Tasidon wrote:Many years ago there was levels to median that kind of made sense to me as players abilities aren't all the same. There were "boosters" helping noob characters level, rushing them while simultaneously farming. There were "farmers" grinding items that you could trade for for the crazy build ideas you had. There were "Charmers" farming those pesky charms that you didn't want to deal with, either because your character wasn't great for it or you just didn't have the knowledge or care to learn the fight. Then there were your average players, making 3-4 characters every season trying "new builds" which were likely o-skill builds, off-meta builds, or the very fun rainbow ctc skill builds. Back when you could lag the entire game out just by doing cows. I get it, this was far from a polished game but man was it fun. I used to look forward to the new weird builds people would come up with that was very useless for certain things, but very fun and dazzling for farming. Which is what the majority of the player base was doing. Farming those key items that everyone wanted, in hopes they would hit the jackpot.
[...]
I feel like what many of the people who played years ago knew as median is gone. In my opinion, the development has gone more towards the very skilled player base rather than the average player base. This mod has gone from one of the biggest multi skill layered community D2 mods to an online single player game. It's practically worse to play in a team than in a party.
I agree with a lot of this. I used to be both a charmer and a farmer. Because I lacked the skill and the time to get really into end game content. I spent my time collecting "not that great" gear, farming bosses for perfect charms, trophy fragments and selling them off to other players so I could improve my equipment with SSU/SSSU. This was a lot of fun but it's no longer possible. The game now caters to "sweaty" elite players who know the latest ways to break the game. It's suffering the same issue that World of Warcraft has. It leaves the fun at the door and nerfs or boosts whatever makes the aim of endgame elite play better/more fun while leaving the rest in the dust.
Meanwhile many actual real Median players who you find playing the game online don't even know about angelics, they don't know the Halloween event and how it drops ridiculous scrolls to boost your characters, they think having a full set is end game. And these guys simply never make the cut. At some point they hit the end game wall hard and it's not at nito, it's often around Fauzt, definitely in Labs. So what are they left with? Run Dunc for a billion times to hope for a SSU/SSSU which s is far inferior to angelics anyway. They are either foced to adapt to the way you have to play current median or they will just fizzle out as they get no progress from tenacity or creativity. They only get progress if they adapt to the latest sweaty strat or broken near-exploit to play the game. This is just not fun. It's not fun to me to have to have my own build be near unplayable because it's not the current meta build and needs to get pulled through labs by a 150 assassin melting everything in its way to merely get a few levels in because the alternative is spending 5x as much time in a lower area where I can actually survive without being amped up every millisecond of playing. There is simply no reward path for players who don't want/can't adapt to "the way you're meant to play". And it's why many people quit. I made new friends with casual players who play for the first time or return after many years all the time but this is always why they quit. And no, not a single one of these guys became an elite player, they all just fizzled out.
I am not against elite content that the average player will never see, but at least keep normal game play fun for the rest of us. I play this for the fun with friends, if I wanted to play offline I would play offline.
Edit: Some suggestions since just complaining isn't helping anyone:- Consider increasing the level cap to 200 and making the climb to ~140 easier. This would further give the elite players incentives for end game and maybe allow less skilled players to catch up in strength "organically" if you put a very hard exp curve at level 140+ or 150+. The idea would be that level 200 is basically impossible to achieve, but opening it up would make the climb to ~140 more easy for everyone else so they can play semi-endgame content. This would likely require disabling skill point gain from levels above 150 to keep things balanced.
- Bring back trophy fragments so less skilled or more casual players have something to bargain/trade with and spend their time on without being super skilled. I am aware AC's can be used to trade but having some variety would be nice. Especially since trophy fragments don't necessarily need to be traded but can also directly reward the player with a power boost.
- Consider making new content for "everyone". Global drops are a great way to realize this. Think the emblems of old that allowed to create certain weapons. Or whispers of the damned. I'm sure things other than global drops can also be used to get something like this. Also considering buffing the "emblems" since their weapons are pretty much useless at this point.
- Consider changing exp gain in multi player games back to what it was. It's a real tragedy when you're playing with friends, struggling to survive/kill while you know you could open a single player game and breeze through these mobs while getting the same exp.
- Buff SU/SSU/SSSU so they become viable again. Right now they're hard to get for the players who could actually use them but labs players who have no use for them drop them like candy. "Sacred" uniques should have an use other than signet fodder. They used to be prized possessions that people traded for, now hardly worth taking up your inventory slots except for some rare exceptions or if you're too lazy to grind out an angelic.
Anyway lets stay on topic.