[WaifuApple]

I don't have much to add beyond just reiterating what I was mentioned to say elsewhere. I'm all for balance passes, but it does feel a little bit like this disastrophism patch in particular carries a little bit of spite / poison in the balance changes. A lot of work was put into this update - I know, I helped with some of it.

But the timing for such heavy handed hits (and in Lava Lake's case not a very interesting set of changes, I don't care that the grind is nerfed but it's nerfed in such a way that seems to intentionally go for making it less fun to go there rather than interesting but slower)

They could have been done in a following update, because as it stands it feels like much of the hype has been lost in what is ultimately a gutting of many builds (a lot more hit than anticipated) that spoiled the ability to actually enjoy the hard work put in.

A shot in one's own foot, as is. It should have been a fun update, should have been a realisation of a lot of time and effort... but some bad decisions really sour the stew.

[Lolzytripd]

I asked you to kill guile, to take it out to the wood chipper..


I didn't ask for flanking to get killed, my main issue with Guile has always been Crit damage, having it tied to a stat instead of being just a flat modifier, Guile could have become the Def/Res penetration stat...

[Snake]

Harder Mobs, more EXP. That's all we want.

[Poruku]

A game should be sometimes easy and sometimes hard, but when you do something hard, you want a reward with it that is proportionally greater based on how much harder it was. Both easy and hard content should exist, and harder content should be more rewarding. That's the core of the matter here, and it's why so many people say that the grind "feels" bad, because they don't get that feedback of difficulty/reward.

Personally I enjoy the game. I often like grinding, even these days. The reason I keep playing is because the combat and the character building is so much fun that every leveling experience is gonna be a little different, and killing monsters feels good. But at the moment, only sea of clouds and a few other places "feel" good. That's because I can fight the monsters, kill them at a pace that is satisfying, and they're not so strong that they'll kill me unless I make mistakes. When the monsters kill you even when you make no mistakes, that feels bad. When you spend 5x more time in a dungeon to get the same amount of rewards, that feels bad. When you're being punished for playing the build that is fitting for your character, that feels bad.

There was a time when people requested harder content, because there was no hard content. We got the hard content we wished for, but split in two. You have the harder mobs that aren't worth grinding, and you have the rematches which are awesome, but only high-end builds can take them on. So we're back at square one, farming sea of clouds because that's what is fun.

I will say, the rematches were a fantastic addition to the game. It's just that for many people, it's not possible.

[Shujin]

TL;DR Didn't read, just throwing my idea in:

Some sort of activateable "Ordeal" at the Crystal Terminal that makes encounters basically "Crazy" or other dungeon suffixes

More mobs in a battle->more time needed to complete-> more time for spawns to come back

More exp earned in one encounter-> Less encounters needed for the exp-> Less stealing encounters from others

I think its worth considered and also fun as a sort of self imposed challange mode or for the stronger ones, just to push their grind a bit further with a bit of added risk.

[Mewni]

TL;DR Didn't read, just throwing my idea in:

Some sort of activateable "Ordeal" at the Crystal Terminal that makes encounters basically "Crazy" or other dungeon suffixes

More mobs in a battle->more time needed to complete-> more time for spawns to come back

More exp earned in one encounter-> Less encounters needed for the exp-> Less stealing encounters from others

I think its worth considered and also fun as a sort of self imposed challange mode or for the stronger ones, just to push their grind a bit further with a bit of added risk.

[Poruku]

We should definitely add that, been asking for crazy battles for years! Though it would still keep people grinding the easy spots

[Tana]

Every piece of gear should be craftable.

Even boss 10*s.

SL2 falls into the typical MMO trap of crafting where the only thing that matters are gear modifiers, consumables, and a few niche items(Staves, idol, jackhammer come to mind).

Yes, sl2 craft skills are absurdly easy to raise up on the level of only a few minutes, but raw materials don't often have free sources, or cheap sources. Whether it just be by raising material costs for those elusive high-rarity items, making recipes expensive to purchase, or tie it to some kind of counter system from killed high level enemies, it could be 'balanced' out. Having craft skills so limited kind of kills both a source of RP of all sorts, and a way for people to get equipment that doesn't result in everyone and their mother OOCly trading gear around behind buildings like it's a bag of crack.

The ever-increasing loot tables continually make it worse and worse if you want something specific, and the 'ancient charges' now that I've tried one are just kind of baffling. Some are... Easy-ish, while the actual rare items have such weird requirements that the only way to do them without hating life is to have the item you're after already. Sometimes, not even that would save you from the hoops.

And I say this as someone who still has g6 characters with 500+ cores, so I am not averse to grinding in any capacity, but it still kind of sucks to spend 30 hours grinding for an item people wouldn't normally keep, and praying for a drop. I genuinely have an easier time getting rare things to drop in a 26 year old MMO that invented the entire concept of camping drops.

[Fayeble]

While there's a lot to be said about XP, I wanted to touch on items.

Recently, we got the ability to gain legend inks at max level by gaining XP. In a roundabout way, this means we passively generate inks by RPing because of RPXP.

Frankly, something I want to see is more reward for RPing like RPXP. RPXP is a very passive way of doing it, although making something more active is hard without being intrusive at the same time.

I don't have a good example at the moment, but in general, I think RPing being encouraged by gifting you mechanically might make things better. That way people can grind if they wish for items if they enjoy it, or people can RP instead and sort of build up 'credit' to get items, plus it can be used to sort of show how someone may work on their weapons or grow to a new style.

To me, the game is too split between MMO and Roleplay. While the MMO can benefit the roleplay, the roleplay barely benefits the MMO.