November 2023 Balance Changes Feedback Thread

Okay, the Balance Changes thread itself, like all of the others, is kind of a train wreck so I’m going to start a hopefully clean new thread for discussing feedback on the changes as people start generating play testing data. Hopefully this can start dialogue with staff to pinpoint what is working and what is not.

I’d like to preface this thread to all who respond:
Please do not use this thread to argue or shitpost. The primary purpose of this thread is to provide information to staff to help adjust changes.

This means you should be able to distinguish between your personal feelings in response to a gameplay element versus your personal feelings in response to someone else’s opinion.

Good post: “this mechanic made me feel frustrated because I did not know how to overcome this obstacle”
Helpful, provides direct emotional feedback to gameplay and precise information on why

Bad post: “anyone who supports these changes is an idiot because they can’t read”
Not helpful, does not provide any information to staff at all in rectifying gameplay

With that out of the way, I’ll start.

I think the CWKPQ bonus stage changes are poorly implemented. It’s incredibly jarring the first time you go in especially if you are used to running CWKPQ, particularly the lack of jump and the slower moving pets. I’ll break down my issues with it into the following points:

1. The bonus stage feels like a jump quest now. It is now the most stressful part of the run with an emphasis on precision and perfection with little room for error. This is supposed to be the part where you get rewarded and get your hit of dopamine, but instead you feel anxious. It is also difficult to practice as there is no area where someone can learn other than running the content itself, which is already a long form activity that is usually not run daily. I imagine those like myself who are not talented at jump quests will have a long road ahead of them in learning how to do this well, and will lose a lot of potential money along the way just to learn a niche mechanic, which feels frustrating. You also need to learn multiple routes, further increasing the learning curve.
2. It seems on paper this change was implemented to even the playing field between everyone, but instead it feels like one or two players are now potentially shafted depending on how they roll for the bonus stage sections. If you get a bad section, you’re cooked, whereas previously highly mobile classes like NLs could help out their party mates by volunteering to get far and harder sections.
3. It hurts demographics that are historically underrepresented the most. CWK is well known as cleave content, a place where warriors can shine, and potentially become strong enough to solo cleave. By targeting not only CWK in general but smaller 3-man groups especially, it harms the demographic that is most in need of help. Ranged characters have other activities they can do such as HT without issue, but strong cleaves struggle to find other alternatives to CWK as a high return activity. This also hurts the supply of items valuable to the entire server such as Weapon 30s, CHCs, and Specs.
4. You no longer have the ability to loot from your party mates, or at least a significantly reduced ability. If I were to theoretically run 4 man and one of my party mates wanted a chair or BFC, they now have to sacrifice multiple of their boxes to come over to me and loot it, assuming I even have enough time to tell them and they have enough time to make their way over.
5. It assumes the looter has pet loot, binoculars, wing boots, and ideally multiple pets. Some people use CWK as a source of NX while still washing and don’t want to buy pet loot on their attacker, something that normally has little value on a bossing heavy character.

Overall, I don’t think this change is going to accomplish what it set out to do effectively. I worry this will discourage people from running CWK entirely and hurt the availability of Weapon 30s and heavily reward merching practices which become particularly effective when supply drops. I personally found the new bonus stage to be pretty unfun and clunky, even despite the fact that I was able to get all of my boxes.