Beghard wrote:

Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:

Davngr1 wrote:

this is not about deserving or not this is about devs removing one of the progression paths.

     yes an RA is needed for lower tier spells that did not up grade and are almost impossible to find but giving away current tier masters that can be adventured/traded/purchased is short sighted and will just take away from the fun. 

    once every wizard has ice bolt master what will be the point?   so many people here so willing to throw away a fun aspect of the game for the instant gratification of reciving a soon to become humdrum master spell.

Thats the point of the posts I have made on this topic as have others.

The current mechanic is broken. There is no progression to spells. Spell progression is absolutely nothing but luck, period. Being on the Bazaar we see powerleveled toons for sale all the time that have all App I spells except the current tier they were outfitted with for sale.

Imagine what would happen if you actually had to know Tier 1 spells and progress from App 1-2-3-4 to Adept 1-2-3 to Master I before you could learn Tier 2? Alts would disappear over night for starters. Too much time needed to level one toon correctly much less 7-30 of them.

So what happens, they cant re-write the game mechanics around actual progression so the research assistant is a fix to the current mechanic. And personally I dont find RNG mechanics fun for depending on my spell upgrades.

Spending hours running instances and not getting anything useul is not fun. I end up at the end of the evening feeling as though I wasted a lot of time and have no progression of my toon to show for it.

How about putting the progression of the toon in the hands of the player. Remove the RNG dependancy for spell upgrades and give us questing, skills usage and such to progress our toon.

Is what it is peeps...

No offence but who really cares? You dont need to have all of your spells mastered any way so it doesnt really make a differance. Its not nearly as hard to get masters as anyone makes it out to be. If for some reason it really is that hard for you then ied be willing to bet you dont need them anyway. This entire thing is just that simple.

 

The moron devs have given no excuse as to why this is being put in game. If ppl were actually having a hard time progressing in the game because of masters and they wanted to speed people up they would have said so. So no, this is not a good idea.

 

There has still not been ONE single good reason proposed by any player as to why this is a good idea. And once again, I WANT I WANT I WANT GIMME GIMME GIMME is not a good reason for any thing. Excep maybe a slap on the ahss and a time out in the corner for acting like a stupid rude child in public.

"Not nearly that hard" is very dependant on the class you play I find. It is very easy to master my Fury for example and extremely difficult to master my conj. The disparity exist.

Very hypothetical but a few possibile reasons for your to consider within and beyond game-play:

• It might have to do with the inability to fix current drops rates or make smart loot smarter without a tremendous amount of development time if at all.
• Perhaps it even has to do with the game mechanic statistics they keep on the total game population of toons between level X and Y that are eligible to play certain content that are not playing that content OR are showing high fail rates for that content.
• Perhaps it is a larger undelying discussion which has been bubbling since last November that a large number of players felt deceived by SOE and their marketing of the TSO expansion which was perceived as very very misleading and border line deceptive trade practice.
• Perhaps it is the players that are more on the side of not purchasing a new expansion for the first time ever because they havent even been able to do the content in the last expansion and dont see that happening anytime in the near future so they have no reason to buy more.
• Perhaps SOE is looking at a dwindling subscriber base which is the cause for a server merge this year
• Perhaps they realize the RNG mechanics do not equate to skill and simply are not fun
• Perhaps they are tired of pandering to the raid crowd which has isolated a very large portion of the paying subscriber base of SOE. Perhaps SOE realizes WoW has 11M casual players...there might be something to listening to those people after all when it comes to the fun factor and simple game mechanics of enjoying the game.

At the end of the day, I too wish the RA had some mechanics of interaction but I dont think its a bad idea just an odd implementation.

The one thing no one in the endless whining has really given much consideration is the fact the dev team is very adamant about putting it in with its current mechanics in place. To that end I would surmise, and admittedly a risky move, assume they have a good reason for feeling this is the best thing to do.

I find it very difficult to get as upset about this new tool though as some people are getting. This is not the sole avenue for getting master spells. For those wanting more challenge, simply do not use the NPC. I would wager that if SOE checks their databases within 6 months of this NPC going live they will find every naysayer on this thread has used it, regardless of their stances taken here.

If you really want to make a point, make a commitment to not use the amenity and come back 6-9 months from now and let us know how much better your gaming experience has been after the new expansion.

And no, I dont have all my T8 masters yet. I have however accomplished the completion of every quest in Rok with the exception of about 10 I am still working on (a handful in Chardok, Seb, VP, and Trakanon), raided all of Rok (PR, VS, Levi, Thuuga, Pawbuster, VP (with the exception of a few named) most of TSO and with the exception of a couple of Guk instances have completed the others and raid ToMC, KorSha, POTAO, WoE.

I do find your statement to be without credit when looking at the hours spent on my conj toon through the vast amount of content and not being totally mastered out by now. Wouldnt you say something might not be right there?? Does it mean the RA is the only answer? Probably not but it seems to be the best answer SOE has right now. Take a deep breath and relax.

Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:

The one thing no one in the endless whining has really given much consideration is the fact the dev team is very adamant about putting it in with its current mechanics in place. To that end I would surmise, and admittedly a risky move, assume they have a good reason for feeling this is the best thing to do.

 

Many of us arguing have been burned making that presumption before. Since they have given no explaination beyond it being "really cool" and a "reason to log-in" and downplayed there being an actual reason for it, you can only look at and judge the feature in context of its implementation and the game as we know it. The fact that it's effectively alt restricted in light of all we know makes any hidden logic for it dubious at best.

Alienor wrote:

We had the same with release of RoK and with TSO, it was just not about spells, but gear. To succed in RoK you had to had the better-than-T7-raid-gearfrom the various quest lines. And nobody cried bloody murder back then and the sky is still where it belongs to.

That would be, well, simply wrong. There was ample howling, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the difficulty of the RoK content when it was released. People talking about how they'd walk in 50m from the docks and get wtfpwned by the level 67 mobs when they were wearing mastercrafted or legendary gear. There was even more crying about the difficulty level of Karnors and how tough the mobs were for being in the low 70s. And the same people then were saying that all SOE cared about was the raiders, and that you had to have T7 raid gear just to do the solo quest lines in Kylong and beyond. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Kordran wrote:

Alienor wrote:

We had the same with release of RoK and with TSO, it was just not about spells, but gear. To succed in RoK you had to had the better-than-T7-raid-gearfrom the various quest lines. And nobody cried bloody murder back then and the sky is still where it belongs to.

That would be, well, simply wrong. There was ample howling, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the difficulty of the RoK content when it was released. People talking about how they'd walk in 50m from the docks and get wtfpwned by the level 67 mobs when they were wearing mastercrafted or legendary gear. There was even more crying about the difficulty level of Karnors and how tough the mobs were for being in the low 70s. And the same people then were saying that all SOE cared about was the raiders, and that you had to have T7 raid gear just to do the solo quest lines in Kylong and beyond. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

And your point is?  We should or should not have the RA because people did or did not complain about ROK? 

OMG, the fearsome RA is coming to destroy the world.  Norrath beware. 

Kordran wrote:

Alienor wrote:

We had the same with release of RoK and with TSO, it was just not about spells, but gear. To succed in RoK you had to had the better-than-T7-raid-gearfrom the various quest lines. And nobody cried bloody murder back then and the sky is still where it belongs to.

That would be, well, simply wrong. There was ample howling, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the difficulty of the RoK content when it was released. People talking about how they'd walk in 50m from the docks and get wtfpwned by the level 67 mobs when they were wearing mastercrafted or legendary gear. There was even more crying about the difficulty level of Karnors and how tough the mobs were for being in the low 70s. And the same people then were saying that all SOE cared about was the raiders, and that you had to have T7 raid gear just to do the solo quest lines in Kylong and beyond. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Indeed, people screamed a lot which is absolutely ridiculous as my Adept 1, T7 Mastercrafted geared swash could have told people then. It's also demonstrative that people will complain regardless.

Silken@Butcherblock wrote:

And your point is?  We should or should not have the RA because people did or did not complain about ROK? 

OMG, the fearsome RA is coming to destroy the world.  Norrath beware. 

I was just responding to that particular point. Personally, with regard to the RAs, I'm in the "frankly, I don't give a damn" category since I'm already fully mastered. This won't significantly impact my game one way or another, and I've said this before, if this helps the casuals, then yay for them.

Strictly speaking, yeah, this does make the game more carebear, but in a fairly minor way. I put it in the same category as the removal of spirit shards years ago. I hardly think it's the cataclysm that some are claiming it'll be.

Kordran wrote:

Silken@Butcherblock wrote:

And your point is?  We should or should not have the RA because people did or did not complain about ROK? 

OMG, the fearsome RA is coming to destroy the world.  Norrath beware. 

I was just responding to that particular point. Personally, with regard to the RAs, I'm in the "frankly, I don't give a damn" category since I'm already fully mastered. This won't significantly impact my game one way or another, and I've said this before, if this helps the casuals, then yay for them.

Strictly speaking, yeah, this does make the game more carebear, but in a fairly minor way. I put it in the same category as the removal of spirit shards years ago. I hardly think it's the cataclysm that some are claiming it'll be. 

Claiming an idea is "bad" doesn't immediately indicate that it's "the end of Norrath" or a "cataclysm".  Generally speaking, I don't think I've seen anyone state that Research Assistants are a horrible idea unto itself, only that it requires some sort of cost.  Arguments which claim that there are such "end of the world" claims would seem, upon first review, to be a strawman built to try to show how opponents here are somehow irrational, when the truth is actually quite different. 

I've seen quite a few rational arguments put forth as to why the Research Assistant is not necessarily a bad concept, but that it should have some level of cost involved.  That said, I'm not sure anyone has put forth a reasoned argument which presents any sort of compelling justification as to why the Research Assistant needs to be without a non-trivial cost. 

Kendricke wrote:

Claiming an idea is "bad" doesn't immediately indicate that it's "the end of Norrath" or a "cataclysm".  Generally speaking, I don't think I've seen anyone state that Research Assistants are a horrible idea unto itself, only that it requires some sort of cost.  Arguments which claim that there are such "end of the world" claims would seem, upon first review, to be a strawman built to try to show how opponents here are somehow irrational, when the truth is actually quite different. 

I've seen quite a few rational arguments put forth as to why the Research Assistant is not necessarily a bad concept, but that it should have some level of cost involved.  That said, I'm not sure anyone has put forth a reasoned argument which presents any sort of compelling justification as to why the Research Assistant needs to be without a non-trivial cost. 

Of everyone on these forums, I have probably been the most vocally against the RA, and even I have said the idea in itself is fine - with a cost.

Not applying a cost does not mean the game will implode as the servers are bought back up after the update that sends them live, nor does it mean people will spontainously stop paying their subscriptions.

What I have said, however, is that the RA will contribute tot he decline of this game. This contribution will not begin on any large scale the say they are released either (though there will be people that stop playing this game on that day), but the bulk of its effects will be felt in T9 when non raid players no longer have masters as a viable progression path for their main, and so start to lose reasons to log in (the opposite of the only stated intention of the RA).

I stand by my assumption that the RA is a result of casual players quitting the game and saying they were sick of no way to progress their character. In response to that, SoE have implemented a system by which they can progress, but overlooked two serious concerns.

The first of these is that most players like to progress in an active manner. most players like their character to reflect what they have done in game, and so want in game activities put in front of them on which they can progress. The RA is not an in game activity any more than the pig race is (less of one, in fact).

The second overlooked concern of the RA is that in giving casual players a means to "progress" their toon, they are robbing both dedicated group based players and raiders from a progression form. This time next year there will be people from each of these playstyles quitting the game, stating the same reasons that the casual crowd that left stated: lack of prgression.

This is why I put forward the question in the current dev Q&A thread about a new form of progression with the next expansion. If nothing new is given to us players as a means to progress, and as a direct replacement of the acquisition of master level spells, then the above is a very real probability. With a new progression form, it can be prevented.

Kendricke wrote:

Claiming an idea is "bad" doesn't immediately indicate that it's "the end of Norrath" or a "cataclysm".  Generally speaking, I don't think I've seen anyone state that Research Assistants are a horrible idea unto itself, only that it requires some sort of cost.  Arguments which claim that there are such "end of the world" claims would seem, upon first review, to be a strawman built to try to show how opponents here are somehow irrational, when the truth is actually quite different.

There have been comments in various threads (here and elsewhere) about how the RAs as-is will "destroy" progression and "ruin" the servers' economies. So there's been plenty of Chicken Little remarks throughout the hundreds of posts about it; that said, I would agree that many of the arguments against it are reasoned and asking for it to be more than just a handout.

Like I said, I really don't care. But for the record, I was one of the people who early on said that I wouldn't mind seeing a 10p per tier cost associated with the RA for masters. And others immediately told me what an absolutely horrible idea that was.

Bottom line though? I think we've all pretty much said everything that can be said about this pro and con. And SOE is going full-steam ahead regardless. They've made that much clear.

Edit: Just to reflect on what Noaani said about progression, personally I never really considered masters as "progression" per se. I can understand how some do, but for me, I see ad3s are just placeholders as you level, and m1s are really a minimum requirement. Just a matter of perspective, I suppose. And how this impacts, or fails to impact, casuals really isn't my concern -- but I doubt many of them will bemoan the loss of this particular form of progression as you see it.

Noaani wrote:

The first of these is that most players like to progress in an active manner. most players like their character to reflect what they have done in game, and so want in game activities put in front of them on which they can progress. The RA is not an in game activity any more than the pig race is (less of one, in fact).

I have conflicting feelings on this. My templar, for example, will probably never get Aegolism (Master I). Is it because that the templar is never in a dedicated group and/or raiding? Of course not, for he is always out slaying the dragons and protecting Norrath from the evils that threaten it.

My templar will not get it because of Murphy's Law(it never drops) and it is currently being sold on the broker for a paltry two-hundred seventy-five platinum pieces. What is platinum used for in this game? For buying better gear, collectibles, housing costs, and even masters. The science behind masters dropping is not an exact science. I can get seven necromancer masters before I or even someone else gets one templar master.

The RA is just allowing people to use guild platinum pieces(cost for RA) to get the master that they can't seem to be getting otherwise. A master quested or brokered will have no difference from one RA'ed. All skills should be mastered, so they will still have something in front of them to accomplish.

The RA will just help players get the masters that never seem to drop.

Noaani wrote:

The second overlooked concern of the RA is that in giving casual players a means to "progress" their toon, they are robbing both dedicated group based players and raiders from a progression form. This time next year there will be people from each of these playstyles quitting the game, stating the same reasons that the casual crowd that left stated: lack of prgression.

Dedicated group based players and raiders are not being robbed from a progression form. If they want to progress master skill wise, they still need to do something. They're just being given another way to get the hard masters that never seem to drop. In fact they're being negatively robbed of a progression form.

This should speed up the process of getting masters, but not enough to make dedicated group based players and raiders feel like they have nothing to do in the coming months.

Once again, I see the RA helping players get the masters that never seem to drop.

Edited for spelling mistakes and wording change.

dalponis wrote:

The RA is just allowing people to use guild platinum pieces(cost for RA) to get the master that they can't seem to be getting otherwise. A master quested or brokered will have no difference from one RA'ed. It will still be something in front of them to show.

You do realize that RAs are sprinkled around the noob areas of the capital cities? There's zero cost to obtaining a master; the guildhall ammenity is just a convenience, not a requirement (you don't even need to be a member of a guild to use it). It only requires that you wait, keeping your subscription paid while you do so.

Kordran wrote:

You do realize that RAs are sprinkled around the noob areas of the capital cities? There's zero cost to obtaining a master; the guildhall ammenity is just a convenience, not a requirement (you don't even need to be a member of a guild to use it). It only requires that you wait, keeping your subscription paid while you do so.

To which I just say 'lol'. Never mind what I said?

Edited for better closing sentence.

dalponis wrote:

They're just being given another way to get the hard masters that never seem to drop.

If this were the goal, 100% smart loot would be the way to accomplish it (by the way, TSO raid mobs are 100% smart loot for masters).

Instead, masters are going from being a form of progression - where not everyone has specific masters, so getting those masters is a way of making your character better - to a point where every templar will have Aegolism, just because they pay their subscription fee - they don't even need to leave Qeynos!

Noaani wrote:

dalponis wrote:

They're just being given another way to get the hard masters that never seem to drop.

If this were the goal, 100% smart loot would be the way to accomplish it (by the way, TSO raid mobs are 100% smart loot for masters).

Instead, masters are going from being a form of progression - where not everyone has specific masters, so getting those masters is a way of making your character better - to a point where every templar will have Aegolism, just because they pay their subscription fee - they don't even need to leave Qeynos!

Well, even under the system as it's going in, people won't be able to get every master; and to even master out their core spells would take them about a year. Implement the RA with provisions (having to do a quest, paying plat, whatever) and you're still removing some "progression" from the game, just with an additional hurdle or two. The only way that I could see a compatible approach would be to have the RA randomly give you a master that you don't have, without any control over selecting which one it will actually be.

For example, talk to the RA, they give you some long-winded quests with whatever suitable number of hoops the player needs to jump through (people have talked about it being on the order of the fabled epic weapon quest lines for a T8 master), come back to the RA when complete, fork over some plat and you get a random master scribed in your book at the tier you asked for. A month later, you can repeat the quest. Anything short of that, and you're just arguing how the deckchairs are being arranged.

The point people keep making is that it is "without cost" which is not wholely accurate. In addition to the 30 day timeframe, the way I understand the procedure, you also have to have the adept 3 scribed to get the master version of that spell.  It is a matter of opinion then whether the cost associated with the RA as proposed is sufficient.  The opinion that the cost is not sufficient is fine, but you cannot say it is "without cost."  

To be honest, I think the 30 day waiting time is in fact a big cost.  To make the point, I would gladly pay a reasonable amount of plat to get the master right away (10, 20, 30 plat?) rather than waiting 30 days.

Now, I am not advocating that RA's be implemented without a time component. Rather, I am merely pointing out that, in my opinion, 30 days plus the adept 3 is still a cost component.