At the very least, I would like a guarantee that this server is safe, and wont spontaneously disappear or otherwise be taken down some day. But in all honesty, I have 3 things I would LOVE to see:
- New end-game content:
Regardless of whether it's a trial, task force or something new altogether, some sign that the story is continuing would be nice. The Coming Storm has plenty of options for new/improved content. It would be nice to see Firebase Zulu get an overhaul similar to Dark Astoria, and would serve as a great area for new incarnate content. I'm sure by now we've all seen/heard talk about genesis powers, and it has left many hoping for additional incarnate abilities (although I think the game's content/difficulty needs to catch up to the current state of incarnate abilities before adding more). Regardless, there is a large number of people leaving the game once they hit the current brick wall after defeating Tyrant in the Magisterium iTrial.
- Fix PvP:
I dont think there's a single pvper out there who is content with the current state of pvp. It certainly wasnt perfect before i13, but it was most definitely better than what it is now. Between the PPM functionality of procs, the god-awful mez system and blatant lack of proper power balancing has left players with little options beyond playing a blaster or a stalker. Honestly, any attempt to fix pvp would be nice, since it feels like we've pretty much just been pushed aside. If the dev team needs any ideas on where to start, I strongly recommend communicating with the leaders of the pvp community. Dan, M3z, Macskull and several others are incredulously knowledgeable with the mechanics, and have done a wonderful job testing out pvp and trying to keep things as close to balanced as possible.
Speaking of power balancing, that brings me to my third, and possibly most important desire...
- actual, proper, unbiased power balancing:
Blasters. Where do I even begin? While I am happy that new powersets have been created, more time and attention needs to be applied to them. Most of the new powersets still function on pve stats while in pvp(stalker's psi melee, dark control, defense's poison, ALL of the new blaster secondaries...), and others barely function at all (ice melee, kinetic melee, dual blades...). On top of that, there's also the ridiculous amount of focus being poured into snipe attacks, while doing nothing to compensate for the lack of damage in sets that dont have one at all.
If ANY of these three things are actually taken seriously(especially the new content), that would be amazing. That being said, there are a couple other things that I think need to be considered:
Dayjobs:
As any badge hunter can tell you, obtaining all of the day job badges is obnoxious, and doesnt just encourage, but actually FORCES you to stop playing in order to get them. While it may seem like a mild inconvenience at most, when coupled with a lack of new/challenging content, it is leading to a number of players outright leaving the game for a month or more. Encouraging players to NOT play the game, in any fashion, does not seem like a healthy model, especially for smaller communities like ours. I dont necessarily have an idea for improving this at the moment, but I do feel it needs to be discussed.
The dev team's mentality/treatment of players:
This one may get me in the hot seat, but it needs to be said regardless. Our dev team is terrible at interacting with the public, and has outright ignored serious issues on MULTIPLE occasions. There is one player in particular who is responsible for the Magisterium iTrial functioning properly, @Sillow. He, along with his group, identified the SERVER-BREAKING crash caused by Nega Pendragon's multi-hitting attack AND supplied the devs with both functional work arounds as well as a proper fix for the issue. Despite all of this, he has received NOTHING in return, not even the Bug Crusher badge, which is ONLY awarded by the devs for finding/reporting bugs. Several bugs have been found/reported by the SG Veracity, yet nothing has been done to fix them, nor have any Bug Crusher badges been awarded to them either (at least one of these bugs were even caught on a live stream). In addition to this, there have been several issues with sexual harassment in-game, which have been TOTALLY ignored, despite the mountain of evidence shown. To me, this is completely unacceptable, and needs to change IMMEDIATELY. The devs don't need to be in constant contact with the players, but incidents like these are the few times when action is required.
