2.0). Then more players would be able to compete in pvp. Now if they would offer meaningful rewards on top of that, pvp would be active.

Another option, would be to merge the 3 small servers together and bring more players to the battle.

Again, this is not about returns it is about balancing players and creating engagement.

Frustrated players quit.

I've never seen one single thread on this forum from a player complaining about being too happy.

Compare that to all the threads where players are wondering why the drops are so lousy. Why the events are so boring. Why pvp is so unbalanced.

Now I've got some basic questions.

1. How much fun would it be to really want to run every map instead of just Q3?

2. How much fun would it be to have some group only quests with appropriate rewards?

3. How much fun would it be to get gems or gops or good sets for long term quests?

4. How much fun would it be to have a boss kill quest with an appropriate reward?

5. How much fun would it be to have appropriate rewards for pvp battles?

6. How much fun would it be to have a smaller gap between the OP and regular players today?

7. How much fun would it be to have events that not only challenged us but actually rewarded the time and effort?

8. How much fun would it be if it didn't take years to get some gear sets?

I could go on and on, but the dev's have proven that they are unable to think long term.
They have proven time and time again that they have no interest in engaging players.
They are determined to poorly copy aspects of other games without understanding why or how those things work.
They are determined not to listen and act upon the reviews of the players.

Quite honestly, if their sole desire were to quietly kill the game, I could not suggest a better way than what they are doing.

 

Nope ... non of those have actual meaning ... Take a look at this and the real meaning

I was just sick and tired of your P.O.V.

Now from what you have said I can make your profile:
- You are F2P ... who is spending money on his alt accounts
- You are casual player who has 5 field marshal toons and few twinks
- You care for the average players but you got backed by the top Heredur Spenders
- Your math is wrong

Al this make as much sense as taking a blind man to a silent movie.

Seriously dude ... him and testing?
A dude who has Deluxe premium at TS ... and making stupid videos and making money from them.

Now I have to ask you a question.
After posting my screenshots at German forum (not you) and saying that i spent 120 gold (which is less than one roll) ... non of you from the German community took the time to present the facts with your OWN testing results? And you all adopted this nonsense as a general opinion?
Let me ask you even further ... how come you are representing average players ... while in same time you were backed by the TOP Heredur spenders ... you didn't know they were P2W? Really?

Several hundred thousands??? Out of which 1/2 are my accounts? And usually when I'm bored I randomly click on BP's questionnaires and then BP is taking them as a feedback
Me representing top players? Are you high ... are you on drugs?
Dude I care for every single player ... what part of I AM WORKING FREE FOR ALL is not clear for you? Only one who is profiting from my work is BP.
No man you are no poisoning ... you are deliberately deluding the public because you are paid to do that!
And as for your claims and false facts and wrong math ... we already saw who is wrong and who is right ... at DAY 1 since Crap 2.0 came to live servers.

​

P.S. -

 

Warning: This is an off-topic, personal reply to the trolling of @trakilaki .
If you are interested in the topic of this thread rather than being entertained by some mud-wrestling, simply ignore it, please...

I so far have put maybe some all-in-all 210 Euros into 2 accounts:
- 100 of those for about 10 months of premium and 75 Euros worth of andermant (mainly for inventory extensions of my 3 main chars) in my Heredur account
- and one month of premium and 25 Euros for Andermant on my Grimmag account
I still consider this "F2P" because it is NOTHING compared to the sums some big spenders invest in their accounts MONTHLY.
If you don't agree, let me know.

Sorry, that's BS - and you know yourself that it's polemics.
The fact is that I have 4 Lvl 50 chars on the live servers, and another 2 on the test server. My 3 main chars are just barely marshals, i.e. they are between top 3000-5000 in the PvP ranks of Heredur - which is due to the mentor bonus.
I don't have any delusions about being among the strongest 5000 chars, lol. From the actual strength, they are on par with seasoned knights of the order without mentor bonus, usually. And I have 2 twinks, yes.

I did (unfortunately) spend a considerable amount of time playing this game in past 2.5 years. BUT as I distributed this time among some 8 characters all in all, the best of them live the reality of a casual player's single char which maybe gets some 5-14 hours attention per week.

Well, sometimes people have common goals for different reasons/motivations.
I don't always agree with e.g. @Vìkì and @ULTRAPEINLICH, but I respect them as knowledgeable players. And I do think that they also care about the long term future of DSO, precisely BECAUSE of the money they already invested.

You know that my personal opinion is that the new crafting 2.0.3 will narrow the gap, while crafting 2.0.2 would have lured P2W players into spending large sums for perfect items.
Well, if some P2Ws were afraid that they might lose their exclusive status and this was the reason why they were against 2.0.2, I am just happy that they did voice their concerns - even if it was for a different reason than mine!

BTW, backing by big spenders... Daywaker2 was arguing alongside with you that losing 2 items at reverting was too much. What should that tell me about your p.o.v.? (nothing, if you ask me...)
When @semen470 suddenly changed his opinion and started to back my p.o.v., I actually went ahead and started to question his motives .

My testing results are that crafting 2.0 allows for a more predictable pursuit of specific enchantments in the long-term, and thus gives me motivation to look at every green or blue item before selling/melting it.
This is also what I keep telling here and in the German forums.
I did not have 2-6 months (which I expect in reality) or virtually unlimited resources to produce god-like items and proudly present screenshots of them. But I also don't think this is necessary for a realistic test.
There were enough other people creating not-so-realistic expectations... ^^

I never had the impression that this 120-gold-for-an-Uber-Item-post had a big influence. My personal p.o.v. was always that people realized that "selling" UBER-Items for (even exorbitant amounts of) gold is not good for the game.

Well, MY p.o.v. is that a pink/legi glove or boot with 18-24% speed can still help me improve. You said it's not interesting for you.
Now who is closer to the casual and who to the top players?

Most of the players here in the forum may actually share YOUR perspective, but from my p.o.v. (e.g. this upcoming number is a GUESS, not a CLAIM!) that is because the top 1000-5000 of each server are clearly over-represented in the forums. Maybe accurately for their total playtime, but not for absolute player numbers.

Prove any mathematical claim of mine wrong; mathematically, not with something you think to be a "practical experience".
Prove it and I will delete everything wrong from the forum immediately and replace it with a big "thank you, Traki, for the correction".
Do it in the way @_Baragain_ argues (or let him do it for you), and I will shut up.

BTW, I didn't make too many mathematical claims apart from that probability table (and excerpts from it).
I did give some rough estimates of gold costs mainly based on OLD Prices (back then when I made them), my probablility tables and @_Baragain_'s crafting methods, but as far as I remember these are clearly marked as what they are - rough estimates.

As for the predictions if crafting 2.0 will narrow or widen the gap between F2P and P2W players: These are based on a lot of assumptions e.g. concerning the long-term farming motivation etc.
While I totally agree that "time will tell", I think nobody should regard their forecasts as facts now.
It's quite pointless to argue about those. I guess even BP cannot be sure of the long-term effects yet. Maybe they can measure them "a posteriori" (like, which category of monthly spenders is using the workbench how often, for items of which rarity levels), but I'm afraid they won't tell us...

The only thing _I_ can see so far is that many people are disappointed because they had the wrong expectations - the most important being that they would see an immediate effect on their stats within one hour or one day.

You think somebody would be willing to pay me for my posts? Would you care to give me their email address?
For the delusions, I think I am usually emphasizing that/when I speak from my personal point of view. It's rather other people who claim to know the objective truth.

 

I hate to step into this quarrel, but you brought up a point that I would like you to expand on.

You've mentioned a few times that 2.0.2 would have improved too many too fast, but you never said what too fast was.

Edit: Oh wait, you were not concerned about the average player, just the heavy paying player improving too fast.

So, since you've done part of the math, I would like you to show the difference between the 2 versions.

If we had gotten 2.0.2 how long (days/weeks/months/years) would it have taken for an average person to improve by say 25%.

Now that we have gotten 2.0.3 how long (days/weeks/months/years) will it take for an average person to improve by say 25%

Then I would like you to explain why you think it is better for players to get frustrated and quit now versus maybe getting bored at some point in the future and quitting?

 

To answer this question will take some time, but I will aceept it as a challenge.

The difficulties start with the question what is an average char/player... As I like to claim I am one, I will probably start investigation with my mage, my first and old main char.

Another issue is also that a good portion of our stats comes from gems, and increasing the stats by 25% of what we had in total (which is possible only, btw, if you were at maximum at 80% of the maximum values before, anyway) would mean that we would have to reach 25% of our accumulated gem values by even more improvements to enchantment values, on top.
So, I suggest I would be looking at my stats WITHOUT any gems.
Does that make sense for you?

That one is comparably easy to answer. I do NOT think it's better if anyone gets frustrated now.

Honestly, I never actually saw any reason to get frustrated by crafting 2.0.
We just finally got something I personally have been waiting for for at least 1.5 years, and I'm loving it. The feature is quite excatly what I wanted (apart from mixing item types in targeted crafting, and thus e.g. being able to use the relative quality of damage lines of shields for weapon crafting). The process is very transparent, we influence the odds by what we put on the workbench.

Nobody is forced to use the system, those who prefer random drops can just continue farming and sell/melt what they don't use.

The current frustration (of course I see it's there and for real) from my p.o.v. stems from wrong expectations that were mainly created by the presentation of crafting 2.0.2 on the test server, and a lack of reasoning/explanation from the game designers why reverting was introduced at all and why they decided to nerf it again, then.
It's a pity that _I_ have to try and explain what I don't really know, why this was in the end necessary and beneficial for all of us, instead of those people who actually took the decision. ^^

 

F2P is when you didn't invest a single dime into the game Armando
You are not F2P ... even if you like to call yourself F2P. Blue color is blue ... it is not red because I want to call it that way.

There you go ... what more to be said? You are measuring the player's strength by comparing PVP ranks.

Armando ... I have spent almost double than your amount of playing time ... but if make it effective ... knowing that I was playing 12+ hours per day ... It would be 10 years of your effective play time.
It is not so important ... just saying.

There you go ... that is it. (even though I don't know what are you implying with _I_ )
Now your are changing the course.
You said

That is the truth Armando ... you want to show yourself as a personification of the unaware and clueless players, which are not even regular DSO players because they come and go in a month or less ... while in same time you are attacking the real players. Isn't that BP's policy? Attack the real players and make up a story about non-existing million other players ... and at the end explain that you made a change in the game because those majority of "million ghost" players (that don't even exist) gave BP reason for the change.
Man you can't fool ME around ... I am an ex military vet who fought 2 real wars ... and participated into another one as a mercenary ... we call that "False Flag Attack".
Yes hit on the players that actually are supporting the game (monetary or in other way) ... but you can't hide the truth ... Those are the real DSO's players not some fictional made up numbers.

1. Haruki may say whatever she like ... no company in the world will present the real numbers in public! That is called business or trade secret. But unlike them ... I can show you some real stats .... you know I have tools in disposal and i am having access to statistics myself.
2. Players who are over-represented in the forums? I pissed my pants again ... sorry
Does anyone forbids the other players to participate in the forums?
Is anyone selecting the forum posters (who can and who cannot participate)?
Those are the ones with GUTS to speak loud ... I have many friends that never post anything in forums. When ask them why? They can simply say: i am not comfortable writing in forums ... or ... I don't have something to say ... or ... I only want to read I have no desire to write ... or some other reason.
Without those "over-represented" players ... all the forums would have been ghost towns.
3. I don't know in what society you are living in ... but the vast majority of people are living in democratic society ... where everyone has right to express his own opinion without fear of being mistreated. in the same time democracy is giving you right to vote freely ... and the votes of the majority rules. BUT ... only the vote of those who actually voted counts. Those who stay at home and have different opinion ... well ... to bad for them.

I didn't mention names ... you did.
But as a small digression I will make a comparison ... You can't compare Daywaker2 with those Heredur players. He is playing at small server with small population and the only competitor at his server is Daywaker2 himself. It makes no difference to him if 2 or 3 or 4 items are getting destroyed into the crafting process because at the end he will always be at the top of the food-chain. While Heredur P2W are scared of competition ... there you go you said it "they protect their investment" ... what more to say?

There is no long-term for P2W ... they can get the effect immediately. Just like I did in TS. I played their way ... I fast forwarded 10 year life-span in a 1 day time. That was my and Baragain's testing showing ... this version is promoting and favoring only F2W.
Take a look around ... it is already happening.
The average players will need years to start advancing ... just advancing I am not talking about coming closer. Furthermore ... vast majority of them won't even get to that point because they will quit.

No man You will do it ... not me ... not _Baragain_ .
He said he was engineer who loves math ... but you like to call yourself "computer scientist". Les see your science in action.
I will only give you a few waymarkers.

1. you are not observing iterations
2. All you have until now is just a hypothesis ... which is only assumption that have never been tested.

Your claims based on Baragain's math ... can't hold water in reality. The math is true and accurate (with exception of not observing iterations) but it is just a math nothing more. To make that real you must integrate the math in the system , you have to be aware if the code or algorithm is flawed (which most probably is), how well will it perform within the given brackets, will it be truly random (which I highly doubt), are there any subset of rules that overrides the randomness, are the results same on different computing platforms and stations, can compilers and the algorithms and the different processing units have impact in the performance and accuracy, are there a set of rules that the public is not aware of ... that actually are "staging" the outcome ... and so on and so forth.
You know ... the mastery of discrete math isn't essential to programming ... but if you want to call yourself a computer scientist you need to understand how information is stored, retrieved, represented in memory, and how it may be rearranged and manipulated, which requires some understanding of the principles in discrete math.
The same can be true of probability ... especially if you need to predict how likely some events are (like how often a variable might be divided by zero given the dataset that you have ... or how often there will be iteration because of the flawed PRNG and ability to round numbers to what decimal) ... or your algorithm's performance depends on the range or ordering of the incoming data ... etc ... etc.


I know some people just like to do math ... but only doing math is just not enough in CS. In my opinion pretty much all the those calculations are a waste of time because:
1. They are not being scientifically tested ... just theoretically
2. They exist because theorist CS people (like mathematicians) enjoy doing math.

 

Really? Since 155 was released so many players have quit. With each subsequent release more quit. They are not doing this because they are so super uber OP that the game has become boring.

So why are they quitting?

1. Failed promises.
2. Delayed promises.
3. Frustration in the ability to improve in a somewhat timely manner.
4. Nerfing.

Can you dispute that?

Wow. Okay, so let me be the first person you see to give you a reason to be frustrated by crafting 2.0

I've spent the last 2+ years creating an okay character. Not great, but okay.

We all know what the drop rate is like, so improving from okay to better takes something more than just waiting on random luck.

As an example I've got 1 keen piece out of the possible 3.

Now I could be happy with that and maybe in another 2 years or 4 years I might one day be able to complete the set.

So should I be happy with that level of progress?

With 2.0.2 there was a chance for every single player in the game to increase faster. Even you cannot dispute that fact.

You're argument was that the heavy payers would increase too fast and widen the gap. You never said how fast that would happen.

You also did not mention how fast anyone else could improve, because that was not your concern.

If every single player in the game improved, the gap has to get smaller. After all there is a cap on how strong you can be.

If you go back and look at every single post I've made about 2.0 you'll find that I never concerned myself with the heavy payers. They are already OP, being more OP doesn't mean anything.

My argument was that 2.0.2 would improve everyone else. Everyone from the beginner on up.

I am not worried at all that some players may get bored at some imaginary point in the future. I'm worried that too many are quitting now.

Whoa, hold on a second. I've gotta call B.S. on this one.

When 2.0.2 was put onto the test server, players were given 50K ander and over 100 legendary items to play with. Of course you were going to get skewed results.

If DSO gave me 50K in ander and over 100 legs now the odds of me being able to improve goes up exponentially even without crafting.

So using the biased "test" as an example is faulty and I expect anyone with math skills to know better.

 

There you go again ... you DARE to say something like that.
Typical only for BP.

 

Oh wait, I missed this point.

So you're argument is that 2.0.3 is going to narrow the gap.

Two days in, Baragain enlarged the gap between his mighty DK and my average DK.

Just think of how much more that gap would be if he were also a heavy payer.

The truth is that Baragain first created a great DK because he has put in far more time and effort into his character than I have.

He also made a long term plan on how to do that, while I never thought beyond that day.

Then with 2.0.3 being as crappy as it is, Baragain had the resources/planning to take better advantage of it than I did and enlarge the gap.

This does not take a rocket scientist to figure out.

So instead of allowing everyone to improve quicker which would in fact close the gap, DSO chose and some players supported to only allow a small group of players to improve quickly.

I await your analysis on how much faster 2.0.2 would have allowed everyone to improve faster than 2.0.3


Edit to add one last thought:

Quite honestly I'm so sick of this conversation that it makes me want to stop playing, but here's one last thing to ponder.

To make this equal, we are going to assume that drop rates are equal and crafting is equal.

We'll use a 2 handed weapon as the example. (although you could use any item)

For this purpose the goal is to get a legendary axe with 3% lines and 1 dmg line.

Let's say that it takes 10 days farming painful mode to find 4 exo axes with 2 % lines and 1 dmg line. (after all you are average and painful is your only option).

Let's say it takes 1 hour to get 100 gold. (roughly the old price)

Not big glowing yellow lines, just average lines.

The goal for average players is to slightly improve, we all know becoming OP takes a lot of time.

Now let's say the random generating gods at the crafting bench are not totally for you or against you and it only takes 10 tries to get those 4 lines you want. We all know it could happen in 1 or take hundreds of tries.

Under the player friending version 2.0.2 it would take 10 days of farming to get that item we want with the 4 lines and 10 straight trips to the crafting machine.

Under the crappy version 2.0.3 it would take 2 months to get that same improved item.

Why? Because after every failed attempt it would require an additional 5 days of farming to replace those two lost items.

Now if you are like me and need lots of gear items, you can see how this would be slightly frustrating to say the least.

As we know each level of improvement will take longer and longer.

Once you get to the point where you need big yellow lines the difference in time can be staggering.

Of course some people will be luckier than others. Some could improve in a couple of months and some will require years to do the same. This only exaggerates with 2.0.3

Now we come to the meat of the entire argument.

How many will quit because they'll become so OP the game is boring?
How many will quit because it takes so long to improve?

Personally in my 2+ years of playing DSO I have not heard of one single person quitting because they were so OP that they were bored in playing.

However, I've seen way too many quit because of frustration.

Now if you are one of the believers that thinks it should take someone average like me years before I am able to somewhat easily farm the fatal maps that is okay.

However, the odds of me being that patient are zero.

One more person quitting the game makes no difference to DSO or to the OP players and their friends, I get that.

However there needs to be a voice for those who are not OP (not that I am) and sadly with each failed release that number gets lower and lower.

 

Alright lads and lasses... Firstly, thanks for starting this thread Armando. Keeping players amused long-term can be problematic with any game, and any sensible strategies for improving this are very welcome. Secondly (aimed at all posters), everyone has their own views as to what they personally want from a game and what would encourage them to stick around. Just because someone else's view does not match your own, that does not mean that they are either wrong or lacking in intelligence. It simply means that what motivates them is different to what motivates you. Different strokes (not that sort!) for different folks. All views are very welcome. Thirdly, play nice. Seriously: debate/discuss ideas/suggestions, but stop being a prick to each-other or you will be awarded with a nice little vacation time. If you are unsure how to play nice, read our Forum Netiquette.