I read these forums a lot and thought I'd try and contribute for once. Hopefully, the friggin' novella below will articulate some of the issues I feel could be remedied. Grab a coffee (or don't - I take caffeine tablets because ain't nobody got time for that.)
(Nightmare) - Enemy Immunities - "Have you tried, like, I don't know, hitting it or something?"
Let me start by saying that enemy resistances have always been part of the equation, and they can add some degree of skill-oriented gameplay. If you're an elementalist using a lightning staff, you might swap targets to have your staff attacks hit an enemy weak to lightning, while using fire and frost spells on enemies weak to those damage types; the speed at which a player is able to switch targets while also navigating the battlefield is part of the challenge.
But having enemies be completely immune to damage types brings forth some serious issues. Suddenly, you're no longer utilizing the build you want to use, because if you don't take certain skills, you won't have a way to deal with [x] enemy type. You might really want to use a certain staff on a character, but it's just not viable because most of your spells are also of that damage type.
One could argue that this is where you depend on your team, but then, there's the issue that nothing in this game is physical-immune, so rogues and warriors don't have to worry about that. Only mages are left having to rely on others to get the job done. At the end of the day, while mages are left frantically swapping targets and altering their builds to account for immunities, Reavers and Silent Sisters are button mashing their way to victory against, well, everything.
Please note that I do not, under any circumstances, think that the solution is to make some enemies physical immune; all that will succeed in doing is make playing melee classes substantially less enjoyable. Rather, I simply propose that full immunities be removed from Nightmare. After the guard buff and barrier nerf, mages were already having a hard time keeping up; enemy immunities simply crippled them further.
(Nightmare) - Enemy Crowd Control - "I don't even... whatever, I'm going to play Witcher 3"
So, this happens a lot:
http://imgur.com/qpPewma
For those who don't want to count, there's 7 despair demons in that picture.
Situations such as the above might lead one to think that "increased difficulty" is synonymous with "you can't move your character." And, well, yeah, being unable to move makes pretty much anything in life harder. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's fun.
Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the above situation to be a walk in the park when solo. But the problem extends past solo gameplay. As someone who spends most of their time doing Quick Match games, I've seen an entire team fall over in under 5 seconds due to knockdowns / ice beams, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
Yes, you *can* beat the above situation under certain circumstances; I completed the game shown in the picture at level 14. But there's two things to keep in mind:
1.) I was playing the strongest class in the game (which is incredibly overpowered and scales better than any other class.)
2.) I have 100% crit chance on the Silent Sister, meaning my cooldowns are *constantly* refreshing; the average player will not have access to this.
I understand that there is a portion of the playerbase with egregious stats, for whom any situation is trivialized. But on the whole, it's important to realize that these individuals are essentially playing a different game at this point. I have fairly high cunning and willpower, but my constitution is a lowly 43; on any class except Silent Sister, the above situation, even with a team, is going to result in a faceplant.
And this is a problem, because there is nothing that can be done about it. You can't outskill it. You can't outmaneuver it. The best you can do is hope you're playing a class with combat roll; that in and of itself is an indication that something is amiss, as having mandatory skills for any difficulty reduces player choice and replay value.
Nightmare could desperately use a reduction in the amount of crowd control going on. It doesn't really matter what faction you're up against right now - you're going to lose control of your character for extended periods of time, and that's just frustrating.
(Nightmare / Perilous) - Enemy Numbers - "Gonna go unlock the doo-... nevermind."
Awhile back, changes were made to the enemy spawn spot radius; the general area in which a player needed to be present in order to prevent enemy spawns was decreased so as to reduce the viability of "spawn blocking". At the end of the day, it didn't change much because it's still possible to do (and regularly requested in Nightmare PUGs.)
What's important to consider here, however, is why people spawn block in the first place. I tracked the number of enemies on stage 3 of a Fereldan Castle Nightmare run the other day: 84. 84 enemies with extremely high hit point values, to say nothing of barriers and guard. Put simply, Nightmare games take a *really* long time when you're not running with high promotion players, but the lengthy nature of the matches is not implemented in a way that is challenging or fun. When you first run into a stage, the large number and variety of enemy types can require a tactical approach. But after you've dealt with them, you subsequently sit around for a couple minutes cleaning up small packs of 3; these packs clearly pose no threat, as you had no problem annihilating their 15 friends that were grouped up before. It ends up being a tedious process, regardless of how many promotions you have.
I propose one of two solutions:
1.) Reduce the number of enemies per stage, especially on Nightmare. This will not only make the combat less tedious, but also bring Nightmare at least a little closer in line with the time-per-match of other difficulties.
2.) Spawn more enemies at once. Virtually everything shouldn't need to be cleared for more baddies to start spawning; if there's less than 10-15 and the players have not reached the kill count for a stage, spawn more.
(Nightmare) - XP Gain - "Why am I doing this again?"
It seems a logical follow-up to reducing enemy count to broach the subject of XP gains. Nightmare XP... really isn't so great. It certainly doesn't seem worth the hassle of trying to clear, given the drastically increased difficulty. The reward for completing Nightmare should be more than just a title and Hakkon weapons. Give us a reason to go back that isn't "because the stupid dragon didn't drop my [item] yet." And on that note...
(Nightmare) - Loot - "Oh. That's why."
As of the time of writing this, I have 95 Fereldan Castle dragon kills. In my inventory, there is one Hakkon weapon.
This is why we can't have nice things.
There are three problems with the current model:
1.) Hakkon weapons only drop from the Fereldan Castle dragon. The dragon is easier than the faction commanders, which doesn't make sense considering the weapons are supposed to be (somewhat) gated by accomplishment. It also means you're stuck doing the same map, over and over. It's hard enough finding a Nightmare PUG; try finding one that isn't on Fereldan Castle.
2.) The drop rates are abysmal. And they get more abysmal once you acquire a weapon or two. And there's no measures in place to ensure you don't end up getting completely screwed by RNG. I believe Piffle once posted s/he had to do over 500 runs to get all 5 weapons. 500 runs on Nightmare difficulty? How much of the playerbase is Nightmare capable, much less capable of investing the time to complete 500 runs? And why is there someone on my friend's list who is fairly casual that received all 5 weapons in 18 games? How, in any world, is that reasonable?
3.) You have no control over what you get. Players delete their Hakkon weapons because the drop rate decreases as you receive Hakkon loot. So if someone really, really just wants the greatsword because two-handed warriors are their favorite class, they might delete the other weapons to improve their chances. There's something fundamentally broken when the notion of deleting top-tier weapons enters the picture.
Ideally, I'd like one of two solutions:
1.) Hakkon weapons are crafted, requiring a crafting material that you receive at the end of completing a Nightmare match on any map. Each weapon requires, say, 30-50 of the material. In this way, you allow players to choose what weapon they get, while also having a goal to work towards that isn't a title with the European spelling of "Traveler". And because any Nightmare map would award a token, you have less of a desire to bash your head into a wall! Yay!
2.) Tie the Hakkon weapons to the Nightmare completion achievements, with a chest at each breakpoint. I'm less fond of this solution because it still deprives players of the option of choosing their weapon of choice. It also awards players a top-tier weapon for completing a single match, so the achievement would most likely need to be altered in some way.
(Skills) Livid - "Uhhhhhhh... wat."
That's really all I have for this. Please put Unbowed back. I've searched the forums, single-player and multiplayer, and can find no references to some great movement incited by the playerbase to remove Unbowed. This was entirely unnecessary.
(Skills) Character Imbalance - "Well yeah, the Hunter's hat is cool and all, but that's about all he's got going for him."
I remember a thread not long ago where TheThirdRace posted asking how to make Katari viable. There were some good tips in that thread. There was also a load of crap about how great Katari is.
The katari, when compared to the Reaver, is not great. The alchemist, when compared to the Silent Sister, is not great. This does not mean these classes cannot succeed; nor does this mean they cannot complete Nightmare. What it does mean, however, is that playing said classes is infinitely more difficult and generally a detriment to the team than if one were to just ride the overpowered bandwagon.
Before the community goes through all the effort of trying to re-design skill trees and suggest improvements, we really need to know: How likely is it that the fundamental tree layouts can/will change? Is this something that, because of how it was initially designed, is not feasible to code for given the limited state of support for the game?
Or should we get to work on making some cool skill tree re-design ideas?
(Crafting) Armor Modifications - "This outfit is so last week."
So, we've got all these different armor choices. And the new armor chests from the "Experienced" challenges were a pretty cool idea.
And like so many others, I'm not using the dragon armors because I don't have good mods to put in them.
The drop rate on good armor modifications make Hakkon weapons look like finding a grey level 12 dagger. I'm not alone when I say that there are many I haven't even seen yet. Given that it's already coded for, it seems a logical next step to implement crafting for armor modifications. It'll grant players substantially more choices in their gear customization while also allowing players to switch their outfits regularly without worrying about stat loss. This game can use variety anywhere it can get it - let's start with something simple.
(Exploits) XP Glitch - "Oh for God's sake, not again..."
Yeah, yeah, I know. Some of you don't want to hear about this anymore. A lot of you probably find it quite irritating.
You know what I find even more irritating, though? The fact that it was implied by the development team there would be repercussions, no action was taken, and the community promptly started ignoring the issue when shiny new toys were released. I'd liken it to a news outlet dangling another story about the Kardashians in order to distract the viewers when a story that was detrimental to their political views surfaced.
And somehow, the community went from being upset about the fact that people were blatantly exploiting, to lambasting anyone who so much as mentioned the topic.
The leaderboard in this game does not revolve around skill. It has never revolved around skill. It is a measure of time invested. You may dislike this, you may disagree with this, but at the end of the day, that is the sole measure of competition in this game and it has never changed. The XP exploit took that one measure and threw it out the window. And the developers' response was a resounding "meh."
I asked Luke once in a PM if anything was being done (this was a few weeks ago.) He mentioned that they were able to track when the exploit was occurring and that repercussions were being discussed. (He also mentioned that he was not a part of those discussions, so please don't jump on a Luke hate-train here.) So, they have the data. They know who did it. And they decided to do nothing.
The community responded when the threat of bans was announced, generally stating that perhaps that was a bit too severe given the already small playerbase. There was also the (apparently legitimate) concern that bans would not be implemented because of their affect on the business. But no discussion was held on this, either. It was just swept under the rug.
I'm going to leave you with an actual scenario. There is an individual on my friend's list who I added a short time before the exploit became well-known. We don't talk much, but she seems like a nice enough person. When we first met, she was sitting about ~200 prestige below me; she had completed a fair number of the challenges, but only had around 60 or so promotions. Four weeks later, she was 50 prestige points above me, with more promotions than I have. She still logs on regularly, and is still past me on the leaderboards.
No, I'm not losing sleep over it (the time invested on writing this entire post is about 1/10th of what I have to spend on work emails on a daily basis.) But it's pretty clear that, even in cases when a relatively casual player suddenly skyrockets in promotions due to exploiting the glitch, nothing has been done.
The point of this section is not to get the Bioware team to take action - I'd venture a guess that ship has already sailed. It's merely to convey a point: If this is the response to exploiting, it cannot be expected that people will not exploit in the future. There's simply no reason to play by the rules if there are no repercussions for not doing so. Issuing a stern, "We might ban people, no, really, we might!" will simply be laughed at and ignored.
CONCLUSION
I don't really have any grand closing thoughts. Thanks for reading and stuff.
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