Every reason why Update 49 is a disaster

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

A few points are currently unresolved for me :

Cauldron Crafted (CC) items :

- What happens with older items if I craft them with U49 ? What will happen with / to my "Teraza's Sight" which has the spell "Detect Secret Dors" on it if I use it ?

- Are items crafted via CC nowadays BTC ? BTA ? The Wiki says BCE or BAE, but the provided screenshots show something else. This is very confusing.

1. In the name of "lag reduction," on-hit effects got screwed over. Majorly. This is so huge, I don't know where to begin. I think some players don't grasp the far-reaching magnitude of the changes, so I'll try to list them as sub-points here:
   
   • Archer's focus. For throwing builds/archers/monkchers who previously could build up stacks of Archer's Focus via doubleshot, it's now vastly more difficult to get your stacks. Throwing 3-4 shurikens or knives at a time? Hah, screw you, now you only get 1 projectile so you build up charges 75% more slowly. I've been doing a throwing life and the difference pre-U49 and post-U49 is like night and day. Of all the builds in the game, throwers/monkchers probably got hit the hardest. Still, this is a blanket nerf to pretty much everything that is affected by Doublestrike/shot.
   • Non-damaging effects. Paralyzing, Colors of the Queen, Destruction, Disruption, Smiting, Vorpal, and every other on-hit effect which isn't pure damage get screwed. In particular, the AA tree got majorly nerfed (due to its reliance on on-hit effects like Dispel, Inferno, Shattermantle, Terror, PK, and the like) despite SSG saying they wanted to make bows more viable. Ironic.
   • Damaging effects like Corrosive Salt, Lightning Strike, and Incinerating got HUGELY nerfed for anyone who uses doublestrike/shot.
   • Crit/Vorpal effects. In general, crit/vorpal effects get nerfed because now when you doublestrike/shot, you no longer have multiple chances to crit. And yes, this applies to damaging effects like Burst/Blast, so no; when SSG tells us that "damaging effects are scaling fine," that's simply not true.
   • SWF gets nerfed because now there are fewer opportunities to vorpal. Ties in with previous point.
   • General nerfs to all damage. Previous doublestrikes/shots gave you chances at additional attacks, compared to a chance at dealing double damage. Why is this distinction so important? Because now, if you miss your initial attack, then you deal 0 damage at all. Previously, your second strike could still hit if you succeeded in the attack roll. Nope, not anymore. Doublestrike/shot is now a glorified critical.
   • Melee CC effects like stun and trip no longer have multiple chances to proc.
   • Master's Blitz Legendary Dreadnaught Blitz gets nerfed for this same reason. Fewer chances of hitting the enemy = harder to get blitz stacks.
   • TWF gets nerfed due to the changes to offhand doublestrike, plus changes to doublestrike in general.
   • There's probably more that I'm forgetting, but even so, this is a veritable laundry list of unintended consequences. And all for what? Lag reduction? ...We'll get to that momentarily.
   
   
2. I'm just genuinely disappointed with Update 49, as I'm sure many other players are.
3. Adrenaline got nerfed because... reasons.
4. Lag still exists, and it's worse than before. So the precise reason for why all these catastrophic nerfs were implemented in the first place... still isn't fixed.
5. Longbow animations look downright weird now.
6. When U49 went live, it was such a catastrophic failure that SSG had to take the servers down for an additional day. Where was QA testing? Importantly, what's even the point to doing these Lammania rollouts if the end result is going to fail spectacularly? Why not delay the release? I refuse to believe that the update was yet ready to roll out.
7. Apparently, people made millions of plat by exploiting a bug in the few hours that the server was live. Naturally, this hyperinflated the currency faster than you can say "Zimbabwe." As others have pointed out, this will have lingering, pernicious effects especially in the HC server's economy. What was done about this? Nothing. But because there was no rollback, the economy will now be indelibly ravaged.

I have never seen such an inflation of currency, as I'm NOT using the Auction House or the Astral House.
I am as independend as possible, or at least I try to do so.

And still, it is a question the players are required to ask them selves . "Do I really need that item ?"

Currently, this forjm community's focus seems to be "rise into powah, no matter at which costs !" which is an inherently selfish thought.
However, this current mindset is dominating video games currently at all. They are made by male developers for male players who know nothing besides "competition" and "power". This such a poorness in thought diversity.

And it reflects in the quoted list - which is about NOTHING BUT power.

[myliftkk_v2]

Things you accept when playing an MMO

• Some people like to solo but chat to others while doing it
• Developers will constantly update, change and generally mess around with the rules
• You can't save your game and thats the appeal, decisions are final.
• Game is constantly changing. From changes to existing content or adding new content.

When you play an MMO you accept these will happen. Its just happened. In my opinion, just change the way you build or play. That's what you always do in an MMO. It's better than having a game that never changes from one game to the next. Some times you win in an update, sometimes you lose. That's just how it goes.

Lol, nonsense.

Population drops tell us all we need to know about the accuracy of the "acceptance" trope. The market does not accept games (any game) constantly changing rules in a way that overly debilitate players.

MMOs are not special snowflakes. They work exactly like other entertainment options, and they fail just like other entertainment options. An entertainment option that cannot approach stability in delivery of content is one off the rails.

[myliftkk_v2]

It feels like most builds that didn't rely upon strange proc gimmicks have been buffed due to the massive crits you can now achieve.

One means features that have been present in the game for years?

Those of us who actually play the builds described are not pleased. My builds didn't play the crit lottery for the same reasons I don't play the real lottery.

What's amusing is the "logic" of massive crits being the optimal configuration is the same logic that drives lottery purchasing behavior. But, as mentioned earlier, math is hard for most.

[Chai]

Lots of conjecture here. "They count on" implies calculated malice on Standing Stone's part. Maybe they're just sincerely trying to improve the game, in their own subjective way, and you don't agree that these are improvements, in your own subjective way?

No conjecture whatsoever, and zero implication of calculated malice. Id like for you to address what was quoted instead of imply some misrepresentation of my mood, which you could not possibly know by reading typed words on a forum. Address it specifically point by point.

[Chai]

It feels like most builds that didn't rely upon strange proc gimmicks have been buffed due to the massive crits you can now achieve.

Big crit number does not necessarily mean more DPS/less HTK.

Procs were not a gimmick, they were in the design of the game, and were just as valid as builds which relied on crit scaling of damage. Poo pooing and tut tutting people for playing the game the way it was designed has become habitually toxic on these forums.

As stated before, I wouldnt have as much of an issue with this if it was easy to rework a build without having to farm for/pay for a heart to do so. If I could just log in and re-align all my feats/AP for free when in a public area, they could nerf away, and not hear many complaints from me.

[Chai]

In repear if I have a choice between on hit killing a mob or having "high dps" I will take the one hit one kill build any day of the week.

You dont get to choose when that happens. The stars need to align for the larger crit numbers to occur. You're rolling the dice like everyone else is, only instead of some level of consistency in similar HTK, you're relying on a linear eclipse to occur to produce that big crit.

I'd take the reliable consistency over the "press your luck" scenario. If know it will take x#HTK or X#time to kill said champion or said reaper mob, thats far more within my control than squaring up to it and praying to the random_number_generation_gods for a stars aligned scenario where a double/triple strike occurs on a 19-20 crit with a good damage dice roll, on a 3rd even numbered Sunday in an odd numbered month when Pluto is in the fifth house of ascension during a blue moon in a leap year.

[Ganak]

We were curb stompin content before the update, and curb stompin after, and now with less lag.

Seeing a bunch of folks trying out bows.


Fair update all in all.

[Marshal_Lannes]

Those of us who actually play the builds described are not pleased. My builds didn't play the crit lottery for the same reasons I don't play the real lottery.

What's amusing is the "logic" of massive crits being the optimal configuration is the same logic that drives lottery purchasing behavior. But, as mentioned earlier, math is hard for most.

Hate to break it to you, but the lottery is way more popular than math. People are gonna love the big boss numbers. I'll leave you to your hand-wringing over Excel spreadsheets calibrating theoretical DPS.

[Tsutti]

• Damaging effects like Corrosive Salt, Lightning Strike, and Incinerating got HUGELY nerfed for anyone who uses doublestrike/shot.
• Crit/Vorpal effects. In general, crit/vorpal effects get nerfed because now when you doublestrike/shot, you no longer have multiple chances to crit. And yes, this applies to damaging effects like Burst/Blast, so no; when SSG tells us that "damaging effects are scaling fine," that's simply not true.
• General nerfs to all damage. Previous doublestrikes/shots gave you chances at additional attacks, compared to a chance at dealing double damage. Why is this distinction so important? Because now, if you miss your initial attack, then you deal 0 damage at all. Previously, your second strike could still hit if you succeeded in the attack roll. Nope, not anymore. Doublestrike/shot is now a glorified critical.
• TWF gets nerfed due to the changes to offhand doublestrike, plus changes to doublestrike in general.
• Adrenaline got nerfed because... reasons.
• Lag still exists, and it's worse than before. So the precise reason for why all these catastrophic nerfs were implemented in the first place... still isn't fixed.
• When U49 went live, it was such a catastrophic failure that SSG had to take the servers down for an additional day. Where was QA testing? Importantly, what's even the point to doing these Lammania rollouts if the end result is going to fail spectacularly? Why not delay the release? I refuse to believe that the update was yet ready to roll out.

Damaging effects are fine, because their damage is also doubled.

I don't think the general damage nerfs are correct because while rolling a 1 means you just don't hit at all, no extra chance, rolling a 19-20 for that sweet multiplier bonus means that instead of getting another roll with a chance to not have this massive crit, you get double the crit damage.

TWF nerfed?? I'm pretty sure it's a buff, because afaik it was impossible to hit 50% offhand DS on any TWF except tempest ranger, and now any TWF can do it. lol. It's a nerf for tempest relative to other TWF, but not a nerf to TWF in general. It should buff their damage significantly, on top of buffing them as debuffers relative to other styles because now they are the only style in the game which hits more than once per animation on top of their advantage in being able to use 2x the weapons and thus apply 2x as many debuffs at once if they so desire.

Adrenaline got "nerfed" because if you do math, you see that pre U49 you would do 600% total damage in a single animation if you doublestrike on adrenaline (+400% damage hit, for a total of 500% on that hit, plus an additional hit from doublestrike which does 100% of its own damage). With U49, if they left adrenaline at +400% damage, then doublestriking makes your animation do 1000% damage. Now that it's instead +200% damage, if you doublestrike, you'll do 600% damage. It is in fact a nerf to its damage if you fail to doublestrike, doing 300% compared with the previous 500% total, but doublestriking results in identical total damage.
_________In fact, it was actually buffed as long as you're using adrenaline charges faster than you regain them because the proc rate used to be 33% chance on a vorpal, with 10% chance of vorpal per hit so 19% chance on every animation if you doublestrike (.9*.9=.81), and now it's a 100% chance on vorpal, with a 10% chance to vorpal each animation, resulting in a recharge rate of ~1.5x faster than it was pre U49 if you're doublestriking and 3x faster if you're not. The decrease in damage if you fail to doublestrike is 40%, meaning that this is an overall buff to dps as long as you are using charges faster than you're regaining them because this is nothing on the 200% increase in proc rate on a failed doublestrike, and the damage is the same on a doublestrike while the proc rate is increased by about 50%. This is a simplification because you don't either always doublestrike or never doublestrike, but the dps still goes up provided that you use charges faster than you regain them.

Idk, lag doesn't seem worse to me. Also to fix your claim, it wasn't intended to fix lag but alleviate it; basically, fix some of the lag. Some people have noticed a change, some haven't and there are other things causing lag sometimes as well but this was intended to mostly/entirely eliminate one cause. /shrug

lol yeah a lot of things went wrong when it was released, but the reason is that none of them were problems that existed on Lamannia. Well, idk if the plat values of ammo were borked on lama, if so then I can see why no one would notice (not as many chests actually being looted, and people having access to infinite plat so maybe not noticing plat stuff). As for the massive lag thing, the scale of Lamannia didn't create a problem where the scale of all the live servers did, as I understand it.
_________Personally I like how many things broke with U49, because while it's annoying for players, it brought to light a good number of things that now the devs are aware of (some things being connected, like thrower attack speed being connected to bow attack speed, and things like learning what caused lag when the game checks for mail actually just being about how often it checks more than how many it has to process). It's always good when the devs learn something about the game code that they didn't know, because it can potentially prevent other problems in the future and give them ideas on how they can actually try to implement/fix things in the future.

[Artos_Fabril]

TWF nerfed?? I'm pretty sure it's a buff, because afaik it was impossible to hit 50% offhand DS on any TWF except tempest ranger, and now any TWF can do it. lol. It's a nerf for tempest relative to other TWF, but not a nerf to TWF in general. It should buff their damage significantly, on top of buffing them as debuffers relative to other styles because now they are the only style in the game which hits more than once per animation on top of their advantage in being able to use 2x the weapons and thus apply 2x as many debuffs at once if they so desire.

TWF got nerfed because of a 50-60% (3.0-3.6 down to 2) reduction in number of attacks per cycle, in particular number of attempts to apply CC effects reducing survivability. As has been described exhaustively, a linear increase in DPS, especially with spikes and troughs completely independent of the player's control is a net reduction in effectiveness on top of the reduction is survivability.

[FengXian]

I've found my forum experience is far more enjoyable ignoring belligerent new accounts from posters that were banned previously. I don't even read them. I suggest you do the same. They aren't worth your time. U49 looks better and better. Especially now that Feywild has been released in the DDO store opening that up to more grouping opportunities for the gaming population.

You know he's right though, you can keep saying "it looks better and better", won't make it any less of a disaster. Facts and math are against you on this one, blindly supporting SSG isn't doing anyone a favor, including SSG.

[barecm]

I've found my forum experience is far more enjoyable ignoring belligerent new accounts from posters that were banned previously. I don't even read them. I suggest you do the same. They aren't worth your time. U49 looks better and better. Especially now that Feywild has been released in the DDO store opening that up to more grouping opportunities for the gaming population.

My account was created March 2006. I have been playing since launch (since beta actually but never got 'credit' for it). u49 was supposed to be what finally helped bow damage. Instead, it turned out to be another nerf. I am not sure how they can think what they did was helpful. SSG is not responding to our questions. They are not providing any real hard math behind their claims. There have been multiple posts with pages of folks who are not happy. They still will not address the changes made and how they plan to address the numerous build they broke in the process. Saying to yourself that this is looking better and better is not helping anyone.

[Marshal_Lannes]

My account was created March 2006. I have been playing since launch (since beta actually but never got 'credit' for it). u49 was supposed to be what finally helped bow damage. Instead, it turned out to be another nerf. I am not sure how they can think what they did was helpful. SSG is not responding to our questions. They are not providing any real hard math behind their claims. There have been multiple posts with pages of folks who are not happy. They still will not address the changes made and how they plan to address the numerous build they broke in the process. Saying to yourself that this is looking better and better is not helping anyone.

Pages and pages from the same 10 or so people. SSG has already responded to your questions, you didn't like the answers. Suddenly the forum is filled with amateur mathematicians thumping the table yelling "science!" but I haven't seen any real game world data from them. In actual play experience, crits have increased and bow combat is better. How do I know? Because I play the game, have seen the crits working better, and talk to people running archery builds. The almost universal response I'm getting in-game is "I wasn't sure at first but I'm starting to like the changes". I stand by my prediction that, just like U48, the majority of the population will like the changes to U49. Finally, they did not break any builds, they toned down some that were overperforming in R10. That's good game design.

[barecm]

Pages and pages from the same 10 or so people. SSG has already responded to your questions, you didn't like the answers. Suddenly the forum is filled with amateur mathematicians thumping the table yelling "science!" but I haven't seen any real game world data from them. In actual play experience, crits have increased and bow combat is better. How do I know? Because I play the game, have seen the crits working better, and talk to people running archery builds. The almost universal response I'm getting in-game is "I wasn't sure at first but I'm starting to like the changes". I stand by my prediction that, just like U48, the majority of the population will like the changes to U49. Finally, they did not break any builds, they toned down some that were overperforming in R10. That's good game design.

SSG never answered all the questions. They answered 1: No they will not give us a lesser heart to fix characters that were broken. The rest of my question list, which I posted in Lamannia and was reposted in the general section, was left unanswered. And yes, they broke builds. When they took 10k stars and made it not work with bows anymore, that broke a very popular build that had existed for over a decade. They broke proc builds NOT because they were over performing (since that never was said by anyone at SSG), but in the name of fixing lag (which was stated by SSG). Just because you refuse to accept the math behind the complaints, doesn't make it less real and factual. And if they were so concerned with over performing in R10, they would have started somewhere besides bows. Bows over performing anywhere, let alone R10, is laughable.

[TheBenWalker]

I have spent nearly all my time in the game developing and optimizing a pale master, eldrich knight, shuriken thrower build... 96 dex for the certain stacks of hits that allowed glass shards to quickly build to nearly 1k damage per tic, used my stacks of alternate energy damage to gain overall dps... with additional hits gone so is my build. My engame build and tricked out final weapon just became useless with this update. I'll be checking out of the game for a while as there's no point in continuing for me at this stage. I'll perhaps bop back in periodically to see if this nerf has been fixed, but I must agree with the initial assessment. Until and unless some version of quick successive hits is restored to throwers, the luster just departed the game for me.

Please make adjustments devs, I'm a decade plus player that would like to continue on with you guys... please create a fix

[Karthunk]

My account was created March 2006. I have been playing since launch (since beta actually but never got 'credit' for it). u49 was supposed to be what finally helped bow damage. Instead, it turned out to be another nerf. I am not sure how they can think what they did was helpful. SSG is not responding to our questions. They are not providing any real hard math behind their claims. There have been multiple posts with pages of folks who are not happy. They still will not address the changes made and how they plan to address the numerous build they broke in the process. Saying to yourself that this is looking better and better is not helping anyone.

Bows are getting a new tree very soon. The Devs have stated, over and over, that they will be taking a delicate touch with range build power after the Inquisitor. With that being said an archer feels really good now.

With broken builds I assume you mean monks and builds that relied on procs? Procs needed to be brought back down to earth. They were grossly broken, this isn't some secret. We all abused the heck out of no save proc effects.

[myliftkk_v2]

Hate to break it to you, but the lottery is way more popular than math. People are gonna love the big boss numbers. I'll leave you to your hand-wringing over Excel spreadsheets calibrating theoretical DPS.

That the lottery is more popular is exactly because humans, on balance, are bad at math (which means they are also bad at statistics), and are consistently so in ways that are easy to exploit for their feels. This thread is simply one more extended countless example of that.

Just as the signaling device in your sig is similar proof positive of why this exploitation works so consistently that the monetization from exploiting those feels isn't even hard.

This argumentation strategy is no different than the home run feels crowd that infected baseball's failed decision-making for ages until sabermetrics (math) drove them out.

[kanordog]

Bows are getting a new tree very soon.

Is the new tree free? Can a human (f2p) ranger (f2p) can use it at character creation?

[Nim123]

Finally, they did not break any builds, they toned down some that were overperforming in R10. That's good game design.

So my Henshin wasn't broken when they gutted Shadows cannot exist without Light ? Half the healing now at cap, 60ish% in epics and high heroics. Maybe they'll fix it at some point. Or not. Jokes on me though, I was dumb enought to VIP for a year.

[Chai]

No, it's your opinion. Taking the game down was due to the in-game mail system which they could not test off of the live servers, because nobody stockpiles 2,000 pieces of mail on Lammannia.

No QC would have caught that, and if you think it would, then you've never worked QC in your life.

U49 has been great so far. Other than that initial downtime, I have zero complaints.

Ive worked QA (what you are calling QC), and that could have been caught. Its called testing off a copy of a live server. Not much of a better way to mimic a live environment than having a direct copy of one. Warts and all.

Also: Lammannia is not the test server, its the preview server. Players do not have access to actual test servers.