Median 2017 - the road so far (feedback)

Firstly I would like to note that whatever you may read, I like this mod and have played it since the early median 2k days so that you look on my feedback in a positive rather than a negative way of someone who just started the game.

To me it seems that a growing tendency has been forming that with every new patch the game gets harder (not in a good way) and a lot of old character builds get broken without enough new builds being introduced to compensate for them. I'll illustrate this with a few examples from my own personal experiences and try to give solutions to the problems.

1) With the defense and life reduction it seems that some changes haven't been proportional enough. If I try to run Kingdom of Shadow with a paladin with the same gear now and a few patches back, now I almost always die during the bridge part, whereas in previous patches I was able to stay always with at least 30% health and be able to finish the uber. This could be a combination of life reduction and/or damage increase in the zombies and/or attack rating increase and/or defense decrease in items. (possible resolution is to decrease attack rating of zombies so that if you have high def it actually matters and you don't feel like you have 0 def - no I'm not running, I always walk there

)

2) Even though the damage reduction by a factor of 8 should keep things the same, if I try terror fauz in the current patch, it seems like I'm doing destruction fauz in previous patches with the same gear for a bowazon. It doesn't seem right to have almost full gear and have difficulty completing the BRC, not to think about farming great runes.

3) Survivability for glass cannons in some ubers is non-existent - due to the way the teleport pads got bigger in duncraig and the fact that more monsters are present, currently you can't possibly do it with a character that has damage but can't take a hit, because monsters swarm you after you teleport, you can't use any of your timered skills, wall piercing skills have been removed and even with summons you die in a blink of an eye. I would suggest to reduce the monster density on teleport pads or remove them altogether there because even if you can kill the monsters, if it requires a blink and possible swarm of them, it limits the viable builds for such ubers.

4) Uberquest difficulty in general for some instances has been pretty ramped up (new Baal anyone?) and I wonder if you have played them enough with each class to see if there exists a viable strategy for each one to defeat them. Currently it doesn't seem like a balance act, but rather - lets see how to challenge the elite players and let the new or average players be frustrated that they can't get past some content.

5) Charms or other items that don't have a 100% chance drop rate. Since we all know how RNG can be good and bad for you (most of the times bad) I would like to suggest the introduction of tokens which have a 100% chance drop rate and if you combine enough of them, you get the charm / item which has a corresponding lower drop chance in current patch (4 Jitan tokens for Moon of the Spider, 9 Khalimgrad tokens for the Zakarum Ear, whatever other ubers that don't have a 100% chance charm drop rate)

6) I know that you want to find ways for (uber) bosses to be difficult, and with the removal of heroic shields I wonder if avoid on bosses has been removed as well, because I have a feeling that some of them still have it and that brings a non-linear difficulty to them, because depending on the RNG they can avoid as much as they'd like and take players hours to complete, or make them impossible to kill altogether.

7) I know that this isn't something new, because it has been in the mod for some time - the Khalimgrad Lantern Archons - I have an open question to you all and would like an honest answer - how many of you can kill more than the 2 entrance angel avatars when trying to farm for ears? For me personally their addition has made the uber difficulty from easy to something like Kingdom of Shadow because of the need for non-stop running. You have to have both high mobility (to avoid the Lanterns), high defense (to not be hit), high life (to survive in case of a hit) and high damage output (to be able to kill the avatars quickly) to be able to clear the entire level. At certain points like when killing an avatar or some corners you have to stay still or circle back and by that time 20+ Lanterns are following you - one misstep and they catch up to you and you're dead. If the difficulty curve stays the same I would like the drop rate for the charm in this uber to be increased if suggestion 5) doesn't make the cut.

8) The new maps and their size has already been mentioned in several posts in the feedback thread and I've added a suggestion for it as well - http://forum.median-xl.com/viewtopic.php?p=141163&sid=c40055b8a7d88d8ec1bdab63852ade61#p141163

9) On top of that I would like to know your thoughts on server resources and which is better for them - for a player to stay in 1 game for a long time because he/she can farm things multiple times and there are many points of interest or to have them rapidly generate new games because of no farming potential or bad rolls.

What I would possibly like is to have some reverts or see if the creators and community can come up with better ideas for these problems. I'm sure that other players have seen these and possibly more things that could potentially ruin their experience in the game. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the game to be dumbed down, but I want the challenges to be smart ones rather than "Oh I have to level another class because my class can't possibly do this, or even if I can, I don't have the stash space available to switch between all the different builds I need for ubers". To add to that point, if we just look at some of the major ubers requiring gear checks - Quov Tsin, Kingdom of Shadow and Yshari Sanctum - you already don't have enough place in the stash to keep all the different gear sets.

I don't want to sound harsh but if things continue to go like this, by the time we get to Sigma with the lock-in functionality for ubers where if we die we have to restart the whole uber (which is something that would break 90+% of current builds IMO for moderate+ ubers) we would have a game with much content but only 1-2 viable builds that can defeat it, low replay value and a large player base which would quickly quit the game due to frustration or lack of interest.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Well, one could go by each point in your post and give some counter arguments. But it will only create another TL;DR post which no one will read. So in short. There are many mods, some easy, some hard. This one is hard. Adapt, improvise and overcome. Also this is hack and slash - expect to walk long maps and kill a lot of stuff.

p.s.: patch came out only few days a go. Give it some time, new meta will settle down and new ways of making things happen will be discovered.

1) There is no player life reduction, zombies in KoS have not been buffed - you are just remembering wrong how hard/easy it was previously or had better gear.

2) Terror Fauzt has been nerfed significantly since ultimative - monsters deal less damage and there are less monsters. Again this was always hard for bowzons, are you sure you aren't remembering it wrong?

3) Not all ubers are equal, you can't expect a glass cannon to have the same survivability as everyone else in every zone.

4) The final boss on destruction and ultimate prime evil was previously a glorified elite mob. No one is forcing people to attempt him as soon as you first get there - the main reason I see for most of the struggling. Difficulty has been ramped up in a few cases, yes. And for many others it has been ramped down/made more fair to give more builds a chance (Xazax, Astro, Kabraxis, Void and many others)

6) Most uber bosses do not have avoid, and given how many hits most of Median's skills deliver you are overestimating its impact.

7) Makes sense, will consider it for the future. The goal here is to get people to clear the level rather than farm the first avatar and the difficulty might be too hard to make it worth it. Also avatar charm drop chance will probably be adjusted so that the closer they are to the entrance, the less chance they have to drop the charm.

You seem to have the wrong idea about the difficulty in this game. Every class can complete all ubers, but obviously, not every build can. And as far as stash space is concerned you can always mule items to lvl1 characters.

I can probably agree with both of you on some points and disagree on others but since we have different concepts of the game, we probably won't come to an understanding without creating a TL;DR thread. Muling for me is something that breaks the immersion of the game. I wanted to provide feedback so that the game could get better, but it is up to you to take it or think that it is a form of whining.

1) This is mostly from the defense reduction on the runewords and items IMO, because I remember using Nih and other runewords that give % vita and high defense, so practically I've used the same gear for it since the beginning of the mod

2) For me the monster density seems to be the same as when I used to attempt it (could be before Ultimative if it increased the density or difficulty) and I was using the same gear spec, charms and skills - IIRC some skills used to have higher % weapon damage modifiers from now, so that could be it, so that if you can't kill the monsters fast enough, they have a higher chance to come to you and kill you quickly.

3, 4 and 6 are probably linked in some manner, but the fact that a build is a glass cannon should mean that it can take down stuff more easily than other builds - currently I have a feeling that non glass cannon builds have both a higher survivability rate (which should be obvious) but I higher kill rate as well due to the mechanics of some items and skills.

As I don't have as much time to play the game now as I used to do before I wanted to see if it could be made more friendly for casual players and provide a clear sense of progression, but it seems that hardcore grinding is something that you want to keep in the core of the game.

TBH I wanted to see if some of my feedback could be used to make the game better for future players (because I don't see many new things in terms of ubers added to it and have grown kind of tired from it), but it seems that they will be the ones who decide what to do and they probably won't have the knowledge of previous versions so that they can make such comparisons. Best of luck to the team and I hope that you attract even more players when you get to the point of releasing Sigma

4) The new Baal is tough and annoying, but I like that. New challenge!
7) I can farm Khalimgrad easily with my Claw Sin and Melee Sorc, kill all stuff, no problems here. I might test other builds later.

We might all know every char is able to complete all ubers, but there is a big difference in how easy it is to achieve. Some ubers require dedicated gears, some require specific skill plans/strategies to complete.

Ok, let that TL;DR continue.

5) bad idea for 9/9 = charm. RNG is random which is one of the best things in hack and slash. More bodies - better chance. With your idea one can suggest that 10 duncraig runs should = secret nagi. Or something like that.

7) that charm give 10% to all attributes. Very good reward. So the challenge is suppose to be hard. At the moment it's not very hard but rather annoying. All you need to do is teleport on top of totem and spam some aoe skill that damages totem and anything around. Also drink a potion everytime you are touched by punisher spike ball. Even tantrum barb is fine there.

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