Ultimate Weapon Discussion

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[balidet]

My thoughts....

Remove the UW...

Enter the Ultimate Aug....

we all like (I think) the new weapon epic aug system currently in place.....

make the UA....could have big Heroic resist buff..heroic stats.....massive AC....defensive buffs...add in some fun procs...whatever....then we can use the nifty new weapon graphics...the aug wont raise white damage but could have a massive proc...
 

players could use the class epic aug in 1 slot...the UA in another slot...then the ninja/ice/fire of there choice in the rest....

can hand in the UA for diff ones that have diff effects....ae proc.....spell focus...ae heal.....whatever...you chose....


MY 2 Cents have been spent....

thank you...

[Xiggie | Stone]

I have dumped 10's of millions of plat and thousands of essences into my UW's. Now we are looking at nerfing them to be a step above epics but I can now sink more plat, mats and time to bring them back up? I am not trolling you Hate, I am just wanting to give you some perspective feedback. With the suggestions you have put forth the effort I put into my UW's will in no way match what I am left with. I did not look over the plethora of suggestions except to skim, I looked over your post. So I have a few ideas, if I riposte else's idea just look at it as an endorsement.

Artifact Ultimate Weapon:
Give people somewhat of a notice that all UW's will be frozen as they are. A week or 2 window to allow them to upgrade them. Take away all the extra aug slots except for the epic slot and make it so the UW can not be upgraded any further.  Allow people to continue to exchange them from one type to another.

New Ultimate Weapon:
Exactly as you have described in your post.

3rd option:
Allow people to turn in their current UW's for the equal tier of epic, fully aug'd plus an amount of plat to offset the cost between the two, or the equivalent amount of credits, (for cases like 1h'ers) and allow those credits to be transferable. This option should only be allowable if the Artifact Ultimate Weapon is not viewed as a viable option.

I like the first 2 options myself. This makes it so people don't just get screwed out of all that plat and effort they put in.

[hateborne]

Honestly I worked on this weapon to be able to roll over content easily, and its been slow nerfed little by little and its just being accepted because they are such small nerfs. Id really appreciate a FULL refund for the work i put into my ultimate weapon through an npc or something if these nerfs continue.

Quick edit, Id just like to say how very strong I feel about a FULL refund npc if nerfs happen, we were promised alot of things about UWs, and none of them happened, this isnt anyones fault because hey, shit happens, but also, Its not my fault, i should recieve all the plat, essences, sls etc i put into UW if i dont want to use it any more.

Before I start, please know that I am not attacking, I am seriously trying to find information!

The bit in yellow, can you elaborate? I am going to take the safe assumption that you are referring to when the UWs lost their shiny clicks. This happened due to a small adjustment I made to each UW and the bulk of the server reacting EXTREMELY negatively. I threw my hands up and pretty much said whatever. Hunter got REALLY upset and reverted them to before I ever touched them (which was the nerf everyone saw) since numerous said I wasn't qualified to touch it.

The bit in red, again, can you elaborate? I cannot remember anything specific about promises for the UW.

As for a full refund, I cannot simply refund and item because you no longer want it. If so, I've got millions of AAXP to Fugitive, Denzig, or Stone/Xiggie if they decide the RoA isnt' worth it anymore. If the item were being utterly destroyed, then yes I would refund it in full.

The biggest concern I have right now is that the UW has a slot for the epic, which comes with a click effect.  Can you have multiple click effects on one weapon?  Other than that, I have nothing but faith in Hate to balance content so that people without a UW can get by, while the UW will greatly reward those who have invested the time.

You cannot have two clicks on a weapon at a given time. This would come down to a question of do you want an epic click on UW or offhand/bagged-item?

I agree with krinkle on the refund if significant changes are made. The essences would not go to waste as I've put soa and strike augs on hold for a long time to invest in the uw. I do believe it should not include SLS or essences but maybe a long ass kill quest for an upgrade component. Keep it more along the lines of t5 and UC.

Should you decrease the stats of the weapon? Yea but a balance of the upper zones would almost have to follow. A nice balance will be worked out and some won't be happy but this is a very dynamic/ organic server.

The goal is build it to be the Ultimate Weapon, not the server-breaking-best-in-slot-forever item. :-)

As a result of these changes, A LOT of resist and damage rebalancing would be done to fix the MASSIVE gaps created by these items. (Which is my biggest problem, content balance)




Keep'em coming. I'll continue to update this thread as I'm able (at work).


-Hate

[Fjord]

The original "UW" was meant to be a fun, game-breaking, and hard to get item. It was certainly fun, wasn't that hard to get, and only broke the game as much as you allowed it to. You can always break the game if you want; I still remember the days of people 30 botting the MCP for 4.0 books. The UW just allows people to do that without loading up or so many chars or backflagging a compensatory flavor-of-the-week class character, and allows people to trade off little chunks of time in building the item for less time spent on the progression zones.

Honestly, I think the game post-UW was more fun than the game pre-UW, but then again, that's my personal view. I don't think the game should be built around the UW at all, because I think the UW should be what it originally was: an option to invest some time on questing to see a benefit on the time spent to progression. Have a UW and want the game to be harder? Un-equip or decrease your group! I haven't done t8/t9, so if that needs to be modified to not require the UW, then it should be modified.

Hate's current suggested solution sounds less like a fun or game breaking item, and more like an optional/marginally better epic for the respective tier. That's fine, but that's a different item, and arbitrarily so. I don't know what your plans are with the augs until you reveal them in their entirety, so I cannot speak to what degree they might influence my conclusion. I don't actually care what you do, but I hope the item retains a unique sense of fun above all else. Ideally, I believe that the UW should retain its game breaking capabilities; if I want to "break the game" (that alone is arguable for a mid ranged UW), it's hardly limiting the person who chooses not to (especially in light of how limited our economy is), as long as they do not have to suffer content tailored to the UW, and that could simply be solved by not tailoring the content to the UW.

[hateborne]

I have dumped 10's of millions of plat and thousands of essences into my UW's. Now we are looking at nerfing them to be a step above epics but I can now sink more plat, mats and time to bring them back up? I am not trolling you Hate, I am just wanting to give you some perspective feedback. With the suggestions you have put forth the effort I put into my UW's will in no way match what I am left with.

Don't worry, I didn't take it as such. I have expected this to be 100x more violent than it has been.

You won't be completely "at the start" on the augs. Some of the clicks will be given to those that have certain weapons and certain ranks (i.e. UW AoE click may be restricted to 1h swords (UW Long Sword), UW Shield Click may be restricted to 1h mace (Ultimate Mace), etc etc). You will not start with the highest rank, but you will not be flat out pissed on either.

This may sound dickish (not intended), but I'm not blind. I understand the hellish grinds that some people have put into them. I'm aware of the botting some have done too, but I'm not letting that taint/skew my judgement. I was a player here and did grind up a few augs (though certainly less than others with more melee heavy groups). That being said, I do understand the time sink.

Xiggie, I would ask that you read over the thread as time permits. Yes I understand that a LOT of time was spent into getting these items. I have no doubt that you've noticed that glaring imbalance they cause. A warrior being able to pull the first 1/3 of a zone, afk autoattacking, then repopping...no healer...no assistance...solo destroying ~50-70 NPCs just a tier or two less. With new tiers, it's become pretty much impossible to cleanly balance content. This is READILY seen in T8 and higher ToFS (ignore T9 though, it was left in beta state). The problem will only continue to get worse (if it can even continue) in future tiers. T9 is locked down both because it's incomplete and because I cannot bring it down to meet both ends of the player spectrum (even the middle ground is more favorable to the UW holders).


-Hate

[Hampage]

I have tried to reply to this 3 times now but keep restarting, heres what it boils down to.

In your first post Hate you say that not nerfing the UW will help 1/3 of the server and hurt the other 2/3. The issue I have with this is that if you have done the UW, you have put in a shit load of work, especially with the nerfs to acquire it. The EoP sink alone is enough to stop most people who aren't already swimming in Plat, then you add in the EoN and EoToFS and to just even get started you are talking about longer than most people spent getting their first UC.

I've got enough Qvic, CT and ToFS essences to make up to UW2, what I don't have are the EoP, EoN and if the weapon gets nerfed down further I wont bother with it. I agree that the HP are out of whack on it, cap that at 1 million. But those that have the upper ranks have put in a ton of time, I don't even have one and I've got hundreds of hours invested into it. Taking away the "Ultimate" aspect of it does nothing for anyone who has spent even 10 minutes trying to acquire one.

[balidet]

A.100 essence (some times days....some times weeks/months of farming)
B.10 million plat(not a big deal)
C.EON(not a big deal)
D.SLS(easy)

Vrs

Collect 10 pages from mobs you are clearing anyway for armor or flag quest progression...

If you want to reduce the impact of the UW on content then it seems fair to look at reducing the quest to get it... Do you want to spend weeks or MONTHS farming for an item that is 2.5 times as good as your epic and you don't really need? Probably not...


so the real question I see is...


DO we want content balanced around the UW?

If so then reduce the UW to a non content breaking status and reduce the quest to get it equally...
IF you don't then return it to its forever awesome glory....
you cant balance it...
people will get very butt hurt no matter what you do(not your fault...just people being people)...people who have spent most of the $$ that run this server...and time....the very people who make the community that the rest of us swim in... In a game that is run almost 100% in instance with people boxing all the toons they play with...what does it matter if its an OP weapon? who cares? people blast past content and then what?

[clbreastmilk]

You have stated that the goal is to phase out future UW's and reduce the gap?  Several of the later tier zones Are balanced around the UW currently, so I believe this should be included in this delicate issue.

An easy solution I see would be to nerf UW Hp and then balance mob damage in T7 or T8 and up. You can additionally, keep UW DPS as is and/or add in augs/clicks.

This accomplishes several things.  You get your gap closer by adjusting UW HP and mob damage at higher tiers.  You dissuade people further from a mandatory UW situation by reducing this massive HP buffer that some people sought after it for and would continue to do so.  You keep the nice damage bonus (and remember not to balance content around it, ever again) which still gives it a use and a goal that people with all that extra time (and or money) will still work on it for.  The amount of DPS the UW provides can always be replaced by additional fully aug'd toons and usually with less time/effort.

[hateborne]

If you want to reduce the impact of the UW on content then it seems fair to look at reducing the quest to get it... Do you want to spend weeks or MONTHS farming for an item that is 2.5 times as good as your epic and you don't really need? Probably not...

so the real question I see is...

DO we want content balanced around the UW?

If so then reduce the UW to a non content breaking status and reduce the quest to get it equally...
IF you don't then return it to its forever awesome glory....
you cant balance it...
people will get very butt hurt no matter what you do(not your fault...just people being people)...people who have spent most of the $$ that run this server...and time....the very people who make the community that the rest of us swim in... In a game that is run almost 100% in instance with people boxing all the toons they play with...what does it matter if its an OP weapon? who cares? people blast past content and then what?

Yellow: No, I do not want another "forced" requirement instead of properly balancing the zones. UC, RoA, and class aug/gear is enough.

Right now, the essence drop rates are still somewhat low (but not crap) due to the overall adjustments Hunter made to the server to stem the flow of UWs into the market. This directly hit the new players harder than it did the upped echelons that could simply power clear 50% longer (though it sucked for those clearing more too).

Orange: Former Glory? You mean when everyone attacked me saying that I wasn't fit to adjust the UWs and Hunter removed my original changes that made them so godly? That won't happen in their current state.

Red: Yes, people that want to speed through content with no real challenge (or just like getting better without a contest) will enjoy this item. Those that donated a lot for an item that gave them the ability to speed past content never lose that speed. The problem (as stated before in this thread) is once the UW reaches point X (literally X, not the roman numeral for 10), the player has little or nothing to fear from the current tier. It's just a slow, low/no challenge grind to get 100 of the current tier's essences to reach the next tier with little/no challenge with another slow low/no challenge grind to get THAT tier's 100 essences. Once that point is reached, you've essentially broken in and beaten a new zone without ever having setting foot inside it.

The reason I care? I want this server to prosper. If I just gave everyone what they wanted, you would all have fun for a few weeks (maybe even a month or two) and then the server would become a ghost town. If you don't believe me, look at all the EQEmu and WoW emulated server with godmode and GM powers enabled. They seldom see more than a few dozen players at a time. Why? There is no challenge and there is nothing to overcome. When you are handed your loot versus fighting tooth and nail for it, there is no real feeling of accomplishment. Hunter cared and took steps to slow the UWs (but not enough). His steps were global (to the server) and far reaching.


-Hate

[hateborne]

You have stated that the goal is to phase out future UW's and reduce the gap?  Several of the later tier zones Are balanced around the UW currently, so I believe this should be included in this delicate issue.

An easy solution I see would be to nerf UW Hp and then balance mob damage in T7 or T8 and up. You can additionally, keep UW DPS as is and/or add in augs/clicks.

This accomplishes several things.  You get your gap closer by adjusting UW HP and mob damage at higher tiers.  You dissuade people further from a mandatory UW situation by reducing this massive HP buffer that some people sought after it for and would continue to do so.  You keep the nice damage bonus (and remember not to balance content around it, ever again) which still gives it a use and a goal that people with all that extra time (and or money) will still work on it for.  The amount of DPS the UW provides can always be replaced by additional fully aug'd toons and usually with less time/effort.

Hehe :-)

For the most part, you essentially stated what I stated (minus the damage component staying as is).


-Hate

[Takishi]

A ton of ideas have already been posted - however, I'd like additional stats if possible Hate.

Can you tell us how many people with 6+ chars from the same IP address that DO and DO NOT have an UW (both sides of the debate per-say)?  IE - 120 people who play 6+ chars have at least one UW, while 145 people who play 6+ chars do not own an UW currently.  

What I'd like to see is how many serious progression driven people do not have already own an UW.  There will always be exceptions to every rule, but I believe this would be a great start to narrowing down an acceptable solution.

[Xiggie | Stone]

Don't worry, I didn't take it as such. I have expected this to be 100x more violent than it has been.

I am glad you received my response as I intended instead of a troll. I have done enough trolling on the forums and i would like to get away from that. Especially when dealing with you. I didn't take anything you said as dickish either.

You won't be completely "at the start" on the augs. Some of the clicks will be given to those that have certain weapons and certain ranks (i.e. UW AoE click may be restricted to 1h swords (UW Long Sword), UW Shield Click may be restricted to 1h mace (Ultimate Mace), etc etc). You will not start with the highest rank, but you will not be flat out pissed on either.

You had me at Hello. If I am reading this right I like it a lot. Basically giving those with higher UW a leg up that they earned on the uw instead of just giving them the new UW and telling them they are screwed on that hand slot. Especially if you are talking about giving out some or a choice of the new augs that would make the tier their UW is at.

This may sound dickish (not intended), but I'm not blind. I understand the hellish grinds that some people have put into them. I'm aware of the botting some have done too, but I'm not letting that taint/skew my judgement. I was a player here and did grind up a few augs (though certainly less than others with more melee heavy groups). That being said, I do understand the time sink.

Again you're not dickish and I appreciate your views on it. Under Hunter the server molded itself to the best way of doing things. I understand your appreciate the delicate task completing what was left undone and improving what was already there. For the record I agree with transitioning the server so that botting is not needed at all.

Xiggie, I would ask that you read over the thread as time permits. Yes I understand that a LOT of time was spent into getting these items. I have no doubt that you've noticed that glaring imbalance they cause. A warrior being able to pull the first 1/3 of a zone, afk autoattacking, then repopping...no healer...no assistance...solo destroying ~50-70 NPCs just a tier or two less. With new tiers, it's become pretty much impossible to cleanly balance content. This is READILY seen in T8 and higher ToFS (ignore T9 though, it was left in beta state). The problem will only continue to get worse (if it can even continue) in future tiers. T9 is locked down both because it's incomplete and because I cannot bring it down to meet both ends of the player spectrum (even the middle ground is more favorable to the UW holders).


-Hate

I will look over all the posts on here, just had some things going on that needed my attention plus I wanted to put some untainted ideas out there. I agree that something does need to be done with warriors basically being able to be a group themselves. Before some of the nerfs that came about I could go into a tier above me with an Ultimate Weapon below what I have now and tank bosses and any adds that came my way. I could prolly kill 10 or so trash with no gear from that zone. That is broken plain and simple. One of the alluring things about this server though is the ability to go back to previous content and utterly rape it. Maybe not to the degree it currently happens though. I hope we don't lose that allure to the point of other servers but I do hope some of it gets toned down a bit for the health of the server.

Thanks for your time man.

[Adidis]

I'm not massively far along in the server (prepping my crew for T6 and no UW) I want to drop my thoughts here. I've personally never cared about the damage, as long as they aren't absolutely decimating current content with a combat round or two. The HP and maybe Heroic Resists have always been the content swaying factor on the item. If those came down to realistic and manageable levels (I do still think they deserve to be above epics as it is a grind) content would be more balanceable. I'm also all for augs that are nice for UW holders. I'm not against them having extra damage, healing or what not (Anything that can be provided by adding a character pretty much), but in the aug thread I stated that I was pretty against UWs having extra mitigation stats and clicks cause that just bridges the gap again. Remember this is just an outside view as I'm pretty sure most this thread will be from people with UWs.

[Dimur]

The UW quest was extremely poorly implemented to begin with, and the itemization of the stats/hp on it were based off nothing that existed to balance it against and was done in a vacuum.  First and foremost, the UW quest should have been level locked to T7 since that was the highest tier out when UW was put in AND the intent of the weapon was a dangling carrot for people who had already gotten max gear and defeated the content that existed WITHOUT needing the UW.  Everything up to and through T7 could be done before the UW existed, yes I know I just said that but I'm emphasizing my point.

After UW was put in without any level requirement, people started abandoning the tiered progression that existed and was completely balanced around not having UW, and instead just started working on the UW in lieu of gearing a crew of toons up and consuming content while progressing at the same time.  This was the first problem introduced by the UW in my opinion.  You didn't need the UW to progress prior to it's implementation so if you want to attain the UW, it only makes sense that you get to the point in progression where it was introduced.  Remember when the level was increased based off flags and people threw a shit fit because their high level strike augs wouldn't fire on their low level toons anymore?  Hunter intentionally level locked them so you'd have to advance to gain the increased benefit of a higher level strike aug, I think him not doing so with the UW was an oversight that he felt he couldn't correct after people started donating RL $$ to get the UW.

The second problem introduced with the UW was the inflation of HP slapped onto higher versions of the weapon.  When you have a sword with an HP amount that eclipses a whole set of tier appropriate gear, you have a problem.  Hunter obviously felt that in order for the UW to be ultimate, it needed to have a rediculous amount of HP that doubled at every new level of it.  The problem that presented was when he made T8 he used a max gear, max UW character to balance around (/rude Fugi).  A lot of tuning had to happen in T8 because of that, people can remember when rampage was removed from the game globally.  It was removed because when you first entered T8, even max geared in T7 crap, killing mobs was a crap shoot because if they rampaged too much and took out one of your healers, you were fucked because of the unresistable 1mil DD that would fire on the tank along with the high melee dmg and AE's that your group had to try to mitigate.  Hell, I remember killing Dozekar with my cleric standing outside rampage range and chain healing the warrior while he solod it because nobody would live through the fight with all the shit happening between AEs and rampages.  The problem was that the damage output on the warrior was manageable if he had a UW but there was no way in hell the rest of the group was able to survive it reliably since they didn't have the HP from the UW.  Since the removal of rampage, the only thing that has mattered is gearing your warrior enough to tank the incoming damage without having to worry about what gear your alts were in since they could easily resist the AEs with high enough resists...T8 was the point that UW became more than an optional piece of gear because the damage output from NPC's was balanced around it.

I'd be fine with gutting the shit out of the HP on UW and capping it or only doing tier level increases at a rate consistent with epics...ie 2x or 3x the HP of the same tier epic.  The UW could have zero stats at all on it, a full reimbursement could be offered and if the damage was left alone I'd still keep it for that alone, not because I can round up more mobs on a pull to kill.  Tedium is the only thing I find about EZ that is daunting, and having a UW to boost damage output saves me from feeling compelled to load in a second group of toons just to kill fast enough to not get annoyed to the point of logging.

I don't think the quest itself needs to be dumbed down or made easier, if you don't have a bankroll of plat to do the combines for UW then you shouldn't be farming UW components, it's meant for people who have little else to do.  Plat is laughably easy to farm if you really want to get it, the EOFS components are annoying to farm but hardly impossible and all but the master you can just buy off someone with enough plat, SLS, or whatever other currency they want.

I'm all over the map on this post because instead of just posting it, I keep getting distracted and coming back to add more thoughts so I'll end it here.  Sorry if it's a lot to wade through, but I just wanted to give a first person perspective of what I know about the UW.

[Chunka]

Dont think I wanna see the quest dumbed down.....if anything I'd rather it were made more challenging, and limited to players T5+. But I'd like to see the quest separated a bit from other crafters guild items (augs, SoA, etc).

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