the future of the game

[aqwplayer]

don't think this breaks any rules, just trying to discuss, not trying to flame or anything. if there are any parts of this post that aren't allowed, if just those particular parts could be edited out instead of the whole thing being deleted that'd be great, but anyways, really long post incoming

anyways, i've played aqw on and off for a while, and i just came back again exactly a week ago, and i have to say that i don't think the game is heading in a good direction (not that it has been for a while but anyways...)

why do i think this?

1) flash will stop being supported in december 2020 (next year) - doesn't mean that the game can't be run, but people will probably have to use the artix game launcher instead, which people basically do not use as far as i know

2) no guarantee that existing bots will continue to work at that point and let's face it, since almost everyone bots now, is there any possibility the game will continue on if it becomes almost impossible to make further progress? level 90 characters, vhl, legion revenant, literally anything nulgath aside from juggernaut items - almost all of these are next to impossible to do manually without spending an excessive amount of time in game.

3) promised server rewrite is actually not happening - game is being displaced in favor of aq2d (which is mobile aq or something?) and aq3d (which is currently played even less than aqw is). this could actually be argued to be normal, or even expected behavior: mechquest and dragonfable were basically left behind in order to work on aqw in the past and it is likely the same thing is going to happen with aqw soon - what i am saying is they have a history of milking a game as much as they can before leaving it behind for a newer project and i am afraid that this is what is happening now

4) ae also has a history of not being willing to hold onto good staff (imo) - such as with the incidents with Ash (who almost singlehandedly kept mech quest and dragon fable alive as an unpaid volunteer working 70 hour weeks) and miltonius being fired for drawing stuff that wasn't even lewd - i am sure there is more that i don't know about. dage is also now working almost exclusively on aq3d...

5) a history of not being able to take constructive criticism as well as not being willing to create basic quality of life features into the game - aqlite has done more for improving legit aqw gameplay than almost any program in history (shoutout to 133spider)- certainly more than ae itself has done

6) not focusing on what's making them money - dage himself said aqw is funding most if not all of their other projects (including aq3d)

7) being heavily against botting (they brigade against it in aq3d, citing problems in aqw) plus they banned a lot of people that one time but let all of us continue to bot in aqw once they realized who their playerbase was

8) extreme focus on being child-friendly game above all else - see firing of milt, vesper and others

i've said a lot of stuff about ae but now i'll talk about the actual game of aqw itself

1) botting (and i bot too) has straight up broken the game - i got three level 90's plus a few reputation classes and shadowscythe general within a week (ssg wasn't worth), only botting for about 14 hours a day. no doubt some could do more but i feel like it is still too much to achieve too easily. also glitched rooms...

2) meta has changed dramatically - where there was once no choice to have team play and group parties to take out bosses (such as red dragon in early lair or bosses in citadel, protosartorium in dwakel etc), classes like archpaladin and vhl mean that no one has to play together anymore - eliminating the social component of the game

3) failure to rework classes - far bigger games than aqw (lol or wow) understand that there has to be at least some class balance. sure there may always be a current meta (like having high solo dps and decent sustain or physical damage resistance) is now, but some of the classes in the early game are basically pointless. with the existence of blood sorceress - a free, fairly decent class with aoe attacks and heal that anyone no matter what level can get by leeching kills off scarletta, classes like warrior, rustbucket, and even oracle and mage in my opinion are barely useful at all. rogue and healer are still somewhat viable. but basically, there are so many classes that will now basically never be used because of "power creep", meaning that the game slowly becomes more and more unbalanced as newer releases become increasingly more and more powerful than stuff created before. again this would not be a problem if even basic attempts at rebalancing and listening to user suggestions were made, but that isn't happening...

4) poor release content - i've seen literally nothing interesting in the releases and i'm not going to wait till mogloween before i can finally pick up vampire lord. i initially wanted to get abyssal angel and the nulgath pets when the ac deals come around but i can't be bothered anymore

5) aside from dage, extremely heavy reliance on RNG (see anything nulgath) or blade of awe (see runes) - pretty pointless imo

6) extreme focus on ac items and deals that let you get collection chests (abusing what used to actually be good like star swords or the initial naval commander) - honestly it seems that even being a member is not as useful anymore because rather than developing member content that being a member alone lets you access, you often have to be a member and have ACs... consider the wheel of doom in which having ACs can effectively let you buy almost any item you want in the guise of a donation... what is the point of having been around for rares when someone else can just buy their way into it? lol. also, loot boxes anybody?

7) daily quests (like elder's blood, pyromancer token, etc) to force players to play the game every day if they want stuff (nah lol) or to fork up ACs (still nah). if the game were of high enough quality, players would come play of their own free will imo

8) literally the only reason to play this game is nostalgia (why i came back for a bit)

and then of course they fired vesper, but this is my reaction to that

[Poonce]

1) flash will stop being supported in december 2020 (next year) - doesn't mean that the game can't be run, but people will probably have to use the artix game launcher instead, which people basically do not use as far as i know

All players will definitely use Artix Launcher https://www.aq.com/gamedesignnotes/aqwmobilefuture-6482 https://twitter.com/alina_ae/status/920152761299238914 https://twitter.com/ArtixKrieger/sta...20893731786754

2) no guarantee that existing bots will continue to work at that point and let's face it, since almost everyone bots now, is There any possibility the game will continue on if it becomes almost impossible to make further progress? level 90 characters, vhl, legion revenant, literally anything nulgath aside from juggernaut items - almost all of these are next to impossible to do manually without spending an excessive amount of time in game.

I don't think so, i see they know about bot but choose not to use it; member players can get it faster remember that~

3) promised server rewrite is actually not happening - game is being displaced in favor of aq2d (which is mobile aq or something?) and aq3d (which is currently played even less than aqw is). this could actually be argued to be normal, or even expected behavior: mechquest and dragonfable were basically left behind in order to work on aqw in the past and it is likely the same thing is going to happen with aqw soon - what i am saying is they have a history of milking a game as much as they can before leaving it behind for a newer project and i am afraid that this is what is happening now

Yes, that will happen; i hope lol if you don't accept it, it's the same as you not accepting technological developments. we must keep going forward

4) ae also has a history of not being willing to hold onto good staff (imo) - such as with the incidents with Ash (who almost singlehandedly kept mech quest and dragon fable alive as an unpaid volunteer working 70 hour weeks) and miltonius being fired for drawing stuff that wasn't even lewd - i am sure there is more that i don't know about. dage is also now working almost exclusively on aq3d...

Why not think positive? we don't know what problems happened in their lab, there must be a reason they did that

5) a history of not being able to take constructive criticism as well as not being willing to create basic quality of life features into the game - aqlite has done more for improving legit aqw gameplay than almost any program in history (shoutout to 133spider)- certainly more than ae itself has done

AE steps right in my opinion, they are trying to keep this game alive. I don't agree that, we all know that 133spiders are from here right; i personally don't like it when he makes aqlite, aqlite actually makes this game die faster; you know my intention: everything is made easy for example 'pinned quest' You can turn in quests anywhere, different from when you finished completing the quest to defeat the boss you have to go back to the first room to turn in the quest, you know how it feels when you go to the first room to turn in quest hmmm

6) not focusing on what's making them money - dage himself said aqw is funding most if not all of their other projects (including aq3d)

Because only this game has a lot of fans lmao

7) being heavily against botting (they brigade against it in aq3d, citing problems in aqw) plus they banned a lot of people that one time but let all of us continue to bot in aqw once they realized who their playerbase was

In this game the only old players who survive, and AE is afraid of losing them lol; if the old player leaves this game will surely die^^

8) extreme focus on being child-friendly game above all else - see firing of milt, vesper and others

Yeah, this is an old player thinking big lol

1) botting (and i bot too) has straight up broken the game - i got three level 90's plus a few reputation classes and shadowscythe general within a week (ssg wasn't worth), only botting for about 14 hours a day. no doubt some could do more but i feel like it is still too much to achieve too easily. also glitched rooms...

LOL you are concerned about this game but you actually make this game die, yooo that means you don't enjoy the game; i have 8 accounts: level 90, 63, 54, 32, 10-1 and it was all made in 2010-2011 ... yoo my level 90 account I put it on battleon to afk waiting for others to ask for help. if i'm bored with that i play my little account to reminisce, i'm happy with it.. and for the glitch room i think AE doesn't fix it because it helps (LITTLE) lol

2) meta has changed dramatically - where there was once no choice to have team play and group parties to take out bosses (such as red dragon in early lair or bosses in citadel, protosartorium in dwakel etc), classes like archpaladin and vhl mean that no one has to play together anymore - eliminating the social component of the game

3) failure to rework classes - far bigger games than aqw (lol or wow) understand that there has to be at least some class balance. sure there may always be a current meta (like having high solo dps and decent sustain or physical damage resistance) is now, but some of the classes in the early game are basically pointless. with the existence of blood sorceress - a free, fairly decent class with aoe attacks and heal that anyone no matter what level can get by leeching kills off scarletta, classes like warrior, rustbucket, and even oracle and mage in my opinion are barely useful at all. rogue and healer are still somewhat viable. but basically, there are so many classes that will now basically never be used because of "power creep", meaning that the game slowly becomes more and more unbalanced as newer releases become increasingly more and more powerful than stuff created before. again this would not be a problem if even basic attempts at rebalancing and listening to user suggestions were made, but that isn't happening...

Well you're right, I think AE made a mistake about this (precisely when the necromancer release) *hope vhl delete and other op class

4) poor release content - i've seen literally nothing interesting in the releases and i'm not going to wait till mogloween before i can finally pick up vampire lord. i initially wanted to get abyssal angel and the nulgath pets when the ac deals come around but i can't be bothered anymore

LOL so you think 'thinking of something interesting for renewal' is easy? ITS NOT *if you are not interested just ignore it^^

6) extreme focus on ac items and deals that let you get collection chests (abusing what used to actually be good like star swords or the initial naval commander) - honestly it seems that even being a member is not as useful anymore because rather than developing member content that being a member alone lets you access, you often have to be a member and have ACs... consider the wheel of doom in which having ACs can effectively let you buy almost any item you want in the guise of a donation... what is the point of having been around for rares when someone else can just buy their way into it? lol. also, loot boxes anybody?

Yoo this part of the business lol, RICH PLAYER ARE FREE bro. this is a way to save your space in the bank, yo see every week there are new items, most people store ac tag items in their bank even though they don't need it lol. I have a lot of ac tag items in my bank, to open my bank takes a long time to load an item, that's why there is that box (and a buyback was created for this too) think about that^^

7) daily quests (like elder's blood, pyromancer token, etc) to force players to play the game every day if they want stuff (nah lol) or to fork up ACs (still nah). if the game were of high enough quality, players would play of their own free will imo

It's an offer from AE lol, it's up to the player to take it or not lmao

[aqwplayer]

interesting reply, we'll see how it goes

[aqwplayer]

one thing i forgot to mention is pvp, so i wanted to say some stuff about it:

1) pvp (bludrutbrawl) is pretty fun until you realize that certain classes or combinations played well are nearly unbeatable. i'll mention some orthodox and some unorthodox combinations. obviously we have vhl whose physical damage resistance and dps makes it almost unkillable except by shadowscythe general (ssg). ssg itself is incredibly powerful in pvp as it has a move with a chance to stun (that ends up stunning quite a bit), a mini-nuke that builds the more stacks you have, a pretty good hot, heal denial, and most of its skills give you more stacks (especially the first one) that make its mini-nuke more and more powerful with each stack. ssg also gets haste boosts as part of it skills and none of its skills require health or mana to use... oh and i almost forgot to mention (not really), every single one of its skills except its autoattack is aoe on more than 3 people (up to 6). this means that you have the chance to stun lock entire groups, lock the heals of entire groups and literally nuke them out of existence. also the more stacks you have, the more damage you do with all your skills overall at the cost of temporarily lowering your damage resistance while the stacks are applied. but since the nuke consumes the stacks, you can enter a room, nuke it, one-shot at least one person (i get 11k-13k damage with bboa) if not killing most, not die because your damage resistance is instantly back up (and even when stacks are on, it's still pretty good), rebuild stacks and repeat. short of getting repeatedly stunned yourself, you can stop entire teams. and even if you do get stunned, unless your enemy is a vhl, you'll probably live anyways...
add to this that you can build stacks off monsters too means you can enter a room, get stacks, re-enter, nuke and almost nothing can stop you. classes like troll spellsmith (severly underused) can get routine 11k-13k crits against normal classes if used properly, if not more, which means if you're not using a damage resistance class, you have almost no chance.

but again, this is all sort of the problem that i'm trying to point out. against certain classes, if played properly, almost every other class is useless. if the player is level 90, uses damage-boosting weapons like i did (bboa - burning blaze of abezeth) or nsod and stacks them with items that give racial damage boosts against humans (like arch doomknight stuff) and also uses pots/tonics (like i do), short of getting disconnected or continual lucky stuns, you can't really lose. using awe enhancements like spiral carve and +5000 or +5500 hp pvp amulets (that can be found as drops) also helps.

also i haven't really mentioned moves that are guaranteed to hit and guaranteed to crit (like some of the ones vhl has) but generally speaking those kinds of moves make using dodge classes a lot less viable when combined with their innate lack of damage resistance. neither have i talked about chrono classes and the insane damage they can hit either but those generally aren't as common in pvp.

2) afk's in pvp are something that ae has still not addressed for an incredibly long time. normally you'll have a max of 5 players on one team actually playing (so max 10 but it rarely gets that high), with the rest idle... i understand that combat trophies are needed for parts of the game but i find it in incredibly poor taste that this still continues to be an issue. you can literally have no chance of winning right from the start (if not playing vhl or ssg and even then you might not win if they have even one decent class to counter, which they always do) because the game ended up being 1 v 6 or 2 v 6.

having said all this i still play pvp as it's the only remotely fun thing left in the game at least in my opinion but if i play a non-meta class, short of getting lucky and solo-ing the captain because no one sees you or checks the captain room, you can't really win or even put up a significant fight (ninja, rogue, even evolved shaman which despite it potential to stun lock and remove crit ability has almost no use in 1v1s because it has no dps, mage, warrior, ranger, arachnomancer, dragonslayer, dragonslayer general, eternal inversionist, royal battlemage because of its cooldowns, vampire lord, shaman, chaos slayer are all not worth playing, at least in pvp).

edit: i forgot to add that if we want the boosts that come with nsod or bboa etc, we have to have those weapons equipped. there's no system of using a weapon skin or amulet or some sort of enhancement to let us use the weapons, cloaks, helms or pets we want while still getting the boosts we earned. we are forced to use particular things, which is something that could probably have been fixed a long time ago. after all, if i already have nsod, why should i only be restricted to using it (or blod) in the future? a way of carrying over the boosts assuming the weapon was already owned would have been a great step to take but nothing like it has happened so far, which i find incredibly disappointing

[aqwplayer]

the new lord of order class (released yesterday) is an insanely good support class to the point that it makes stonecrusher's role as best supporter insignificant... again we see the legendary phenomenon of power creep. this classes somehow manages to successfully combine the best of stonecrusher with that of frostval barbarian and is almost a nightmarishly good supporter. it's rank 10 passive even makes every single attack a critical hit lol. i'm not even joking about this, try reading the description of the class

[Pignoy]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I wasted my money
I hate AE

[aqwplayer]

going to rehash some old stuff as well as talk about some new stuff - as usual, read it only if you want to... lol

non-ac lord of order released today. how to get it? dailies lol. yet another cheap way to get players to stay longer in what's slowly turning into a worse and worse game in which people have to pretend they don't bot but at the same time have to listen to other people claim they farmed things like NSOD legit however like poonce accurately observed "It's an offer from AE lol, it's up to the player to take it or not lmao", so i guess i won't. we can add that to the long list of classes i'm not going to bother botting for. you would think that instead of actively brigading against botters in the new game they are focusing on, aq3d, they would at least try to sympathize with their userbase and main source of income (again, according to dage) a bit but no. cheating is still against the rules despite the fact that only very few are left legit and even those probably play on or at least have tried aqlite becauses it's a significant improvement on the normal aqw browser player. not sure if i said this before or not, but even alina has recognized it.

however one sort of good thing is that they at least brought the safiria server back (probably temporarily). why? well when they first released lord of order and the mirror realm stuff, three servers actually filled up for the first time in a while. in anticipation of more people playing again for the non-ac release, they probably re-opened more servers up. so was it self-serving in the end? well, yeah, probably. did it at least feel sort of nice though? yup. lol . note that this is also in itself misleading because the max number of players for each server is not necessarily the same. so just because artix and galanoth are both full does not mean they both are capped at the same number of players artix has. what does this mean? it means that even when the servers say full, fewer players are playing than you would think... lol

and i almost forgot one of the biggest things. ae staff have said that the way they test stuff like drop rates or rank 10 passives by first making the rate 100% to ensure that skill or drop is working properly as is intended and once that is confirmed, they make it super low like 1% or .01% or whatever it is. what does this mean? this means that they have never actually played the game as we have played the game, which is pretty devastating when you think about it. after all, when is the last time you can remember a rank 10 passive actually activating? obviously the probability is low but i guarantee most people have never seen one. in addition, everyone has suffered the pain of RNG... except ae staff apparently.

well have a good day lol

edit: and like i also mentioned before, they STILL haven't added in weapon/cape/helm skins so that we can get the buff of certain items while visually using other ones. how come we can do this for classes (meaning that we can wear other armors on them, and have been able to do so for a long time), yet we still cannot do this for basically anything else?

[Zendux]

A main reason I play the game for nostalgia points, like you and I'm sure many others.

I also find it fun to bot in a weird way; it is like playing an idle/management game rather than a grinding game. I use RBot and have been learning c# as well. I enjoy writing programs (although looking up all proper ids/names can be annoying) and seeing if they work or not. It all depends on how you view the game. If bots stopped working or became bannable I'd be a bit sad but would just move on.

[aqwplayer]

cool, i can definitely respect that. also i had never really thought of what you said about it being an idle game or management game but you're definitely right that that's what it is at this point in time. i guess i just have to take some time to change the way i look at it. thanks

[Pignoy]

I only read the some parts of thread here so I don't really know what you're guys talking about,
my question is

if the bots will be gone or remove will you still play aqw or play other game and what is it?

[aqwplayer]

i will almost definitely leave if there are no bots available (after waiting a little bit to see if someone makes a new one). same goes for if the game changes to mobile only or something like that. not sure what other game i'll play but there are a lot of good ones to choose from that are at least somewhat more actively developed like minecraft or path of exile

[aqwplayer]

bought member + ac's - member is almost useless except for the fact that it lets you complete dailies faster. the slightly higher level enhancements do not provide a significant benefit either. plus of course once you're non-mem, you can barely use any of the stuff so it really is pointless. i also unlocked almost all the non-mem classes that you need a membership to access - most of them are not that good. buying ac's is a much better investment - farming pets, legion, lightcaster, a few chrono classes, etc, plus items can be permanently freely banked...

in other news, in the latest design notes (10/28/19), they say "Many players actually also prefer the older style as well". i would like to take a moment to look at that word actually. this sounds like they cannot believe that this is the case. i mean i think most people prefer old naval, nulgath etc etc. is this really that hard for them to understand? they state that: "When AQW was created, a very different art style was used. It was much simpler. These very very very very old items not matching some of the extremely detailed styles used today is not a bug." i am not sure why i even have to say this but more complex does not necessarily mean better. similarly, having more detailed drawings does not automatically mean the work becomes high quality. and even then, why do they feel the need to correct the impression that older drawings are bugged? i mean does anyone actually have this impression in the first place?

basically, newer is not necessarily better. same with making things more detailed or more complex. i am not certain how this idea entered into the minds of ae staff but it's pretty unfortunate imo

edit: this style of thinking seems to have carried over very heavily into aq3d. they're so focused on trying to be fancy or use the latest techniques or whatever it is they are trying to do that they are failing to focus on what their playerbase actually wants. it's pretty pathetic if i do say so myself

[aqwplayer]

just want to add some stuff: as long as ae continues to only value the player input of the people who scream the loudest or people who tell them what they want to hear, the game is pretty much not going to go anywhere (like it has been doing for a pretty long time now). and eventually people are going to grow tired of the same re-colored items over and over and over again if they aren't already

the biggest problem i have is that they never actually do much, if anything to improve the quality of the game:

1) the most obvious example again is rebalancing classes. since they have previously made changes to multiple classes and skills after their release, this isn't something that hard to do. and how hard can it be to change the numeric value of a cooldown or mana cost? if it is anything like a normal variable, it really can't be that difficult. yet we still continue to have classes that are just so outrageously bad that they might as well not exist. i'll give some specific examples but won't necessarily be able to address every single one:

archfiend/legendary archfiend - its last skill has a 50 second cooldown. that's almost a minute. i mean seriously, an entire minute? and it only makes the enemy take 75% more damage. arachnomancer can reduce enemy defenses by 100% less and the skill costs less mana at only a 24 second cooldown. arachnomancer can also double all DOT damage the enemy takes. why is a class locked behind a paywall (archfiend/legendary arch) so much worse than a free rep class (arachno)? and even if both were free, i mean really? you couldn't take less than five minutes to halve that 50 second cooldown? when people play the game, they actually want to play the game. they don't want to spend time waiting for stuff like this.

darkblood stormking - its last skill costs 90 mana. again, really? i know one of its other moves is supposed to gain mana but in what reality is this class actually viable?

sentinel - this class has supposedly already been "buffed", but it is still incredibly poor. its third skill boosts damage and haste. it also gives a self-DOT starts at 400 but the maximum heal its second skill (which is supposed to heal more the lower your hp is) does is around 600 if your hp is almost zero. if you add this into the fact that the self-dot hits you 4 times for every one time you use it, you lose a minimum of 1600 hp with each usage... lol. if we consider that the damage buff can also boost the self-DOT if you re-use it, it's possible to do a 600+ damage DOT to yourself that you actually can't even outheal. the argument is that the self-buff is so good that it needs this DOT as a downside but even with the damage and haste boost, the DPS of the class is so poor that even most starter classes can reasonably outdo it (including healer and oracle). for a good comparison, sentinel's third skill is like the mega-nerfed version of VHL's third skill (unshackle). would it really be that much to ask for to either lower the self-DOT or increase how much the heal skill does or even an hp buff (like dark metal necro and its reskins have) so that the class doesn't get to half-health by using just one move? i mean it is impressive that the class can basically kill itself using only one skill twice but... it's just so pointless... it's not like classes don't have good effects with small self-DOT's. look at "the collector" or VOT's third skill which actually has an outright stun but nowhere near such a penalizing self-DOT... it's clearly possible and it would make this class at least a little bit more viable...

there are a lot of other classes that not only i, but other people too, just keep permanently banked because they're just too weak or the downsides are just too great, even if you want to play for fun.

i'll list some of the classes here. i can't think of all of them at the moment so this is not a comprehensive list, but it definitely includes the following:
dragonslayer (2 of its 4 skills don't work against basically any monster in the actual game...), cryomancer (incredibly poor HOT and cooldown on the HOT skill, last skill completely prevents its HOT for being applied for 14 seconds... last skill is also the only serious damage dealer but that's if you ever actually have enough mana to use it which... you don't... lol), evolved shaman (horrible dps - starter classes can outdo it and any potential for "stun locking" is complete rng and not actually dependable at all). i may or may not add a more complete list eventually but i think the high cooldown/high mana issue or something similar is present for quite a few older classes.

2) next, one of the most depressing things is that there are some non-mem classes that require membership to unlock but are basically not worth it at all, with the exception of chrono assassin (which is pretty decent) and to a lesser extent legendary elemental warrior (nowhere near as good as chrono assassin but not nearly as bad as the ones i'm about to list), all the other ones are extremely poor. this would include: beastmaster, deathknight lord and legendary archfiend (addressed above). i mean has anyone actually heard of or even seen anyone use beastmaster? not that it's worth it in any case i guess... lol

i'll discuss buying membership vs buying AC's vs both vs neither in a new thread i'll start eventually start

[[MPGH]meme]

1) the most obvious example again is rebalancing classes. since they have previously made changes to multiple classes and skills after their release, this isn't something that hard to do. and how hard can it be to change the numeric value of a cooldown or mana cost? if it is anything like a normal variable, it really can't be that difficult. yet we still continue to have classes that are just so outrageously bad that they might as well not exist.

What people don't realise is that not every player is sitting at the level cap with Void Highlord and Legion Revenant just waiting for another class they can play with. It just isn't a good business model to make every class usable at every level. If somebody can pick up Darkblood Stormking or some other relatively easy to get class and have little to no issue with the majority of the games monsters, then what is the point of them spending hours upon hours farming something like VHL?

I think the ideal system is one in which the class itself just determines the play-style of the person using it and the class' strength is determined by the level of the player. I know this is implemented to some degree, but in reality somebody using Scarlet Sorceress at level 40 isn't doing all that much less damage then the player running the same class at level 90.

As a collector I love being able to try to get as many classes as possible, but can you imagine what it's like as a brand new player trying to understand what the hell they are even looking at when it comes to the class list. There's a reason why games like World of Warcraft only have like 10-20 classes in total.

I know this wasn't really the point of your post, but if AE wanted to re-balance the many useless classes in the game they would. There are certainly no shortage of players that would be happy to do this for free. At this point it's all about the demand of the playerbase as to what classes are fixed. When the IoDA returned, the sheer amount of people picking Dark Caster spurred AE to turn what was one of the worst classes in the game into a decent one. I'm sure it's not the sole reason it was buffed but it just goes to show that money talks, especially considering Chronomancer (a class that was probably about as common as Dark Caster before the Wheel returned) is still sitting as probably the worst class in the game.

[aqwplayer]

What people don't realise is that not every player is sitting at the level cap with Void Highlord and Legion Revenant just waiting for another class they can play with. It just isn't a good business model to make every class usable at every level. If somebody can pick up Darkblood Stormking or some other relatively easy to get class and have little to no issue with the majority of the games monsters, then what is the point of them spending hours upon hours farming something like VHL?

I think the ideal system is one in which the class itself just determines the play-style of the person using it and the class' strength is determined by the level of the player. I know this is implemented to some degree, but in reality somebody using Scarlet Sorceress at level 40 isn't doing all that much less damage then the player running the same class at level 90.

As a collector I love being able to try to get as many classes as possible, but can you imagine what it's like as a brand new player trying to understand what the hell they are even looking at when it comes to the class list. There's a reason why games like World of Warcraft only have like 10-20 classes in total.

I know this wasn't really the point of your post, but if AE wanted to re-balance the many useless classes in the game they would. There are certainly no shortage of players that would be happy to do this for free. At this point it's all about the demand of the playerbase as to what classes are fixed. When the IoDA returned, the sheer amount of people picking Dark Caster spurred AE to turn what was one of the worst classes in the game into a decent one. I'm sure it's not the sole reason it was buffed but it just goes to show that money talks, especially considering Chronomancer (a class that was probably about as common as Dark Caster before the Wheel returned) is still sitting as probably the worst class in the game.

i mean you're definitely right that money talks. although having said that, i myself have spent quite a bit of money on the game on multiple accounts over the years and although i am not into thousand dollar or higher territory just yet, what i've put in is no small amount, at least for me. anyways it just sucks that i guess it's not enough money for them to actually care about what i'm saying. obviously mpgh isn't a reasonable way to expect to communicate with ae (and i definitely never expected it to be). this thread is more for other users who want to understand the situation. ae has already heard everything i'm saying from many different people over the years and every time it has basically already "fallen on deaf ears", to use a fancy idiom

also there is a difference between you and i are saying. i'm not trying to be too sassy but if you read at least my latest comment (unedited), i have not, am not, and will not ever ask for every class to be vhl level or even anywhere close. all i'm asking is that the older classes at least be playable. the ones i've listed are, quite frankly, not. i simply used vhl, VOT, and collectors' third skills as points for comparison as they all do self-damage and have other effects, just like sentinel's third skill. you can say whatever you want about different playstyles but legendary archfiend aside, dbsk and at the minimum definitely sentinel are unplayable the way they currently are, no matter what playstyle you prescribe to. beastmaster and cryomancer less so, but the criticism still basically applies. no one will touch those classes with a ten foot pole (if they even know they exist) because of what they currently play like and like i said before, my list of classes like this is hardly comprehensive. i'm barely scraping the surface

i just think it's unfortunate that despite it being such a simple thing for them to do to at least begin stepping in the right direction, they haven't

also you can maybe look at this issue this way. if we consider the current state of battle pet-based classes like necro (rip)/beast master/darkside/horc evader, why are they unpopular? are they unpopular because no one likes battle pets? or are they unpopular because ae has never actually taken time to develop the battle pet idea and as a result all the classes save necro (and to a lesser extent horc evader) are pretty much just poor class choices for players to make and so players don't make those choices, which ae then interprets as people not liking the idea, consequently leading to them abandoning it? which one?

basically i'm asking a "chicken and the egg" type question. do people not like certain classes or ideas because those classes and ideas are bad or is it because those classes and ideas were developed or implemented poorly that people didn't like them and as a result, ae misinterpreted why people were reacting the way they did and made decisions that either drove those ideas into the ground (assuming they didn't just straight up abandon them like they have for a lot of their actual other games)? or both?

well i basically just said the same thing twice but it's not like i have answers to all the questions either. the game has basically become a "collect the latest class/item reskin from a reskinned map with reskinned monsters based on an already reskinned version of a legacy map while we pretend like we're ok with botting and concentrate all our resources on other games all the while depending on volunteer artists and sometimes even programmers we could pay but don't" and "we released the same exact zones this holiday like we did last year but with one new zone added, oh and also take a loot at this new chest with magically supposedly really high value that we're offering to you for a low price now (conveniently always 10k acs) just for a few weeks!!! get yours today while this great deal lasts and be thankful while you're at it!!!". i mean they're literally using textbook advertising strategies. the fact that they re-introduced the whole wheel of doom gambling lootbox type thing also demonstrates where their priorities actually lay (i mean although they are a business first and foremost so it's not like i really technically ever expected anything else but it's still disappointing to see).

obviously i'm coming across as highly sarcastic (and i'm definitely trying to be in some cases) and i guess i am thankful for what little they're doing seeing as me and my many alts still continue to play the game. i don't think their playerbase is children anymore like it used to be but they're still trying to act like it is. but again, since i'm technically not even close to whale-territory yet, i guess literally nothing i've said counts which i'm cool with, i just kind of want others to understand the situation

i wonder what the final straw will be for the whales to stop supporting them? we'll see i guess. for now they still are, so i guess they can have their way. i know if it gets to that point and they try to turn back and appease the lesser paying but far more numerous paying players, i'll snub them. gotta "vote with my wallet", right? it's not like they understand any other language. i won't be the first to do this and i won't be the last. plus seeing as they've already demonstrated that they don't actually care it's not like it'll be that hard of a decision for me to make

no doubt someone will eventually respond to this thread saying "if you don't like the game, just don't play" but the thing is: i do like this game, i've been playing it on and off for a while, i've met a lot of cool people on it (both in the past and now), and i would like to continue playing it. it's just really hard for me to continue playing (and supporting it monetarily although i currently still am, for whatever reason) when they don't actually seem to care what the average paying player thinks. no matter what they say, their lack of care is visible in their actions and i want people to see them for what they are