Just expressing a bit of frustration. There were a few items which were added on the test realm and removed pretty quickly (ALL chat, for instance, a good idea this didn't make it out) but it is pretty clear that you stopped listening to our complaints after a while.
I like crafting, but I think the treasure card crafting is a little heavy handed. But really, the big problem is with the 'enhanced bosses', ie, introducing endorsed cheating to the game.
I thought certainly that 100k health for Malistaire was a starting point you would continue to monitor with the test realm, little did I realize that is what you intended as an endpoint. It is an extreme example, but it sounds like teams of four grandmasters are no longer able to take him down -- I have not yet tried, but then I am now wary to.
I was hoping that since I hadn't run into any INTERRUPTs since the new stuff was added, that you decided to put that one off or shelve it entirely. Unfortunately this is not the case.
Oh, and stun shields were added over much protesting, but even worse, the stun itself now seems not to work. What's up with that?
Why do you have the test realm at all, if you don't listen to us? It seemed to be rushed into the regular game, and I think you will lose people over it.
Side note: I'm really liking Grizzleheim. I think if you had added that and the new chat, you would have been fine.
I can understand your frustration, but I don't think it's a matter of Kings Isle not listening.
All Chat: I heard a lot of user comments against it. Just too much noise, with little purpose was the gist of it. Group chat is very helpful.
Crafting: haven't had much experience with this yet. It does seem to be rather work intensive and sometimes time intensive (cooldowns).
Treasure card crafting: mixed feelings about this. The library is significantly reduced and with the exception of keen eyes and tough, there isn't a whole lot there for me. But I get the concept that crafting had to have some kind of tradeoff. Why craft if you can just buy it from the library?
Malistaire: you seem to presume that it should be guaranteed that four grandmasters should be able to take out Malistaire. What would be the point of that? Perhaps they lost due to strategy/tactics/luck of the draw, fizzle, power pips, etc. If it's almost guaranteed that four grandmasters can take him down, then it becomes a game of target practice. Where's the challenge and satisfaction in that? I will say even the bosses should play within the rules of the game that everyone plays by. Up his health, sure. Call minions, sure. Cast a spell out of turn, NO. Cast a higher level spell than what he has pips for? NO.
Stun Shields: well, KI is in a bit of a catch-22 here. In the forums, it seems the number one complaint in PvP is chain stunning. Fair/unfair is irrelevant; it's a tactic that uses what the game supplies. But people are very frustrated with chain stunning and watching their wizards get pummeled helplessly. KI came up with stun shields to try to address this.
Well the problem with all chat was that it was completly unusable. I mean just with the limited folks on test it was hard to see or do anything with it, imaging if it was on live it would be over 100x worse. NOW I did give a suggestion at the time which I "assume" they didn't have the techical ability to do at the moment which was make the all chat specific to the partiqular city your in. Meaning it would be all of wizard city if you were in wizard city, or all of Krokatopia if you were in krokatopia so on and so forth. Spamming, obsenities were also an issue with the all chat, which isn't very conducive for their game rating. The thing thou that is the worst part, is that you seriously need that channel to form groups for the "new" "enchanced" "cheating" bosses, as it is now it is hard to find folks to form a group.
I know there was alot of frustration over the enhanced encounters on the test realm, but they went live anyways. At least we talked about it, unfortunatly no dialog from KI on their point of view.
Crafting OH my what a pain, we were forced to do it the way it is on live. Although I will say that KI did listen a bit to us. The amount of mistwood required was dramatically lowered and the number of items to make for the first quest was also lowered. We had to deal with a resource item reset meaning all of that gathering that happened was for not. I still don't think anyone made it to the dragonspire tier for crafting, so that is probably going to be a problem when it hits live. I also see the one bug where you don't get a time slot from completing the first quest made it to live. Unfortunatly or fortunatly it doesn't happen for everyone so it was/is hard to track down.
TO ME, based on other game's beta's it seems that this one was really pushed out, and also a HUGE lack of communication. I assume the originial beta wasn't like this but frankly I don't know I didn't play at that time.
