rest wrote on Feb 5^th, 2014 at 3:35pm:


I don't know about railroading, but BB definitely affects pugging.  Should it?  No.  Does it?  Yes.  But we should be talking about what is, not what should be.

Just as one example, I have seen LFM's up for hard runs that I have not joined because I first "needed" to run the quest on Elite ("need" being subjective here).  I don't think I'm alone in this behavior.  So at least in that respect you have less people joining PUGs, which in theory hurts the game overall.

I can only speak for myself, but if BB wasn't there I think I'd be much more likely to join hard or normal runs and therefore be in a position to potentially help out newer players.

One quick fix has already been suggested elsewhere.  Doing a hard or normal first-run could only drop your streak by one "notch" (i.e. from 5 to 4) instead of taking it all the way to 0.  So you still pay a price to join that run, but only a small one that is easily made up.

GooFY wrote on Feb 5^th, 2014 at 8:21pm:


See, this makes me scratch my head. I have levelled at least a heroic toon and a half sans opening privileges, and my main thing is I will  NOT post elite need opener LFMs because I will not be that guy. First life xp is so easy to come by it is not necessary. I really found it trivial to level, and I hooe not too much of a burden, (apart from the time I joined an elite von3 running genuinely not realising my latency was at the 4 second mark (don't ask) they found the humor worth the 10% )

Heh, remove BB, you will kill even what's remaining of social panel.
Say it was your idea and you might find raging vets on your balcony, not just pigeons.

Dropping BB really fucks over players who TR.

Yobai wrote on Feb 6^th, 2014 at 9:31am:


Adding more half baked systems doesn't fix the root problem.  If the root problem was TRs need more XP, or the XP needed to level TRs was too much that seems like something really simple to fix.

Flav wrote on Feb 6^th, 2014 at 1:35pm:


Killing BB will absolutely NOT make me more prone to run normal or hard. Nor will it make me more willing to pug.

You know what I pugged this life on my melee FvS? In The Flesh. Elite. For bravery. I wouldn't have been able to solo it, and I'm not willing to do hard or normal. If that LFM hadn't been up, I wouldn't have bothered to run it at all. If I hadn't gotten an extra 50% for the quest due to BB, I wouldn't have even bothered to hit the LFM.

I mean really it boils down not to how good of a player you are, but to knowing your limitations. Maybe that's a hallmark of a good player: knowing what they can and can't do. Or maybe I'm making excuses for being a shitty player. I don't know the answer to that one. What I DO know is that if BB didn't exist, I wouldn't bother with half of the quests I do. Once and done on elite is FAR superior to e/h/n/n/n/n/n/n/n/n/n/c the best xp/min quests like it was back in the old days.

And you'll never see a return to the old days where doing Stormcleave on elite at level 4 or Madstone on elite at 9 was a thing. They've already put in stupid level lock-outs on parties to avoid exploits, I can't imagine they'll ever go back on that and bring back the underlevel bonus.

And besides, how are underlevel bonuses any different than elite streaking? To get the best bonus, you want to be as far below the quest level as you can possibly be to get max XP. In the current state of the game, that would mean that shitty puggers join LFMs for underlevel quests and just fucking die instantly. It would likely be a much worse problem because elite BB means you're the same level as the quest, in most cases. So people wouldn't put up LFMs anymore than they currently do. Why would you take some random asshole instead of a friend/guildie/channel mate that you can rely on?

Do you really believe that bringing back the underlevel bonus would mean people would be more willing to do normal or hard? I don't think that's the case. I'd say a bigger problem than the elite streak 50% bonus is the 80% bonus for first time elite. I'm no math wizard, but 80% is more than 50%.  What was the old underlevel bonus? 10% per level? So to equal the elite BB streak bonus, you'd be doing level 6 quests at level 1. Level 13 quests at level 8. Level 16 quests at level 11. Does that sound MORE pug friendly to you? Tell me honestly.

Cripey wrote on Feb 4^th, 2014 at 2:46pm:


Stormcleave.

Terebinthia wrote on Feb 5^th, 2014 at 10:20pm:


Tried reading this three times and I still honestly have no idea how this relates to what I posted.  I said nothing about first life, or needing openers.

rest wrote on Feb 6^th, 2014 at 1:52pm:


Same.

rest wrote on Feb 6^th, 2014 at 1:52pm:


You might have surprised yourself.

I was doubtful about Bravery In the Flesh, but I tried it solo anyway...and it was easier solo than most PUG runs I've done in the past for it.

(Delirium drinking contest solo, though...that was rough!  Far worse solo than even a crappy PUG.)

Grasp of the Earth dragon negates the stun during the drinking contest, I think?

I skipped In the Flesh my last Elite BB TR life because it was such a pain. Or I should say I wiped with a Pug trying it on Elite and then said fuck it, just skip it.

Flav wrote on Feb 6^th, 2014 at 1:35pm:


The problem is that Turbine has historical done a horrible job at this sort of thing.  Lots of people told them BB would reduce pugging options and with minor tweaks those problems could be reduced greatly, but they ignored anything that was not a "I love it" response as usual and we got what we got.