You know the game is not balanced properly when...

[Monkey-Boy]

Why would it do that if you don't mind?

I don't think it would, they tried this a few years ago with the Challanges and nobody cared then either.

[slarden]

You just won the prize.

There are many builds out there that are good, but they are only great when they are played by someone that knows what they are doing.

The problem arrives when someone that has no clue how to play visits the achievement forum and sees a certain build and determines it must be OP. In game most of us know someone who can solo EE on any class/race. Is everything OP? No. Are there balance issues? Yes, but they will not go away. It is near impossible to balance a game when Turbine must cater to both people who care about making a good toon and those who just copy builds or have no wish to learn game mechanics or other in game tidbits of knowledge.

I just don't want the game balanced around exploit builds or exploits in general. Beyond that I don't care what they do with difficulty.

I just caution that other games have significantly diminishing returns on the highest level content for good reason. Once you have those goodies you won't feel challenged if they allow you to crush the content you ran to get the items. DDO would be wise to avoid things like SOS back when the level cap was 20. Unique, cool and highly coveted yes - but not adding significant player power or we will never get off the "game is too easy" treadmill.

[Blackheartox]

Make drops rare.
Heal amp augments.
True seeing augments.
Functional things such as collectible bonus items.
Maybe a new VOM for 10% more xp that starts at lvl 20.
Fire absorbtion augment.
Universal utility items that do not affect power creep much.
Horizontal increments.

There are plenty simple rewards that endgamers would really appreciate.

ALSO
I run EE MoD 3-4 times a week between my toons. The achievements section is sufficient for that. Trust me.

Killer DM mode would give us something to do. Make a simple quest insanely difficult. Take something simple and make it insane. I honestly wouldn't care if it was Korthos.

Imagine if they added actuall stuff like scroll bag, or components bag or toold bag, or a bag of wonders where you can put all your other bags in.

I know its just a nice little dream someone has who spend today 5 hours to clear tr cache and relogs to store and think hard what to keep what to trash, and in the end buy ANOTHER char slot to store items.

Sigh

[Thrudh]

Or it could be that they really are a weaker overall archetype right now. It takes enormous investment to get enough DCs for most content (and how fun is to have to debuff mobs constantly?) and yet someone with a barb, paladin or bard will outclass you with only moderate gear against bosses.

You really don't know what you're talking about...

It does NOT take enormous investment to get enough DCs for most content... It's quite easy, except for end-game epic elite and that's 5% of the content, not most content. Absolutely nothing wrong with having to grind some gear and past-lives before you can handle end-game epic elite.

You don't have to debuff mobs constantly, just sometimes, and that's strategic skilled play... which I thought you wanted MORE of...

Do you want casters to just cast the same spell over and over, while standing in the middle of a bunch of mobs? Well you THEN call the game balanced?

I don't want that at all. Sev seems to understand the problems with paladins and heavy armor... He's also smart enough to see that casters are fine... They are balanced correctly right now.

[Vellrad]

The only XP reward that would be good would be XP gems.
But anyway, noone does elite for XP (except for 1st time BB)- EN is faster and gives much more XP/minute and is auto completion even on gimp builds.

[bartharok]

Why would it do that if you don't mind?

First run for fun. Then notice you have a shot at making the list. This would mostly happen at the early stages, though

[Monkey-Boy]

Imagine if they added actuall stuff like scroll bag, or components bag or toold bag, or a bag of wonders where you can put all your other bags in.

I know its just a nice little dream someone has who spend today 5 hours to clear tr cache and relogs to store and think hard what to keep what to trash, and in the end buy ANOTHER char slot to store items.

Sigh

Ultimate non-power drop . . . a token worth 20 more bank spaces! people would grind the hell out of that and adds no more character power.

[Monkey-Boy]

The only XP reward that would be good would be XP gems.
But anyway, noone does elite for XP (except for 1st time BB)- EN is faster and gives much more XP/minute and is auto completion even on gimp builds.

Nonsense, you're forgetting about sagas.

[hit_fido]

There are plenty simple rewards that endgamers would really appreciate.

I wouldn't even be opposed to some award in the form of Turbine Points for the top placeholders. I'm not sure the best way to design something reasonable, it may be in the form of xxx points to the group members who retain the top score for xx days, it could be some other scheme. But it would be tied to something with longevity, rather than the obvious dead end of looting the new shiny and then having no more reason to run the quest, again.

Why would it do that if you don't mind?

As was ironically pointed out we have an active achievements forum here, albeit with quite a lot more than 20 players participating. It's fair to say we don't need anything else if that addresses the challenge issue, but evidently it has not as we still have players clamoring for challenge. It's also fair to examine the arguments for more challenge to try and decipher if what those persons want isn't actually more challenge but just another new easily farmed item faster than they're going to get it otherwise along with new content.

I don't think the "wants new items faster" is a problem worth solving. I think "wants a challenge that lasts longer than a week" is worth solving. I'm proposing along the lines of some others in this thread that some leaderboard style system could be a (partial) solution to providing a persistent challenge to players and groups. It can even come with some significant reward as noted above, but marginally more powerful items is a misdirect, in my opinion.

[MadCookieQueen]

Ultimate non-power drop . . . a token worth 20 more bank spaces! people would grind the hell out of that and adds no more character power.

actually...you bet I would grind it till my eyes bled

A few quality of life items for running the "uber hard OMG nightmare stuff" would make the time worth it.

It would be nice that instead of constantly invalidating loot, we got a variety of items for new content and harder content. Draconic Soul Gem made EE FoT worth it...it didn't add a power creep, just a quick way to have your elemental resistances instead of running around your ship for the old shrines.

[Monkey-Boy]

As was ironically pointed out we have an active achievements forum here, albeit with quite a lot more than 20 players participating.

Citation needed.

I'm talking actually achievements, stuff from the speed run threads. I'd be shocked if it's more than 20 people posting.

[hit_fido]

Citation needed.

Citation for what?

[Vint]

I just don't want the game balanced around exploit builds or exploits in general. Beyond that I don't care what they do with difficulty.

I just caution that other games have significantly diminishing returns on the highest level content for good reason. Once you have those goodies you won't feel challenged if they allow you to crush the content you ran to get the items. DDO would be wise to avoid things like SOS back when the level cap was 20. Unique, cool and highly coveted yes - but not adding significant player power or we will never get off the "game is too easy" treadmill.

I agree with you, but people here keep claiming that Bards are “exploit builds”. Tell them to come to Thelanis and I will introduce them to a rogue that leads every kill count in EE.

Sure a Bard maybe has a little more going for it than a pure fighter, but in the right hands either can be lethal. The problem is that there are too many complainers that have little game knowledge are going off of what they see in the achievement forums and not what actually happens in game.

As for your SOS comment, Turbine needs a carrot to put in front of players. Either a grind to an uber weapon or content that will challenge them. The complainers are against both. (not saying you are one of them).

[Vellrad]

Nonsense, you're forgetting about sagas.

Sagas sucks for XP/minute.

[Monkey-Boy]

Sagas sucks for XP/minute.

Not when you run through EEs are warp speed anyway.

The Sagas have the advantage of letting you keep the stones for the next ETR.

[IronClan]

You just won the prize.

There are many builds out there that are good, but they are only great when they are played by someone that knows what they are doing.

The problem arrives when someone that has no clue how to play visits the achievement forum and sees a certain build and determines it must be OP. In game most of us know someone who can solo EE on any class/race. Is everything OP? No. Are there balance issues? Yes, but they will not go away. It is near impossible to balance a game when Turbine must cater to both people who care about making a good toon and those who just copy builds or have no wish to learn game mechanics or other in game tidbits of knowledge.

It's the second time in 5 years that me and Vint agreed on something... So it must be true. Especially agree that people see Videos and get upset, and the Dev's listen to this... they obviously nerfed Blitz in direct response to Cetus' videos...

OTOH they actually made Blitz easier to build up for the average player and increased it's boss DPS dramatically so maybe smoothing over that "outlier" was beneficial to the players as a whole?

[Vargouille]

Re: Sorcerer

I would agree with two trees. You could have made one with multi-selector, it would be just the same.

Well, if you really only wanted to be able to focus in a single element and get fewer SLAs.

I've most often heard players say Sorcerers have 2.5 trees. Which is to say there's a good chance they'll get another tree someday, but are probably lower priority than than a few other classes who definitely have only two trees, any way you count it.

[Monkey-Boy]

OTOH they actually made Blitz easier to build up for the average player and increased it's boss DPS dramatically so maybe smoothing over that "outlier" was beneficial to the players as a whole?

They also made it much easier for multiple people to keep a blitz going in groups. This might be the single biggest change in the game being so much easier right now.

[slarden]

Sagas sucks for XP/minute.

It's actually really good with 5 sagas from 8 chains and fast quests. The best part is the ability to bank the xp for next ETR so you can start at 23.

Most of the xp LFMs I see are for sagas, Von 5/6, Spies, Wiz King and Von 3. Other than a few high xp/min quests - saga questing seems to be the default.

[hit_fido]

I'm talking actually achievements, stuff from the speed run threads. I'd be shocked if it's more than 20 people posting.

Yeah there's more than 20 people posting but I stopped counting after I saw you were one of them.