I didn’t want to waste a lot of time on this PTS since it’s an exercise in futility given how the majority of feedback has been ignored dating back to the Alvir’s Legacy update (so basically one year).
First of all, there aren’t any new resistance levels (I spent some time datamining the client and Bluehole Ginno has not been actively working on anything new; I will cover the specifics in a different entry) so this isn’t an issue. According to those with Patron, the red-eye rewards are still the same which also is not surprising since Firecait covered that in their last live stream.
That also speaks volumes; if there was a decent revenue stream coming in from their revenue sharing agreement, Ginno would be switching out the soul bag quickly. They’ve instead chosen to make sure the only way players can acquire more Capricious tokens is by running the raid (since they know the dearth of content that exists to keep players occupied anyway).
As far as this patch, the sloppiness of the cut/paste is telling…. just take a look at some of the piece names for Hellspawn gear across all the classes. This is just a cosmetic issue BUT realize whomever is left working on this PC version at Bluehole Ginno, is also cutting/pasting code snippets. Following is the cannoneer example.
As a result, level 60 branding runes are also bugged (does not roll amplification). It is NOT intentionally disabled where Bluehole Ginno or Trion specifically did not want that property to roll on those runes because it defeats the purpose of compelling players to level up their artifacts as high as possible (which is tied to how the game is monetized). Not saying it could be intentional due to other ulterior motives (like branding rune extractors for example which we naturally do not have any proof of).
The damage scaling and monster HP scaling for Fallen Castle Hell is very specifically tuned this way on purpose to at least give a challenge to the top geared characters in each class on live. It’s also meant to try and keep everyone else who isn’t as geared busy for the next few months. It isn’t going to keep the top geared folks occupied/challenged for very long though, Anyone can do the math to figure out the approximate damage and mitigation breakpoints since the power creep on this was lazily performed.
Since the folks I normally play test with weren’t on, the following is just the first 14 minutes of a solo Fallen Castle hell run (it takes awhile to solo clear to the final boss with a glass cannon “chicken running around w/o a head” class). The numbers (mob damage and health) need to be increased for each additional party member (since again, this isn’t an archdevil dungeon – but there are also benefits in a party due to instant revive). I take damage (to show how hard they hit), try and hit mobs with just main attack, try to do damage in multiple ways to show the damage/crit/penetration numbers, etc.
Basically, any really well geared character already on live should be able to solo clear the majority of this dungeon (it will still take awhile but Chimera legendaries will fix that a bit). And a party of well geared players will still have a challenge BUT can complete this dungeon without much issues (and two well geared ones can carry an undergeared one as needed). We were able to clear this on PTS without much problems with a mixed party (myself, tempest, evoker).
My character stats are shown before the first mini boss fight which I cut off once the mini boss hit 50% (ideally during this, you want to also focus on taking out those elemental healing stones). The stats on this character are “limited” by what runes I could get (artifact amplification ones I just used Bloodstained runes and didn’t bother trying to get all the right properties since just refining them takes time and I didn’t want to waste a lot of time on PTS), don’t have maxed 5-star talismans (the ones I have are a result of opening over 500 gemmed boxes dating back to the previous PTS). Devilian level is only 22 and I only have level 3 vitality and rampage rune socketed.
When I say limited, I mean in reference to this update; on live, this character still would not be in the top 5 but it is representative of what an average well geared character on live will be coming in with for this patch. Refining those pieces (not all are to max) took around 450 stones (on live, I would not even consider using this much stones on transitory gear like Hellspawn OR anything before actual end game unique tier). To go from +9 to +15 on weapon artifact, I burnt through 1524 G7’s and 1220 Ael’s Pure Tears (using Alvir’s Pure Tears would consume a lot more G7’s in total). That is just for weapon socket. This number is within the ballpark for the amount that it took a player who did it during the 6.0 PTS.
Again, anyone can do the math as to the amount of real money one needs to spend in order to short cut the material acquisition part; what took me around an hour to do with the supplied test consumables (hitting the refine/ok or cancel button and enchant for the artifact) is going to take the average player over an year of constant grinding to even reach a fraction of this. And this game will more than likely be comatose by then because none of this money is still nowhere enough to fund production of actual new content.
The before mentioned lack of dailies for all of this plus the prior level 58 DF and raid dungeon are also part of this list as well as invasion tickets for dungeons that Bluehole Ginno may have changed their minds on (like I got a bunch of Ruined Citadel Heroic invasion tickets which have also been dropping since Alvir’s Legacy) and the dungeon invasion chest gave me nothing but that during this PTS tryout. There are some other issues including being able to glitch the mini bosses under the right circumstances. I didn’t bother trying the level 60 Dimensional Fortress.
With that, I am done with previewing this mess and don’t know if I will bother playing it on live except to just run Abyssal Tower for XP (and in/out zero point challenge to farm gold pouches).
Addendum: the reason I didn’t just use Capricious armor (higher refined main stats for the socketed pieces given the bugged Hellspawn runes) was because I wanted to see how well the Hellspawn numbers held up. I know I was handicapped with the loss of main stat (plus I had bad luck with runes for the Capricious earring and I didn’t want to waste a lot of time).
If the Hellspawn rune issue isn’t addressed (highly likely it won’t be), then yes, Capricious (refined) will end up being better as transitionary gear (except for the weapon even if using a Bloodstained or Morbid rune with amp+main stat fully refined).
Also note that the dungeon is solo clearable ONLY up to the boss (this is what happens when you cut/paste other bosses into that room without better fine tuning). This particular Hell dungeon final boss room (at base +0) may NOT be solo clearable until later in the level 60 cycle when the power creep exceeds Chimera (the attack on the weapon is only around 400 more than Hellspawn which when calculated with the extra main stat increases on the rest of the set, may not provide enough damage).
This was also (finally) a shrewd move to get more players into PTS (they should have known this from ArcheAge since some players make that games PTS their home server due to the fluffy commands to get a lot of stuff for testing; players can effectively experience the content) since players will see where they need to get their gear at on live. Translation: make whatever sales from DEX, credits, or the new packs they will be releasing.
