Beastlord Season - Ends Friday 23/6

[Morf]

I think it's an exaggeration to say that "most" T4 players are sporting BL. It's not even a viable set on any of my lvl 40s. I do a lot of gear inspecting and I do not often see much BL other than for very specific specs or to fill in pieces while working toward a different set. It is by no means a required set and for a lot classes and specs it's nowhere near BiS.

Its not the whole set although given the opportunity i would rock the full set on my kotbs, its the 3 piece or 4 piece and more importantly the book (pocket item) allowing only 2 gear slots to be taken aswell as the tali slot in the back piece.

Check the armory and the top rr players, its no surprise they are all rocking 3 pieces to max there dps.

I have hours of video contrary to this point. Currently, yes, there's glorified ganking because the demand for gear is a trickle at best. At release, each server boot was a flurry of activity and PvP to secure a kill, and multiple groups would often clash at the point they respawned. That's what the goal is with turning off the quests temporarily. Maybe it works and we see a bunch of action at the new bosses (because you'll need to figure them out again), or maybe it'll be lackluster and we don't bother experimenting with it again. But that's the joy of being here, we're going to mess with stuff. Sometimes that comes at the expense of community approval.

Isnt this to be expected ? ppl got what they wanted and dont visit them again because you get more pvp in the open rvr zone aswell as a chance for a loot bag, who is going to travel all the way to west praag for a tiny chance of pvp ?

Why even bother testing when its obvious what will happen ? you remove the quests ppl are not happy because they are at a disadvantage to those who do have the 3/4 pieces, you then bring them back and you still only have the few players who dont have the set doing them which is where we are at now, maybe you will get a little action for a week after they come back then what ? remove them again for a period of time ? this is very unnecessary.

Its not about something coming at the expense of the community its about common sense, you are removing the chance for players to get bis gear because no longer do ppl spend time battling it out for the kill, wasnt this to be expected when they were first introduced ? maybe stuff should be planned better in the future so you dont have to piss part of the community off by making unnecessary changes.

[Markon]

I think it's an exaggeration to say that "most" T4 players are sporting BL. It's not even a viable set on any of my lvl 40s. I do a lot of gear inspecting and I do not often see much BL other than for very specific specs or to fill in pieces while working toward a different set. It is by no means a required set and for a lot classes and specs it's nowhere near BiS.

what makes beastlord so strong is the ability to mix and match gear sets.. so yes people most likely arent using a full set, but that doesnt take away from the fact that BL is extremely good and has for some classes bis components and taking it away will create a gear disparity.

Can you be effective without it? sure, you can. However taking it away feels like a "the rich get richer" kinda deal, since for a few months where it is gone those who have BL WILL have a (be it small) advantage over those who do not have it. And in a pvp game small advantages mean a lot.

I feel like this is a bad solution for what you wish to achieve. If you want more contention over boss fights then make an incentive to fight over the bosses instead of just having people wait out the respawn timer, and put something in so people would want to revisit the area. Or make the bosses mechanics different so you actually fight the boss while having to fend off other players for the last hit or somethign in those lines.

[wargrimnir]

You can mix and match every other set, easier than BL which requires 3pc to get started and the book requires all the quests to be completed.

We're ALSO introducing new sets, that yes, are relative in power to BL. As already mentioned.

I don't see any real reason to leaving this thread open any longer as it's clearly just going to result in further shitting on it. If you can't understand the reasoning and objectives laid out here, I'm not sure further explanation is going to help at this point. If you just flatly disagree with it, then do so quietly.

This wasn't opened as a discussion/debate as to whether or not we would/should, it was an informational post instead of just leaving it solely to the patch notes. Something that I'm increasingly becoming wary of bothering with.

[UndeadPatron]

You can mix and match every other set, easier than BL which requires 3pc to get started and the book requires all the quests to be completed.

We're ALSO introducing new sets, that yes, are relative in power to BL. As already mentioned.

I don't see any real reason to leaving this thread open any longer as it's clearly just going to result in further shitting on it. If you can't understand the reasoning and objectives laid out here, I'm not sure further explanation is going to help at this point. If you just flatly disagree with it, then do so quietly.

This wasn't opened as a discussion/debate as to whether or not we would/should, it was an informational post instead of just leaving it solely to the patch notes. Something that I'm increasingly becoming wary of bothering with.

Once more, you just lock the thread which so clearly causes problems within the playerbase and hope that the issue just goes away. No wonder this server is dying big time with stuff like this happening. Instead of just running away and making vague promises of future gear, maybe listen to the community for once.

[wargrimnir]

You can mix and match every other set, easier than BL which requires 3pc to get started and the book requires all the quests to be completed.

We're ALSO introducing new sets, that yes, are relative in power to BL. As already mentioned.

I don't see any real reason to leaving this thread open any longer as it's clearly just going to result in further shitting on it. If you can't understand the reasoning and objectives laid out here, I'm not sure further explanation is going to help at this point. If you just flatly disagree with it, then do so quietly.

This wasn't opened as a discussion/debate as to whether or not we would/should, it was an informational post instead of just leaving it solely to the patch notes. Something that I'm increasingly becoming wary of bothering with.

Once more, you just lock the thread which so clearly causes problems within the playerbase and hope that the issue just goes away. No wonder this server is dying big time with stuff like this happening. Instead of just running away and making vague promises of future gear, maybe listen to the community for once.

There's nothing constructive going on here. The points being made were already, obviously, considered. I'm more than happy to answer questions and clear things up, but to be told, YET AGAIN, that the community drives development is just silly. So here's what's on the agenda, for me, personally, since I don't talk for anyone else on the team.

- Finish Rare Fortune set and add it to drop tables.
- Run through all the Ch22 Normal/Hard PQ's and tweak objectives so they're a reasonable challenge.
- Add abilities to the final bosses in said PQ's (Torque might make new ones, who knows)
- Testing and feedback? If people bother to do them. This part is important because it'll determine how much struggle it will be to earn...
- Finish Onslaught set and add it to Ch22 PQ Gold Bags.
- Concept planning for future BL lair bosses
- Add abilities and set lair areas (maybe incorporate areas for the skirmish portions)
- Write new quests for BL delivery
- Enable BL quests again

Then somewhere in all of that I'm sure I'll be picking up some duties related to the patcher, and a couple other projects unrelated that haven't been revealed yet.

[Darosh]

Spoiler:

I think it's an exaggeration to say that "most" T4 players are sporting BL. It's not even a viable set on any of my lvl 40s. I do a lot of gear inspecting and I do not often see much BL other than for very specific specs or to fill in pieces while working toward a different set. It is by no means a required set and for a lot classes and specs it's nowhere near BiS.

Its not the whole set although given the opportunity i would rock the full set on my kotbs, its the 3 piece or 4 piece and more importantly the book (pocket item) allowing only 2 gear slots to be taken aswell as the tali slot in the back piece.

Check the armory and the top rr players, its no surprise they are all rocking 3 pieces to max there dps.

I have hours of video contrary to this point. Currently, yes, there's glorified ganking because the demand for gear is a trickle at best. At release, each server boot was a flurry of activity and PvP to secure a kill, and multiple groups would often clash at the point they respawned. That's what the goal is with turning off the quests temporarily. Maybe it works and we see a bunch of action at the new bosses (because you'll need to figure them out again), or maybe it'll be lackluster and we don't bother experimenting with it again. But that's the joy of being here, we're going to mess with stuff. Sometimes that comes at the expense of community approval.

Isnt this to be expected ? ppl got what they wanted and dont visit them again because you get more pvp in the open rvr zone aswell as a chance for a loot bag, who is going to travel all the way to west praag for a tiny chance of pvp ?

Why even bother testing when its obvious what will happen ? you remove the quests ppl are not happy because they are at a disadvantage to those who do have the 3/4 pieces, you then bring them back and you still only have the few players who dont have the set doing them which is where we are at now, maybe you will get a little action for a week after they come back then what ? remove them again for a period of time ? this is very unnecessary.

Its not about something coming at the expense of the community its about common sense, you are removing the chance for players to get bis gear because no longer do ppl spend time battling it out for the kill, wasnt this to be expected when they were first introduced ? maybe stuff should be planned better in the future so you dont have to piss part of the community off by making unnecessary changes.

Out of the top my head and various posts made by staffers throughout the thread, there are a couple of legitimate points made:

1.) Preparing the playerbase for a potential event-cycle that is meant to improve longevity of perceived progression.
2.) Potentially baiting out more community interaction by disabling pickup, but not sharing or turn in - the implementation of this change isn't even set in stone yet.
3.) Lowering the effort needed to maintain aspects of the game that are potentially prone to bugs.
4.) Working out a better system alltogether with a clean basis to build on; incentivising (a greater amount of) players to engage in discussions on the forums and provide <workable> feedback.
5.) Steering the project towards a more sophisticated state whilst maintaining proportions and resources - time and effort.

To "plan better" is a thing you can expect from paid professionals that can properly dedicate their attention to the thing they are working on - not from people that are running a project of this scope on their on dime, with the little time they can squish out of their actual lives - keep in mind that community interaction, tech expertise and general management of resources aren't things you pull off on the fly.
How about that bit of common sense? If you demand someone to abide by common sense and deploy mechanical precision, you might want to abide and deploy it yourself to begin with.

Prompting a thousand rhetorical questions whilst sporting an otherwise condescending and scolding tone doesn't help you in your endeavour to make a point.

Reading some of the replies to this and other changes... it begs the question whether people have ever worked in their life (and found themselves in discussions that <have to> yield workable results) or otherwise participated in any project even remotely coming close to the scope of this one ~ all the while dealing with constant - more often than not garbagetier - input.

Its a longterm-versus-shortterm debate revolving around an active <testing> environment, now think twice as to what this server needs (especially in regards to the way feedback is presented in) and what the circumstances enable - at times dictate.
If it helps think back to retail (how mythic handeld the community and the game), the niche-nature of this game and the nature of this project - "duh".

[Aurandilaz]

Looks interesting enough. Will those ch22 PQs work like Ruin gear acquisition does, fragments and shards from lesser bags?

As for BL hear my idea:
-BL boss will only spawn in CONTESTED T4 zone, with a respawn timer of 3 hours to prevent too much grinding and increase your odds of getting some PvP.
-Redesign more T4 Lair bosses into BL bosses, with hopefully most T4 zones getting their own boss.
-Quests are done in order, started from capital, with each quest phase rewarding one piece of Beastlord gear. The requirement is to kill ONE ANY Beastlord boss in an active contested zone.
Eventually you work through first phase, kill one boss in contested area, then return to capital, get maybe jewel rewarded first, then you start quest phase two, go kill another BL boss in some contested area, then return and earn next piece of BL... until eventually after 5 BL kills, you will have finished last BL quest phase and are done with it.

This would limit how fast you can complete a BL set, and since BL boss would only spawn in contested zone, the chance to get fighting done at the BL lair site increases.

Zones that already have bosses:
CW
Praag if you include West Praag
Caledor
DW
BC
KV
leaving zones without BL bosses for now:
Reik
TM
Eataine

those 3 zones should have enough room somewhere that could be turned into a possible lair, and transport some existing lair boss into that lair and buff it up to BL boss levels.

[wargrimnir]

Looks interesting enough. Will those ch22 PQs work like Ruin gear acquisition does, fragments and shards from lesser bags?

As for BL hear my idea:
-BL boss will only spawn in CONTESTED T4 zone, with a respawn timer of 3 hours to prevent too much grinding and increase your odds of getting some PvP.
-Redesign more T4 Lair bosses into BL bosses, with hopefully most T4 zones getting their own boss.
-Quests are done in order, started from capital, with each quest phase rewarding one piece of Beastlord gear. The requirement is to kill ONE ANY Beastlord boss in an active contested zone.
Eventually you work through first phase, kill one boss in contested area, then return to capital, get maybe jewel rewarded first, then you start quest phase two, go kill another BL boss in some contested area, then return and earn next piece of BL... until eventually after 5 BL kills, you will have finished last BL quest phase and are done with it.

This would limit how fast you can complete a BL set, and since BL boss would only spawn in contested zone, the chance to get fighting done at the BL lair site increases.

Zones that already have bosses:
CW
Praag if you include West Praag
Caledor
DW
BC
KV
leaving zones without BL bosses for now:
Reik
TM
Eataine

those 3 zones should have enough room somewhere that could be turned into a possible lair, and transport some existing lair boss into that lair and buff it up to BL boss levels.

I'll respond to this through the lock solely because it snuck in.

- Requiring an active zone would result in additional coding, and take away from the initial RvR activity in that zone. Neither of these I find productive for a largely PvE experience. It was considered during the first implementation and rejected.
- The plan is already to introduce new bosses, but the old quest lines will not be used. For the next season afterwards it will give us more flexibility to pick and choose through multiple quests, ultimately incorporating all the T4 Lair bosses in the distant future.
- Doing quests in order would fragment the available players needing each quest, this is something we were avoiding. It too was considered during the initial phase. Like other the related quests (Hunter/Tracker/Stalker), they're picked up and completed on their own.

2.) Potentially baiting out more community interaction by disabling pickup, but not sharing or turn in - the implementation of this change isn't even set in stone yet.

Also for this, I've heard disabling the quest will also disable the ability to turn it in. Before the patch this week will truly be the last chance to complete it, unless you hold onto the quest until the spring season when it may be reused.