Well, after long absence, I am back. And now that I am back, I think it's time we talked about Raids. Most older players tend to agree that raids are broken. They've upset the game something fierce and it's easy to see why. Hell from what I gathered, MW:LCN is already experiencing the effects of raids breaking the game balance. Here's a few reasons why they are broken. Let's take a look at a hypothetical viking. You started as level 1 and went to level 2150. Leveling has become stupidly easy. Stam/Energy/Health is the way to go. Now, on paper that might look great, but it's anything but. First of all, you're playing massive catch-up in regards to your own bosses and adventures. And I mean massive. 13 lands worth of adventures and bosses. The bosses will take quite some time, as unlocking them tends to demand you kill earlier ones multiple times. Secondly, thanks to not having a real economic base, your base bounty is somewhere around "Oh, how cute, it would be a shame if someone were to chainlist your cheap sorry ass. Oh, I am doing it, silly me." Have fun with all those looking to cheaply get their honorable bounty achievements. Third, in relation to 1 and 2, your inventory sucks big time. Due to the raids you have a few dozen awesome items. If you managed to farm literally over 2k raids with bare minimum of investment, you might even have over 2k great and awesome items. And the rest? If you managed to get a full clan, you'll need 10k weapons and 20k warriors. Have fun getting to a viable (for your level range) inventory. Fourth, the items themselves. Put bluntly, you are screwed, again. For a Viking you need 2 warriors for each weapon. Oh, look at that. Raids drop 2 weapons for each warrior. Dayum son, I reckon you will be farming for quite some time to come. (Pirate drop 1/1/1 Weapon, Matey, Ship) If the 2:1 weapon to warrior rate holds up (and over literally ten thousands it damn well should) getting 20.000 warriors from raids means doing around 60,000 raids. Even purely farming them with 1000/1000 investments means investing 60 Million stam and 60 Million energy. Sure, after this massive investment you have an inventory that most likely will guarantee you victories for quite some time to come, but you're also well in excess of level 50,000. It is pretty much the same on Pirate Clan, 60k raids needed for a full raid load-out. And that's maybe the worst problem with raids. If you do not invest a literal ton of money and time into farming them, you are going to suffer badly when using them as means of gaining on the old guard quickly. Sure, it's pretty easy to close up to them, doing 300 raids by yourself will allow you to reach level 25,000 easily, but unless you're willing to farm literally ten thousands of raids with always the bare minimum and always relying on others to finish them off, you're going to face people who have gotten to where they are by investing in sensible ways and building themselves up in ways that allow them to slug it out with people who worked their way up the same way. They can take a beating, but they're also more than capable of dishing out the hurt in ways the quickly levelled understrength newcomers can not. Hell, I have seen people on Server 2 who levelled up with raids who neglected basic things like "Maybe buying at least 1000 hired chiefs may be a good idea" and "I might need more income" Sure, a lot of the old guard are unhappy as the newcomers shake up the leaderboards, but there is merit to their complaints. These people do not know how to really play the game, only how to pay for it and when they're caught in a situation where they can't pay for it, where they have to measure up against raw power (and possibly malice) of another player, they tend to fold and become upset. We need to adress both the concern of the old players, the issue of raids letting people advance too quickly and making them weak for massive stretches of the way up and the fact that raids are pay to advance on the leaderboard and when done 'right' aka farmed pretty much pay to win. And, finally, we as players need to consider that KANO needs money to continue with the games and cutting off the revenue from raids won't help with that. By the way, 60M stam are equal to 8k 7500 stam refills. 80k FPs. $12,500 for stamina refills. If anyone is interested in the price tag of using only farming to get a raid item only loadout. Energy refills can be bought via the leveling rewards easy enough. Now, presently, I can't see any good solutions. Abandoning them would give the game time to rebalance, but also cut the revenue stream they undoubtedly are. Limiting their XP payout? People become reluctant to commit, after all, they must either be ready to kill a raid by themselves if no one steps up or a lot more raids end in defeat and nothing but XP is gained. Raid revenue goes down the drain. Keeping things as is is merely asking for trouble. The game environment can already be toxic at times, letting an issue like Raids continue to fester and splinter the playerbase between old guard and new blood will lead to lots of headaches down the road. MW:LCN is already showing signs of this happening. So, discuss, what are your experiences with raids and raid leveling and raid levelers? Please keep it civil, it's a contentious issue with no good solutions to it at this moment.
