by GDEXXY » Nov 5, 2003 (7:05 pm)
I spoke with you in great detail about all of your frustrations and I must say that this message comes at a bit of a shock considering you gave me the disctinct impression that you now understood some of the changes and understood that they were still being tweaked and fine-tuned. I also have to say that you tend to have this continuing theme of implying that everyone else bears the same opinions of every aspect of the rebuild along with you and that just isn't true.
Unfortunately, everything you are upset about has either been fixed/changed or at the very least, explained with care and in detail. To quickly summarize:
Level loss was based on experience loss at a ratio and based on disctinct percentages based on level. A 50th level Barbarian and a 15th level Barbarian would NOT lose the same number of levels and with the ratio changes between the first trial allocation and second trial allocation, you should have either lost none or at the most one level for this second allocation (depending on how close you were to 8th level before the allocation and assuming you were a fighter, which I believe I recall you were).
Skills, as they pertain to combat and in the only sense that you mentioned them, were never vital to a character's success in combat, though they were recently created to (a) give small bonuses to combat and (b) provide extra class experience rewards. The small bonuses wound up to be large bonuses and were extremely easy to gain, giving many players engouh experience to advance several levels. The skill reset should have no impact on bare-necessity survival simply because NPCs/creatures were never improved when the combat bonuses from skills went live (in late July 2003).
Creature/NPC difficulty did rise, however, as most everyone noticed and was later fixed even before the second trial allocation. This is because character health and damage was lowered (to balance extremes between levels and classes and to fit in with spells) but NPCs weren't lowered enough to compensate. While things are better now, they will undoubtedly go through a week or two of tweaks and fixes where appropriate.
You're also accurate with your estimation that skill learning speed may have been set too slow. Although I encourage feedback and player opinions, try to be a little more constructive than "what nonsense is that" and "get with the program". As with other fixes and tweaks, this was also changed with the launch of the second trial allocation and is being monitored to see if it is now at an appropriate level.
In short, I have to ask you (and everyone else too) to be more patient -- the entire game was fundamentally rebuilt (even though a lot of the systems perform and act the same way, they still depend on and use other systems that were changed out from under them) and it's only natural that we expect there to be snags and problems that will need to be corrected -- especially during these testing periods. I also welcome criticism (though try to keep it a little more constructive and remain in-character on the in-game thought channel) and suggestions as we rely very heavily upon the feedback we receive from all of our players.
Thank you everyone for your understanding and support. I still have a very stern list of problems that need attention, some small (like rosters and references to old ability scores, etc.) and some more large-scale that effect everyone (like spell damage for the new trainable spells), but please be assured that your comments are not falling upon a deaf ear -- I've taken to heart everyone's feedback and concerns and am doing with it what I can, so keep it up.
Thanks again.
GameDirector Exxy, CEO
Role-Players Gaming Network, Inc.
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