First and most important thing:

Keep this free of spam. I dont want it closed within a couple mins because of senseless spam.
Give constructive feedback and feel free to discuss...



As some of you have noticed, we have a discussion in our guild chat about the game going on.
As everyone probably agrees, the situation right now isnt really fun for anyone.

For those who are interested, feel free to peek in there.
But keep it free of any spam!!!


One thing that made many people quit was the removal of arena.
As we were told more than once, it wont return...

Still, many people miss it as they dont like the new cata system with the driving part.
(Fortunately, we had a slight increase of solo prof, exp and items again.)
The main problem right now, the multiplayer focus of this game lacks the small player base these days.

But there could be a connection we need between arena and catacombs...
The autopilot!

Right now, its a useless feature as its just a dummy.

I tried it a couple times, but its slow and not very smart. E.g. it explores the same areas twice instead of going on.

BUT...

if this features was made WAY FASTER and WAY MORE INTELLIGENT it could give us a link to arena times:

The autopilot will do the driving and the player can mainly focus on killing mobs just like he used to back then.



Additional thoughts to the idea:


There could be something like a new mob chain counter again !

e.g.:

- for every mob slain in a row per level without dying or going to town the character gets

- more experience
- better item drops ( this can be in terms of quantity or quality, like higher tiers )

- at level up or death, the bonus resets again.


Regarding the autopilot, there could be a mob chain feature that directly effects it:

- with more mobs killed ( in a row ), the autopilot will get more FUEL from the slain mobs and thus be able to drive faster.

So killing mobs in a row would be a way to charge the autopilot or increase its duration so to speak.


It could be discussed if the speed counter should reset when a player leaves to town or not.
For group catacombs, it would most certainly reset so that groups have a motivation to stay in cata and play accordingly ( teamplay, character selection etc. )


Results of this update:

- people dont need to drive but have a USABLE alternative to driving that comes close to the arena feeling with engage, kill, engage, kill

- solo playing will be a much more motivating alternative when there are no groups available (which is often the case these days)

- it would pay out to have good items again as it directly effects the mob chain counter and thus the autopilot

- hybrid gear/chars or gear and stat distribution in general would require much more thought again to increase the chain

- it would make skillables like FISH, GLYPHS and also comfreys much more useful again as they could increase the duration of the chain.

- objectives and their rewards can be reworked so that they actually need to be done in order to get those chains or at least to effect them positevely.
- Result of that would be that people actually do objectives again and not blacktrack all the way.



Some of the main problems that ls has right now are:

- the small player base (yet the game is multiplayer focused and thus has people waiting ages to get a full group and be able to play)

- the game is not beginner friendly (beginners cant make currency with ls, they get kicked from veteran groups, solo isnt a great option these days)

- the dead economy ( great gear is worth nothing as its not needed to play the game, there is way too much average gear for the number of players)

- the lack of challenges/competition ( blacktrack 1-71 has become the main way of playing to reduce the playing time. ovjectives arent needed)

- there needs to be much more constructive(!!!!) discussion between the community and the creator again as we once had in the early versions
( suggestions or update notes shouldnt turn into a spam fest, yet the wishes of the community should be heard and considered by the creator)

...

All of them are connected with each other, so we would need suggestions that help improving them again...



Additional Ideas:


I still like the idea of making whites sellable so that we have some kind of ingame currency again
epecially for beginners to raise some funds just like we had with mutables before it became a skill.

Therefore, wells should be guaranteed on EVERY map at least once.
If you clear a whole map, one should get a well for sure as reward somewhere in there.
Its still hard enough on high levels and bigger maps and one can not well tier XIV items on a lvl 1 map anyway.


And last but not least... we need a way to get income form ladder slasher. One could still debate if its pure fg or something else.
It cant be that people have to play other games in order to afford playing ladder slasher. It should be a way to make fg.
In the beginning, this was one of the main reasons people came here and also then STAYED and spend there fg here again.
At the moment, the economy is somewhere near death.

Another thing is the price of the vault that never adapted to the economic situation.

- 25 slots cost 1200fg a year, most rather would need 50-75 slots as:

- they need to put in their climbing gear which is more than 25 items usually
- hold shrinables items ( especially for casters to get mana, since low tiers wont give much recovery )
- hold wellables, as they need to find a well and cant switch a character when they have no one to hold it

- On top of 7 days of guild transfer which cost 100fg x 4 x 12 = 4800fg a year.
No small guild can pay that any more...

There could be features added to finance these things. It was often suggestion to give pure fg rewards for something ingame.

Another idea for a vault would be this:

- people could find vault pieces or something like that by killing mobs or by doing all objectives or whatever seems appropriate.
- if they can gather a certain amount of them and stack them together, this will result in 25 slots for a month or guild transfer days

- a needed basis of vault would be free then and allow players to have a vault without financial issues, yet need active playing and work to get them together.


Thats it for now, feel free to comment, discuss and make your suggestions...

Great ideas and very well thought out. I like the following:
Faster autopilot, i don't even care if its smarter
Sell-able whites
Chain
Vault pieces or someway to get cheaper/free vault

The currency debate is harder to solve, one thing we need to bring back is the thread that has what items people are buying for skillers. At least that's a few fg every climb.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

Regarding the skillers thread, we still have this here on softcore: http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=60608527&f=273

But due to the economy issues, most skillers including myself struggle with fg themselves and either quit or reduced buying skillables.
Thus in the long term, there needs to be something else as skilling alone isnt bringing back enough fg to buy more skillables.

I just started and I never experienced most of what you talked about (arena). Tbh I like it but from what i hear it used to be alot better. I like the selling whites part, its kind of like selling unid annis, i think it would boost the market alot! I had to invest a portion of my fg into the vault like repviously mentioned and it sucked haha.

Question: Has the idea been brought to paul to restart the ladder and have like a competition goin? Offer a percentage of the fg he makes off the market fees as a reward, like first person to successfully complete 5 mqs get a portion, 10 mqs, etc.... ? I feel like that would boost the market too. There are alot of people on this forum that have simply never played it, and even if paul could get them playing for a few days / week would get the market moving imo, and a percentage of them would stay and play

This post was edited by Hiccup on Jun 27 2013 06:48am

The ladder "resets" (restarts) when an alchemist passes the master quest. Tell Ristvall in my guild to get that done for all of us. As for Fg "rewards" as you suggested with your examples.... I'm not to keen on that. I'm all about the integration of Fg into LS, but not so much like you said. I'll explain more later.



@NaRa: I'll post some feedback when I have time. Currently at work. Good suggestion though.

This post was edited by MrMoJoRising on Jun 27 2013 06:57am

Alright thanks for explaining that. And yea i know its been some contreversy about ot, I just figured it would jumpstart a ls movement for the first few weeks while people struggle to get to first few mqs

I am no expert by any means so take what I say very lightly especially when it comes to LS let alone any topics about to be discussed but this is my two cents... I too wish that there was away to gain low amounts of FG for sell-able items. Right now I am in a basic stand-still because of me not really being able to afford decent gear to climb, however I also understand if that happens yes, Ladder Slasher will be flooded with players which is not a bad thing because it will revitalize the game. However also, FG will degrade tremendously. I do not want to see something njaguar built over the years (which holy cow think about how far D2JSP has come... and how long) turn to garbage because of an implementation of gaining currency for items sold. Rather gain FG, why not implement an in game currency only, which is only used to purchase LS specific items however nothing of real "Value" (I.E. Healing Items of some sort only. No weapons, armor, charms, etc...) This would let new people play the game, and like myself when I am in stand still be able to actually gain a way to play longer than 5 minutes, go to town and recover for 5 minutes.... etc... And to finish off this idea. Make the healing style items cost a pretty penny. So it would still limit how fast ladders are climbed but give the solo player a more realistic approach...?

Again, I hope I don't sound silly. I am no expert but this is something I would enjoy playing more if I was more able. Please though, do not make a way to gain FG for items sold. This is will crush all economies across the entire forum.
Edit: Also, when the ladder resets for all players. Have the in-game currency used to purchase healing style items reset aswell, so you never have an unfair advantage. Or even have it non-transferable currency between characters and every time a MQ is attempted reset that characters in-game currency to give no unfair advantage to anyone, anyway.

This post was edited by KrynDelios on Jun 27 2013 08:02am

are u sure u are a teacher and not a writer ?
with all those walls u posted this week u can make a book

now as for the suggestion u know i like it !

where is that damn like button

edit :

about the vault guild transfer days, maybe we can implant gold drops from mobs like u have IGG so not fg
and set the drop ratio of gold that way that it wont over do it but not to less as well and when u collected a
XXX ammount of gold u can buy transfer days.

or maybe for every 25 GP's a guild receives u get 1 guild transfer day

This post was edited by Dream_Theater on Jun 27 2013 08:29am

You are way off base with your comments about Fg and economy. First of all, trying to transition LS to a currency other than Fg will pretty much destroy the game entirely. This game will always be strictly attached to this website through use of Fg. Second of all, a thriving LS economy will have no impact on what other people play across these forums. There once was a time where I sold multiple items for over 100k Fg EACH, and 30k, 40k, 50k items were being sold left and right on a daily basis by the community. Did not notice at all any affect to other games economies. That comment about crushing other economies across the forum is just ridiculous and has nothing to do with LS.

E: AT work, so not much time to get into detail, but that post threw me for a loop. Had to respond.

This post was edited by MrMoJoRising on Jun 27 2013 08:16am

I would love a way to make the vault/ guild transfer days cheaper. I never find anything worth really selling so I'm not making FG on this game to support my vault or transfer slots for my guild.

I would love some of the other options you mentioned but this is one big one for me.