quinch1199
Dwarven Lord Under The Mountain
The patch to end all patches landed just over a week ago now and we’ve all had a good chance to digest most of what’s changed and what hasn’t. Whilst lots have changed, key things remain the same so the vital question is… have they done enough to not only retain existing players but encourage players back?
I won’t be going into all the changes made but discussing how the game plays now and firstly I can say it “feels” like a complete different game. Being top gear score I immediately logged into World Tier 4 and ventured out… it is so refreshing to meet mobs of level 33 as a normal thing!! Wandering the streets handing out candy to people now gives you XP towards one of the many types of Cache’s you can now get through achievements. In a similar way to Underground you level up, you get a Cache, complete a task, you get a Cache etc.
These are good features in Underground and good features now in the Open World.
What this patch has done best, is breathe new life into solo play, playing with just one or two friends and open gameplay in the Open World. There have been a few additional locations added into the dungeon generator for Underground and the other major spike of interest is that genuine scaling for group size has been added.
That said, if you get a team of four and most of them are incompetent ….
Ai has been improved I’m told, but honestly I’ve not noted much different myself but that might be because I’ve always played cautiously anyway.
What I am noticing is the changes to aggro generation. This is far closer to a normal MMORPG now where you can take more predictable and active role in crowd controlling the mobs you face. For someone like myself more used to this and applying crowd control to mob encounters this makes life SO MUCH BETTER. Whilst the mobs still pose a threat to me I feel far happier engaging a group of enemies if I’m prepared for it now. Add to this the reduction in Time-to-kill has allowed me to gain so much more out of solo play than before where often a high level HVT for example would take ABSOLUTELY AGES to grind through ultimately meaning I had less time for other activities in the game.
In the its entirety patch 1.4 has given us a lighter, faster, far better balanced game in so many aspects. No, it hasn’t actually ADDED anything different, but its changed so much that felt slow, sluggish…perhaps even thuggish about the game. As a game it feels polished finally … even though there are new bugs … this is the game that should have released or at least released as part of the UG update.
Perhaps this is the point where the game can be built on, but perhaps also…it’s too late. With two major updates left to hit, newer games released (Battlefield 1), and others over the horizon (Wildlands) this may just be the patch…the game… we wanted but unfortunately several months after we wanted it.
We still have a static environment in the game and that lack of evolution may just be the final blow. I can’t see many retaining interest in a static game where nothing changes except the quest to find more loot. Loot alone does not make a game! Whilst we now have a genuinely balanced and exciting gaming experience that’s enjoyable to be in, we now may well cry even more that the world around us seems to be firmly stuck in a time loop.
This game remains beautiful. It still has things to find. It is now also eminently playable but I’m not sure how RE-playable it is now when you reach a certain level.
I won’t be going into all the changes made but discussing how the game plays now and firstly I can say it “feels” like a complete different game. Being top gear score I immediately logged into World Tier 4 and ventured out… it is so refreshing to meet mobs of level 33 as a normal thing!! Wandering the streets handing out candy to people now gives you XP towards one of the many types of Cache’s you can now get through achievements. In a similar way to Underground you level up, you get a Cache, complete a task, you get a Cache etc.
These are good features in Underground and good features now in the Open World.
What this patch has done best, is breathe new life into solo play, playing with just one or two friends and open gameplay in the Open World. There have been a few additional locations added into the dungeon generator for Underground and the other major spike of interest is that genuine scaling for group size has been added.
That said, if you get a team of four and most of them are incompetent ….
Ai has been improved I’m told, but honestly I’ve not noted much different myself but that might be because I’ve always played cautiously anyway.
What I am noticing is the changes to aggro generation. This is far closer to a normal MMORPG now where you can take more predictable and active role in crowd controlling the mobs you face. For someone like myself more used to this and applying crowd control to mob encounters this makes life SO MUCH BETTER. Whilst the mobs still pose a threat to me I feel far happier engaging a group of enemies if I’m prepared for it now. Add to this the reduction in Time-to-kill has allowed me to gain so much more out of solo play than before where often a high level HVT for example would take ABSOLUTELY AGES to grind through ultimately meaning I had less time for other activities in the game.
In the its entirety patch 1.4 has given us a lighter, faster, far better balanced game in so many aspects. No, it hasn’t actually ADDED anything different, but its changed so much that felt slow, sluggish…perhaps even thuggish about the game. As a game it feels polished finally … even though there are new bugs … this is the game that should have released or at least released as part of the UG update.
Perhaps this is the point where the game can be built on, but perhaps also…it’s too late. With two major updates left to hit, newer games released (Battlefield 1), and others over the horizon (Wildlands) this may just be the patch…the game… we wanted but unfortunately several months after we wanted it.
We still have a static environment in the game and that lack of evolution may just be the final blow. I can’t see many retaining interest in a static game where nothing changes except the quest to find more loot. Loot alone does not make a game! Whilst we now have a genuinely balanced and exciting gaming experience that’s enjoyable to be in, we now may well cry even more that the world around us seems to be firmly stuck in a time loop.
This game remains beautiful. It still has things to find. It is now also eminently playable but I’m not sure how RE-playable it is now when you reach a certain level.
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