so i read on warcry about the revsion of the october letter to the players. they will be adding a skill and changing the way salvaging works, which is really cool.
they mentioned this balancing they did to counteract the games that people play to exploit the reward. i never would have thought to use the cooking skill to exploit a reward. who thinks this stuff up?
i am really all for balancing the game. i have had my gaming life seriously impacted by the things that turbine has had to do in order to counteract the shinannegans of macroers and the like and i have been hurt a few times. not being able to sell crafted items has hurt my cash flow, especially now that olthoi don't drop the same kinds of loot they used to drop.
i have a bunch of mages (two 3schoolers, three life hybrids, and three pure mages) that will all need level 6 spells very soon, and i am having issues getting the cash to buy them. see, i use buffs a lot, but they are all *MY* buffs. i actually cast my own buffs, level 3's or 4's or whatever the toon is able to cast, so life for my guys is pretty expensive between spells and comps. i am fine with this, i just need to find a good place to hunt for loot. as much as i hate the place, it's looking like the phyntos menace is a good place to hunt for it, at least until i can hunt a toon in a matron hive or the dires.
i also don't take many gifts from others. i have a couple of tinked items, tho not many, and i most of them have been tinked by my mule, tinka. i have powerleveled her a bit, it's true, and now i have a guy pushing XP her way, but i have never put her in an XP chain, nor have i combat macroed her. for a while, i did use her to robochef healing potions which i sold, and for all the effort i guess i ended up with two MMD notes for the trouble. i am not sure it was worth it, but the cash did get all my mages and hybrids at the time into level 5 spells. now there are quests and stuff to help level trade characters and make a little money, and katusa will also help level her, i think she is viable again as a character. this is an example of a good balance to taking something way.
all this is leading to why i don't like macroers or other cheaters: turbine has taken great strides to eliminate them, and sometimes those eliminations have hurt me. i have complained a bit about it, but in general i have lived with the changes. there is always talk of banning third party apps, and i think that that is where i may draw the line. i use magic alot because i don't have much luck with finding really nice items. the bulk of my charactes are mages because spells are easy to get and the only way to get ready access to a complete set of buffs, is to cast them on yourself. this is tedious, unless you use an app like nerfus buffus to do the buffing for you. i have put up with nerfus and decal breaking with each patch, and i will have to admit that for the last few months, life has been good.
if, in it's desperation to stop macroers and other cheaters, turbine does ban 3rd party apps like decal, then people like me who use those apps to take some of the tedium out of playing may be left out. i have to hunt in dungeons because the lands out in the open are full of very high level monsters. the hi level monsters are there cuz the everage toon is like 200th level, unlike me. so to get anywhere i just run like hell and hope i don't get killed. then i tie to the portal of the dungeon you are looking for and recall there until i outgrow the dungeon. this is how all my dudes hunt thanks to the outrageous level to the content in the outlands, which i am sure is in response to all the macroed toons running around complaining that there isn't any content that challenges them.
this is why i don't understand cheating... if you are going to cheat and max out, why bother playing? i know why they do it, becuse they want to be the biggest and the best. that's fine, be the best, but then why would you want the game to be remade to challenge you? if you maxed out in the shortest possible time, then move on, don't hang around an skew the balance for us real players. honestly, where do they come up with this stuff?