For the tome, I think the time may be a bit too long. With the hour cool down, I think it is just a short respite from damage more then anything. Of course, the effectiveness of that is dependent upon the class you are fighting.
I want to reply to these two portions separately.
First part: 'A short respite' is kind of an understatement. The closest analogue to this artifact lasts half as long and deal a portion of the blocked damage at end of duration. Numbness definitely ain't on the chopping block, but it might be if it last twice as long and had no downside. This is before the tome is even upgraded. Not trying to be invective here, but I think you underestimate how long 15 to 20 seconds is in a combat scenario, especially in the small team engagements that Imperian has come to favor. Judge it based on how many full 'class combos' you can squeeze in and you're looking at somewhere between 4 and 7. That's a lot of attacks out from you. That's a lot of time completely immune to damage. You might think an hour long cooldown is a restrictive enough penalty, but there's no actual trade off in combat itself. That's still going to win a lot of fights by itself and that isn't OK. Bolded part: I think this is a good reason to at least consider axing the thing. A player converting affs to damage with one big button like Brainmelt, for instance, would view this artifact as a one-sided reset button in the user's favor. Versus a class that just pumps out damage, you are blanking their offense for 15 seconds. I think there's something to be said for the negative gameplay experience of somebody being able to literally ignore your offense with a USD buy-in, as opposed to just being more resilient/dangerous overall with a USD buy-in.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
oooorrrr give everyone an aff route that self-tracks like Outrider. That'd solve the problems raised with both promos. No afftrackers and no damage routes; level the playing field for everyone.
*fireworks*
But actually. I don't know much about Imperian balance, or any profession except druid, and not even that really, but I do feel the need to observe that the atmosphere of team fighting right now is absolutely decimated by a no-downside numbness, especially for that amount of time. Most of magick circle's (idk or c about the other two not gunna lie) professions that are 'good' for lowbies are good because they are able to mash damage, with added affects, until target dies. That's all I can really do too, in fact, even though my aff tracker is functional and good-looking thank you very much.
It's already a pain in the rear to incentivize people outside of the normal pkers to action but there's not even a point to trying if there's a chance that their only contribution will be "+1 target for enemy team". If a person with reasonable PK talent without this tome gets one, there's minimal reason for anyone but other people with reasonable PK talent to go fight them. Especially in a major combat engagement, where you *know* that stuff will be combat ready.
Edit: I'm being facetious, but if we plug in this universal aff-route stuff I'm super down.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I'm not ignoring your concerns here. I'm out of town for the holiday.
For the aquamarine, I wonder if making it area confined would be a idea people could get behind. At least then the person doing the curing is at risk. Perhaps with a room message indicating the character had been cured by unknown power.
If you do this, name the person who's doing the healing and then and only then do I think it might be okay in terms of balance, but I'd still think its kind of lame though, because you don't have a means to get it now, so you're basically giving people who were here and able to sink money into the game during a single month an advantage. Availability is a problem, and its also why I'm less down on the tome, than I am on the earring.
I'd probably be more in favour of axing this earring to begin with, to be honest, so long as those whom do have them presently are compensated for the loss in some way.
oooorrrr give everyone an aff route that self-tracks like Outrider. That'd solve the problems raised with both promos. No afftrackers and no damage routes; level the playing field for everyone.
*fireworks*
But actually. I don't know much about Imperian balance, or any profession except druid, and not even that really, but I do feel the need to observe that the atmosphere of team fighting right now is absolutely decimated by a no-downside numbness, especially for that amount of time. Most of magick circle's (idk or c about the other two not gunna lie) professions that are 'good' for lowbies are good because they are able to mash damage, with added affects, until target dies. That's all I can really do too, in fact, even though my aff tracker is functional and good-looking thank you very much.
It's already a pain in the rear to incentivize people outside of the normal pkers to action but there's not even a point to trying if there's a chance that their only contribution will be "+1 target for enemy team". If a person with reasonable PK talent without this tome gets one, there's minimal reason for anyone but other people with reasonable PK talent to go fight them. Especially in a major combat engagement, where you *know* that stuff will be combat ready.
Edit: I'm being facetious, but if we plug in this universal aff-route stuff I'm super down.
side note, outriders 85% of the time fall into the category of what Sarrius called 'would view this artifact as a one-sided reset button in the user's favor.' outrider is a bad example, because its main method of killing is based on how much damage they do, their animals do, and their afflictions as well. if I'm not doing damage, I'm pretty sure I'm not causing bleeding.(or not enough to matter anyways).
I'm not ignoring your concerns here. I'm out of town for the holiday.
For the aquamarine, I wonder if making it area confined would be a idea people could get behind. At least then the person doing the curing is at risk. Perhaps with a room message indicating the character had been cured by unknown power.
If you do this, name the person who's doing the healing and then and only then do I think it might be okay in terms of balance, but I'd still think its kind of lame though, because you don't have a means to get it now, so you're basically giving people who were here and able to sink money into the game during a single month an advantage. Availability is a problem, and its also why I'm less down on the tome, than I am on the earring.
I'd probably be more in favour of axing this earring to begin with, to be honest, so long as those whom do have them presently are compensated for the loss in some way.
Not sure on the solution for this if the earrings get axed, 10 credit tradein for them wouldn't be fair since I know they sold for far more on promo. It would be a kick in the pants to those players who did buy them on promo for anything more than tradein value.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
I'm not ignoring your concerns here. I'm out of town for the holiday.
For the aquamarine, I wonder if making it area confined would be a idea people could get behind. At least then the person doing the curing is at risk. Perhaps with a room message indicating the character had been cured by unknown power.
If you do this, name the person who's doing the healing and then and only then do I think it might be okay in terms of balance, but I'd still think its kind of lame though, because you don't have a means to get it now, so you're basically giving people who were here and able to sink money into the game during a single month an advantage. Availability is a problem, and its also why I'm less down on the tome, than I am on the earring.
I'd probably be more in favour of axing this earring to begin with, to be honest, so long as those whom do have them presently are compensated for the loss in some way.
Not sure on the solution for this if the earrings get axed, 10 credit tradein for them wouldn't be fair since I know they sold for far more on promo. It would be a kick in the pants to those players who did buy them on promo for anything more than tradein value.
I guess I'll just say it: oh well. Them's the breaks. buyer beware, etc. These days, I'm big on Greater Good; if it might be best for the game for these to get changed, those people can just bite their lip about it when they do. Any artifact you buy in this game is subject to change and that goes double for the historically volatile promo items.
Thankfully for all of you with an aquamarine earring, that probably won't happen because I'm sure Jeremy has had too many headaches over those kinds of situations.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
@Wyll@Sarrius I'm big on the greater good too. To a point, I agree with you Sarrius. And to a point, I do not. It's one thing for something like this to be thought of as a good idea and then realize that the implications are just too grave. It's another thing entirely to release something that literally has the ability to completely change pk globally because of its implications, then sit on it to see how many people buy it up, then sit on it a bit more, then nerf it.
I'm not saying that's happening here; I'm just saying that the quicker they get ahead of it, the better. I'm sure the earrings, if axed like they should be, would put a little something in your pocket. But where I do agree with Sarrius is that there's no accounting for what you spent on it on something like say promo market. If you said, 'Lol I bought these for 100cr on promo,' then that's you spending what you thought they were worth; and that is your responsibility.
If you got them from the wheel, again, I'm sure there will be some small measure of compensation in the event that these things are (and should be,) just taken out entirely, or nerfed down to a significantly lower heal rate to the point where no one will even bother to use them (1% active, 1% linked, 1% stacked!).
With the Bronze Shield though, that should certainly be gotten in front of now-ish. Letting it sit for a few months, intentionally pushing people to need it to be competitive, only to nerf or axe it later is unscrupulous.
EDIT: Unrelated, but @Oystir they in fact do have universal tracking! It's called Aetolia. Not in Imperian, plz. There's a reason we don't play Aetolia.
@Owyn - If that's the case, why didn't anybody say something about the aquamarine earring when it was released? I knew it was going to be a problem upon reading its description for the first time, much like the Bronze Shield book. It needs to be pointed out before it reaches a point where we have to sacrifice overall balance for 'business reasons'.
To everybody clutching pearls over their aquamarine earrings - Much like anything in the world that costs money, it is your duty as the purchaser to inspect the quality of the goods and accept the responsibilities inherent in the purchase. If you buy a cheap car, you can't get mad that it broke down - you knew it was cheap when you bought it. This is kind of the same: you all knew what you were buying when you bought it. That is why it commanded that price and I doubt any of you would disagree. None of you can claim you didn't know it was powerful, and I think it would be willfully ignorant to claim you didn't 'think it was that bad'. Combining that power with exclusivity is a recipe for something that most assuredly is going to get changed down the road (something I find myself remembering I said in 2015 when we released apple bags). This leads in to my second point: as the consumer, it is your responsibility to set a value on your currency, and thus judge the actual value of the price of any goods you purchase. Because of that, take note of how expensive something is when you buy it.. ask yourself how likely it is to break (or in this case, get nerfed.)
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
@Sarrius But I did say something at the time. I said something to @Jeremy Saunders the day the earrings were announced, and I said something again during the Twitch.tv session.
I'm not advocating ridiculous reimbursements for the earrings. I absolutely am advocating getting ahead of both of these things now opposed to later.
I don't think anyone has been using the aquamarine earrings -- at least not to my knowledge. It's a can of worms I intentionally didn't open, and I'd rather keep that can closed.
Yes, the promo market is volatile and it works because it depends on what someone is willing to pay for an item. No doubt about that. But at the time the earrings were sold, they had a value that people deemed worthy of 100+ credits a piece. I sold 2 nearly back to back for 150 each. You can compare the price of just those earrings to say, Amethyst where I sold 2 for maybe 25 credits each.
To nerf it now or get rid of it completely and then just ask players to tradein for the value of 10 credits as their tradein value would be a giant kick in the pants. I have no idea what the solution to this situation is, but I'm just going to say I think it'd be unfair to players who spent unbound credits to acquire these to get screwed over. And I'm saying this as someone who sold the earrings and do not own anymore of that type.
The bronze tome as you guys say ruins balance, but that is an artifact where Jeremy already refunded people's price difference. Earrings were different. People also bought spins at $6.xx - $9 a spin for a chance at those.
But overall, yeah, this stuff should be considered way before releasing these items because now we're in a pickle.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
@Wyll I mean, I have access to 6 of them. I don't think people even realized how OP the aquamarines were til very late in the game because everyone was so focused on things like Diaspore, Topaz. I even overlooked them on the first day because of dat amber earring. But the second day, when I went through and read again I was like, "...No way."
Nonetheless, the people who bought any of the earrings for 100+ cr is... well. Why. You can't hold the admin responsible for someone's decision to drop 100's of credits on promo market. It's just not their responsibility at that point in time.
Kind of like the warhorn that sold for like upwards of 1k credits and then the token stone came out.
No, we can't hold admin responsible for the free market, but we can for releasing promos/artifacts without realizing the consequences only to backtrack and devalue an item when a specific group of players complain, rightly or wrongly. And I give the last statement because I haven't used the aquamarine earrings, so I have no idea about the issues you guys are raising. I'm speaking specifically as someone who buys into promos and go after certain items because I can see the value of them. I want profits.
Do whatever with those specific earrings, but I'm willing to bet some people are going to be upset. I know I'll think a little bit harder now before I buy into promos. I'm not going to pay $6+ a spin(gamble) hoping for a specific item because it was listed as doing x, y, z in the announce post and help file only to have it be changed the next month.
And while we are on the topic of promos and artifacts, I don't think it is too much to ask that these items be thoroughly tested before release. I get you guys have a lot on your plate and Imperian isn't getting a lot of love compared to the other IRE's, but I don't think it is too much to ask that these items are relatively bug free. To release them and then depend on the player base to test them thoroughly is frustrating.
I buy into the promos every month, only for a chunk of the items not to work. Then I have to file a bug report and wait for it to be fixed. Sometimes the items aren't even fixed all the way through. It's getting tiring.
But the biggest issue for me as someone who got shrubbed(temporarly, thank goodness) because of bugs, is that I'm paranoid AF now that any bug I find or discover is going to get me shrubbed right back again. It's not my job as a player to have to keep filing bug reports for items, but I do it because I don't want to get shrubbed or made out to be some guilty party that took advantage of whatever.
Another player and I even spoke about this briefly, you guys got us paranoid. Sometimes I don't even know if something I encounter is a bug or not, but we don't get to use the 'I didn't know it was a bug' excuse and certainly not for someone like me who did have that genuinely happen once.
Also, back to the items in the current sale, does decay time stop when you hide stuff inside the Rashirmir tome? Wyll needs an expensive lunch box.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
I bought several auction items in the past for well above what they were eventually released to general availability for. If you pay that kind of money for something, or anything, that's your problem, not the administrations. Especially with promo items, which are a _notoriously_ fickle market and very insolvent in terms of holding any value.
For the earring. The best solution if they are going to get rid of it is to just replace it with another earring of the players choice. Make it a command, tradein aquamarine for x earring. Done deal. People get to pick a diff earring they think is worth what the aquamarine was worth.
I've got no horse in this race currently, but the shield tome seems /shrug to me personally. Its good, but 15 seconds every hour is pretty tame IMO. I had a look just now and it didn't really jump out at me as something I felt would be something I would bend over backwards to get. That may change based on how easy these page things are to obtain and thereby extend the duration (I've not logged in so haven't read the announce), and whether there is a page cap. That's the only real concern I'd have with it, personally. Numb artefact is just straight up better.
For myself, I'd be more down for the tome that hides you from alertness. Combined with stealth favour that is very, very strong.
Also has anyone tested if it blocks snap, because if it does you're all barking in the wrong forest let alone up the wrong tree: I would log in and buy one right now and I don't even play at the moment.
Tome of the Holy Martyr is straight up fantastic. The only reason that price isn't massively too low is because of the painful cd. I would 100% buy one if I was playing, it just opens so many options.
Widow tome is interesting. Not sure I'm sold on it being that useful, but depends how rapidly they reweb. Thirty seconds not so great for a room locked effect given most conflict systems are more mobile now with the cooldown, but maybe someone will make it work.
Rashamir tome is cool. I don't think it impacts raiding a massive amount, but there are some fun things you could use it for. Also I bet you can troll greensharders with it, which would be the best countertroll ever when you summon your legion. Guaranteed hilarity.
Aquamarine earrings are fairly ridiculous though, that does need looking at.
@Septus -- 15 seconds for any straight-damage class is a very long time. It's not as if the Bronze Shield is similar to a shield tattoo -- the person soaking up damage can use their full offense with no penalty during the time they're taking no damage. They can heal as normal, etc. Imagine yourself with a Bronze Shield. I mean, c'mon. You gonna tell me you wouldn't take 15 seconds of zero damage to your health PERIOD, *while* you could dish out the damage?
Widow is underwhelming. The web time is slow, you can get past them without cutting them certain ways, cutting them only takes a very small amount of bal, etc. I definitely tested this one to see if it would be anything remotely close to a piety for magick.
Rashirmir can be used for hilariously nefarious purposes, one of which you pointed out. But, like you said and I previously said, I don't see it being very useful for raids unless you have no counter radiance and you're not in a good place to dodge it.
EDIT: Actually, the nefarious purpose you mentioned eludes me now that I think about it. If you're greensharded then your tome is back where it was and you can't pick it up. You cannot BECKON it (believe me I tried) when it's been read.
Honestly I don't think the 15s damage immunity thing would bother me at all. If someone drops it against me one v one my reaction will be walk out of the room, count to ten and walk back in. They've got one shot at it and at high tier you execute your kill multiple times anyway, so one more wouldn't bother me overly much. My prediction is most people would mistime it anyway. It'll matter, absolutely. But I don't think it'll be significant in the grand scheme of things. For teams it'll just be one of those things leaders will need to watch out for when focussing down targets, resist the desire to flip their desk and immediately switch.
Though the cooldown needs to be on the person and not the tome, or someone will just buy like five and that would be bad.
I bought several auction items in the past for well above what they were eventually released to general availability for. If you pay that kind of money for something, or anything, that's your problem, not the administrations. Especially with promo items, which are a _notoriously_ fickle market and very insolvent in terms of holding any value.
Auction items are different. Promo items are different. Promos you buy into every month and if it becomes a habit of, 'let's release this before testing fully for balance/bugs/etc and we can deal with it later' then I'm going to be bowing out of buying. We talked about value in another thread, but 100+ credits unbound is $27.50 - $40. At this point, it is neither here nor there because we don't know what will happen yet.. but..
I think @Laeka had a great solution, honestly, if they do go the route of changing it or getting rid of it.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
From a business standpoint, it is bad for business to stop making these promotional items - at least in the short term. My business acumen is probably far less developed than Jeremy's, especially because this is his arena of expertise. However, it is my firm opinion that the policy will make more trouble for Imperian down the line. These promotional items are clearly intended to evoke a sense of urgency through exclusivity, and a sense of chasing the dragon to continue staying competitive. That's a difficult model to resist, and from the PoV of somebody that was playing when these promotions first began, part of that difficulty was in feeling like my combative viability was at risk of being taken hostage every month.
From a balance standpoint, promotional items are the 'death by a thousand cuts' for Imperian's combat. It won't happen on the first cut. It might not happen on the twentieth. However, eventually the game will bleed out due to a combination of factors - promotion fatigue, steady decline in participation, increasing barrier to entry through promotional power creep, et cetera. Because of this, I firmly believe promotional items should be the ones with the most scrutiny put towards the effect they will have on the game long term. You can release whatever powerful PvE artifact you'd like on promo, because there's no player behind the keyboard for "orc8790267", but the same does not fly for PvP items. Continuing to create these items puts us further away from a sterile combat environment, as well as putting more hoops in place to jump through if we were to try and expand our playerbase again.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
I bought several auction items in the past for well above what they were eventually released to general availability for. If you pay that kind of money for something, or anything, that's your problem, not the administrations. Especially with promo items, which are a _notoriously_ fickle market and very insolvent in terms of holding any value.
Auction items are different. Promo items are different. Promos you buy into every month and if it becomes a habit of, 'let's release this before testing fully for balance/bugs/etc and we can deal with it later' then I'm going to be bowing out of buying. We talked about value in another thread, but 100+ credits unbound is $27.50 - $40. At this point, it is neither here nor there because we don't know what will happen yet.. but..
If your only argument for them is "I would stop buying if I stop getting advantages" you need to examine why you are purchasing those items to begin with. Moreover if not receiving those momentary advantages makes you not buy them, I don't think you're making a wise purchasing decision to begin with. Something that retains a low value over time is logically better in the long term than something high value that rapidly becomes essentially meaningless because it was "fixed". You then argue not to "fix" it because you lose value, and I'm sorry, but your enjoyment of the game and right thereto, ends, where mine and everyone elses begins. You don't get to keep value of an unbalanced artifact at the expense of everyone else. That is patently unfair, and puts the microtransactions directly at odds with the design of the game and enjoyment of its players. That is a bad, bad idea.
I will concede that you're right that the auction items are generally different - they are generally the same lineup with a couple switched around every time and maybe a new one to spark interest. Availability is less of a problem in this regard, because it has generally been safe to assume that if you do not win an artifact in one auction you will have a chance in another. On my alt, it took me several auctions to manage to get several of the artifacts she desired, but she had several chances across a large time frame. Ergo, I would not consider them very problematic, whereas I would in turn argue monthly promotions of non-returning items, are.
With promotional items, with some notable exceptions, general availability in any measure is just not the case - they come and go in that month and then they're gone forever and ever. So you buy the powerful artifacts out of that lot, if you know what's good for you, but I would argue this is destructive to the game as a whole. It's a short-term catharsis versus a long term loss of value. You can argue all the emotional appeals you like about how good the catharsis feels and it makes you come back, your right to enjoyment of the game ends where others begins, and there can and will be (and indeed HAS BEEN over stretches) genuine promotion fatigue that causes not insignificant problems for the mud, exactly as @Sarrius describes.
In addition, the limited availability of promotional items means whatever balance effects they do have *are* going to be maginified significantly by the limited availability. It creates social classes in Imperian, where the people who pay in every month have all the time-limited special toys and those whom do not are second-class citizens. You have spoken at length about accessibility and being able to play without significant monetary investment in Imperian before, Wyll, and this is something that acts directly in opposition to that goal.
I would stop buying if the releases aren't thought of thoroughly in terms of:
1. How it impacts the game(balance, etc) 2. Bugs being thoroughly tested
And if number 1 was taken care of each time before a promo gets released, we wouldn't be having this conversation about value and nerfing items. I never once said I would stop buying if I stopped getting advantages, I don't know if you know this.. but I PvP for fun and not competitively, I join arena events and the like to literally spam my bashing alias. These earrings have no impact on me and I also own ZERO aquamarine earrings between all of my characters that own earrings.
I even said as much in all of my posts above, I'm sorry that you didn't read, literally this..
..... if it becomes a habit of, 'let's
release this before testing fully for balance/bugs/etc and we can deal
with it later' then I'm going to be bowing out of buying.
If you had read exactly what I wrote above, it would have saved you the wall of text you just wrote, because I pretty much agree with what you're laying down.
I don't want players to get screwed AFTER an item has been released and they have to backtrack.
example: buying a promo item at 100+ credits only for it to be nerfed and make it worth like 25 credits
If this was dealt with BEFORE the item was released, we're good. There is also the point of promotional fatigue that I was going to touch up on, but you and @Sarrius both already spoke on it, so there it is.
Here is the thing too.. we have several different people chiming in on promotions and their impact on the game. A large portion here is chiming in on the combat aspect of it, but I am chiming in from the perspective of someone who plays the market by buying and selling at the right times. If you want only the perspective of one side, why come to the forums?
I need combat people to buy my promo items I put up on the market. They need me to spend my RL money to buy items to put them on the market. We have a beneficial relationship. As a whole if there was no value for me at all in a promo, I'm not buying. Would you buy into a promo you saw no value in? Don't ask that of me if you won't do the same.
But the CEO of IRE has already said it before that they make money when they have promotions every month. I don't see that stopping anytime soon and why should it? I look forward to promos every month.
The best thing for all players at this point is if they actually considered thoroughly the consequences of items before they release them. And in that consideration, the health of the game long term should be taken into account. I don't think anyone of us here disagrees on that point.
You say, "Oh crap." You say, "My bottle is empty." Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly. Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
Comments
First part: 'A short respite' is kind of an understatement. The closest analogue to this artifact lasts half as long and deal a portion of the blocked damage at end of duration. Numbness definitely ain't on the chopping block, but it might be if it last twice as long and had no downside. This is before the tome is even upgraded. Not trying to be invective here, but I think you underestimate how long 15 to 20 seconds is in a combat scenario, especially in the small team engagements that Imperian has come to favor. Judge it based on how many full 'class combos' you can squeeze in and you're looking at somewhere between 4 and 7. That's a lot of attacks out from you. That's a lot of time completely immune to damage. You might think an hour long cooldown is a restrictive enough penalty, but there's no actual trade off in combat itself. That's still going to win a lot of fights by itself and that isn't OK.
Bolded part: I think this is a good reason to at least consider axing the thing. A player converting affs to damage with one big button like Brainmelt, for instance, would view this artifact as a one-sided reset button in the user's favor. Versus a class that just pumps out damage, you are blanking their offense for 15 seconds. I think there's something to be said for the negative gameplay experience of somebody being able to literally ignore your offense with a USD buy-in, as opposed to just being more resilient/dangerous overall with a USD buy-in.
*fireworks*
But actually. I don't know much about Imperian balance, or any profession except druid, and not even that really, but I do feel the need to observe that the atmosphere of team fighting right now is absolutely decimated by a no-downside numbness, especially for that amount of time. Most of magick circle's (idk or c about the other two not gunna lie) professions that are 'good' for lowbies are good because they are able to mash damage, with added affects, until target dies. That's all I can really do too, in fact, even though my aff tracker is functional and good-looking thank you very much.
It's already a pain in the rear to incentivize people outside of the normal pkers to action but there's not even a point to trying if there's a chance that their only contribution will be "+1 target for enemy team". If a person with reasonable PK talent without this tome gets one, there's minimal reason for anyone but other people with reasonable PK talent to go fight them. Especially in a major combat engagement, where you *know* that stuff will be combat ready.
Edit: I'm being facetious, but if we plug in this universal aff-route stuff I'm super down.
I'd probably be more in favour of axing this earring to begin with, to be honest, so long as those whom do have them presently are compensated for the loss in some way.
Not sure on the solution for this if the earrings get axed, 10 credit tradein for them wouldn't be fair since I know they sold for far more on promo. It would be a kick in the pants to those players who did buy them on promo for anything more than tradein value.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
Thankfully for all of you with an aquamarine earring, that probably won't happen because I'm sure Jeremy has had too many headaches over those kinds of situations.
I'm not saying that's happening here; I'm just saying that the quicker they get ahead of it, the better. I'm sure the earrings, if axed like they should be, would put a little something in your pocket. But where I do agree with Sarrius is that there's no accounting for what you spent on it on something like say promo market. If you said, 'Lol I bought these for 100cr on promo,' then that's you spending what you thought they were worth; and that is your responsibility.
If you got them from the wheel, again, I'm sure there will be some small measure of compensation in the event that these things are (and should be,) just taken out entirely, or nerfed down to a significantly lower heal rate to the point where no one will even bother to use them (1% active, 1% linked, 1% stacked!).
With the Bronze Shield though, that should certainly be gotten in front of now-ish. Letting it sit for a few months, intentionally pushing people to need it to be competitive, only to nerf or axe it later is unscrupulous.
EDIT: Unrelated, but @Oystir they in fact do have universal tracking! It's called Aetolia. Not in Imperian, plz. There's a reason we don't play Aetolia.
To everybody clutching pearls over their aquamarine earrings - Much like anything in the world that costs money, it is your duty as the purchaser to inspect the quality of the goods and accept the responsibilities inherent in the purchase. If you buy a cheap car, you can't get mad that it broke down - you knew it was cheap when you bought it. This is kind of the same: you all knew what you were buying when you bought it. That is why it commanded that price and I doubt any of you would disagree. None of you can claim you didn't know it was powerful, and I think it would be willfully ignorant to claim you didn't 'think it was that bad'. Combining that power with exclusivity is a recipe for something that most assuredly is going to get changed down the road (something I find myself remembering I said in 2015 when we released apple bags). This leads in to my second point: as the consumer, it is your responsibility to set a value on your currency, and thus judge the actual value of the price of any goods you purchase. Because of that, take note of how expensive something is when you buy it.. ask yourself how likely it is to break (or in this case, get nerfed.)
I'm not advocating ridiculous reimbursements for the earrings. I absolutely am advocating getting ahead of both of these things now opposed to later.
I don't think anyone has been using the aquamarine earrings -- at least not to my knowledge. It's a can of worms I intentionally didn't open, and I'd rather keep that can closed.
To nerf it now or get rid of it completely and then just ask players to tradein for the value of 10 credits as their tradein value would be a giant kick in the pants. I have no idea what the solution to this situation is, but I'm just going to say I think it'd be unfair to players who spent unbound credits to acquire these to get screwed over. And I'm saying this as someone who sold the earrings and do not own anymore of that type.
The bronze tome as you guys say ruins balance, but that is an artifact where Jeremy already refunded people's price difference. Earrings were different. People also bought spins at $6.xx - $9 a spin for a chance at those.
But overall, yeah, this stuff should be considered way before releasing these items because now we're in a pickle.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
Nonetheless, the people who bought any of the earrings for 100+ cr is... well. Why. You can't hold the admin responsible for someone's decision to drop 100's of credits on promo market. It's just not their responsibility at that point in time.
Kind of like the warhorn that sold for like upwards of 1k credits and then the token stone came out.
Do whatever with those specific earrings, but I'm willing to bet some people are going to be upset. I know I'll think a little bit harder now before I buy into promos. I'm not going to pay $6+ a spin(gamble) hoping for a specific item because it was listed as doing x, y, z in the announce post and help file only to have it be changed the next month.
And while we are on the topic of promos and artifacts, I don't think it is too much to ask that these items be thoroughly tested before release. I get you guys have a lot on your plate and Imperian isn't getting a lot of love compared to the other IRE's, but I don't think it is too much to ask that these items are relatively bug free. To release them and then depend on the player base to test them thoroughly is frustrating.
I buy into the promos every month, only for a chunk of the items not to work. Then I have to file a bug report and wait for it to be fixed. Sometimes the items aren't even fixed all the way through. It's getting tiring.
But the biggest issue for me as someone who got shrubbed(temporarly, thank goodness) because of bugs, is that I'm paranoid AF now that any bug I find or discover is going to get me shrubbed right back again. It's not my job as a player to have to keep filing bug reports for items, but I do it because I don't want to get shrubbed or made out to be some guilty party that took advantage of whatever.
Another player and I even spoke about this briefly, you guys got us paranoid. Sometimes I don't even know if something I encounter is a bug or not, but we don't get to use the 'I didn't know it was a bug' excuse and certainly not for someone like me who did have that genuinely happen once.
Also, back to the items in the current sale, does decay time stop when you hide stuff inside the Rashirmir tome? Wyll needs an expensive lunch box.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
I've got no horse in this race currently, but the shield tome seems /shrug to me personally. Its good, but 15 seconds every hour is pretty tame IMO. I had a look just now and it didn't really jump out at me as something I felt would be something I would bend over backwards to get. That may change based on how easy these page things are to obtain and thereby extend the duration (I've not logged in so haven't read the announce), and whether there is a page cap. That's the only real concern I'd have with it, personally. Numb artefact is just straight up better.
For myself, I'd be more down for the tome that hides you from alertness. Combined with stealth favour that is very, very strong.
Also has anyone tested if it blocks snap, because if it does you're all barking in the wrong forest let alone up the wrong tree: I would log in and buy one right now and I don't even play at the moment.
Tome of the Holy Martyr is straight up fantastic. The only reason that price isn't massively too low is because of the painful cd. I would 100% buy one if I was playing, it just opens so many options.
Widow tome is interesting. Not sure I'm sold on it being that useful, but depends how rapidly they reweb. Thirty seconds not so great for a room locked effect given most conflict systems are more mobile now with the cooldown, but maybe someone will make it work.
Rashamir tome is cool. I don't think it impacts raiding a massive amount, but there are some fun things you could use it for. Also I bet you can troll greensharders with it, which would be the best countertroll ever when you summon your legion. Guaranteed hilarity.
Aquamarine earrings are fairly ridiculous though, that does need looking at.
Widow is underwhelming. The web time is slow, you can get past them without cutting them certain ways, cutting them only takes a very small amount of bal, etc. I definitely tested this one to see if it would be anything remotely close to a piety for magick.
Rashirmir can be used for hilariously nefarious purposes, one of which you pointed out. But, like you said and I previously said, I don't see it being very useful for raids unless you have no counter radiance and you're not in a good place to dodge it.
EDIT: Actually, the nefarious purpose you mentioned eludes me now that I think about it. If you're greensharded then your tome is back where it was and you can't pick it up. You cannot BECKON it (believe me I tried) when it's been read.
Honestly I don't think the 15s damage immunity thing would bother me at all. If someone drops it against me one v one my reaction will be walk out of the room, count to ten and walk back in. They've got one shot at it and at high tier you execute your kill multiple times anyway, so one more wouldn't bother me overly much. My prediction is most people would mistime it anyway. It'll matter, absolutely. But I don't think it'll be significant in the grand scheme of things. For teams it'll just be one of those things leaders will need to watch out for when focussing down targets, resist the desire to flip their desk and immediately switch.
Though the cooldown needs to be on the person and not the tome, or someone will just buy like five and that would be bad.
I think @Laeka had a great solution, honestly, if they do go the route of changing it or getting rid of it.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
From a balance standpoint, promotional items are the 'death by a thousand cuts' for Imperian's combat. It won't happen on the first cut. It might not happen on the twentieth. However, eventually the game will bleed out due to a combination of factors - promotion fatigue, steady decline in participation, increasing barrier to entry through promotional power creep, et cetera. Because of this, I firmly believe promotional items should be the ones with the most scrutiny put towards the effect they will have on the game long term. You can release whatever powerful PvE artifact you'd like on promo, because there's no player behind the keyboard for "orc8790267", but the same does not fly for PvP items. Continuing to create these items puts us further away from a sterile combat environment, as well as putting more hoops in place to jump through if we were to try and expand our playerbase again.
I will concede that you're right that the auction items are generally different - they are generally the same lineup with a couple switched around every time and maybe a new one to spark interest. Availability is less of a problem in this regard, because it has generally been safe to assume that if you do not win an artifact in one auction you will have a chance in another. On my alt, it took me several auctions to manage to get several of the artifacts she desired, but she had several chances across a large time frame. Ergo, I would not consider them very problematic, whereas I would in turn argue monthly promotions of non-returning items, are.
With promotional items, with some notable exceptions, general availability in any measure is just not the case - they come and go in that month and then they're gone forever and ever. So you buy the powerful artifacts out of that lot, if you know what's good for you, but I would argue this is destructive to the game as a whole. It's a short-term catharsis versus a long term loss of value. You can argue all the emotional appeals you like about how good the catharsis feels and it makes you come back, your right to enjoyment of the game ends where others begins, and there can and will be (and indeed HAS BEEN over stretches) genuine promotion fatigue that causes not insignificant problems for the mud, exactly as @Sarrius describes.
In addition, the limited availability of promotional items means whatever balance effects they do have *are* going to be maginified significantly by the limited availability. It creates social classes in Imperian, where the people who pay in every month have all the time-limited special toys and those whom do not are second-class citizens. You have spoken at length about accessibility and being able to play without significant monetary investment in Imperian before, Wyll, and this is something that acts directly in opposition to that goal.
I would stop buying if the releases aren't thought of thoroughly in terms of:
1. How it impacts the game(balance, etc)
2. Bugs being thoroughly tested
And if number 1 was taken care of each time before a promo gets released, we wouldn't be having this conversation about value and nerfing items. I never once said I would stop buying if I stopped getting advantages, I don't know if you know this.. but I PvP for fun and not competitively, I join arena events and the like to literally spam my bashing alias. These earrings have no impact on me and I also own ZERO aquamarine earrings between all of my characters that own earrings.
I even said as much in all of my posts above, I'm sorry that you didn't read, literally this..
..... if it becomes a habit of, 'let's release this before testing fully for balance/bugs/etc and we can deal with it later' then I'm going to be bowing out of buying.
If you had read exactly what I wrote above, it would have saved you the wall of text you just wrote, because I pretty much agree with what you're laying down.
I don't want players to get screwed AFTER an item has been released and they have to backtrack.
example: buying a promo item at 100+ credits only for it to be nerfed and make it worth like 25 credits
If this was dealt with BEFORE the item was released, we're good. There is also the point of promotional fatigue that I was going to touch up on, but you and @Sarrius both already spoke on it, so there it is.
Here is the thing too.. we have several different people chiming in on promotions and their impact on the game. A large portion here is chiming in on the combat aspect of it, but I am chiming in from the perspective of someone who plays the market by buying and selling at the right times. If you want only the perspective of one side, why come to the forums?
I need combat people to buy my promo items I put up on the market. They need me to spend my RL money to buy items to put them on the market. We have a beneficial relationship. As a whole if there was no value for me at all in a promo, I'm not buying. Would you buy into a promo you saw no value in? Don't ask that of me if you won't do the same.
But the CEO of IRE has already said it before that they make money when they have promotions every month. I don't see that stopping anytime soon and why should it? I look forward to promos every month.
The best thing for all players at this point is if they actually considered thoroughly the consequences of items before they release them. And in that consideration, the health of the game long term should be taken into account. I don't think anyone of us here disagrees on that point.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.