Hey everyone
I thought I would share a little bit of feedback concerning PvE and leveling in general since 2.3 came out. I'm a returning player from Terra so I haven't played for a few years but I'm still up to date and the game didn't change all that much since then, except for the newly added patch.
TTK (Time To Kill)
Having our damage globally lowered with the new damage system is an issue in PvE, since the mobs' HP haven't seem to have scaled with the new system. It takes a lot of time to kill anything in the game right now. It can literally take you 4-5 hits of a rare weapon to kill a level 25 mobs, let alone kill a room full of /127 ranked mobs at Ceres labs or the like. I also believe this is an issue in PvP.
Rare weapons vs non rares
By now a lot of people have noticed an issue regarding the rare weapon situation, let it be in both PvP/PvE, it is often better to use a lower TL version of you cap it better. It makes you loose incentive for hunting rare parts a lot, and the excitement on finally getting your hands on a rare weapons. I would see rare weapons doing around 35% more damage than its non rare counter-parts. Also, I'm guessing less skill required to cap the weapon damage% could be a thing.
Leveling
Regant being bugged at the moment, and after a few things getting fixed by Zoltan regarding CRP irregular damage, both CRP and El Farid seem to be the best places to level up at the moment. Ever since I came back, I find leveling to be way, way too long compared to before. It has been argued that Regant shouldn't be the only place to gain levels, which I do agree with, however since we haven't been able to yet create better PvE/End-game leveling diversity, it may be wise to reopen it so you are not clogging the PvP scene. I have seen a lot people say "But it's Regant, it's high game content i should be hard!". It has nothing with it being hard. As a matter of fact, Regant has never worked correctly since its release back in NC2. The mobs don't do distance damage, and their melee is bugged half of the time. Concerning the current issue with the boss, even if you survive him, his mobs will die as the resist on mobs is currently not working. basically, we have one extremely OP boss mob and other mobs that are super easy to avoid and spam AoE on. Nerfing the boss isn't ideal, but it's a necessary step in the meantime. Talking about teams, the server's population just doesn't allow you to easily find a team, this is a simple fact.
I know you should work hard toward the leveling of your characters, but this gap is way too big at the moment. It is an interesting idea to make other caves work as well and create different ways of leveling up a character rather than the EF/CRP/Regant meta, say make Desert Cave, Swamp Caves and others worth going to as well. Speaking of which..
Single target vs AoE leveling
Everyone knows that AoE leveling will always beat single target leveling. Not saying it's impossible to do, but it just takes so long and thus make caves like Desert Cave, Swamp Cave or 'wild hunting' not really worth it, leveling-wise. I don't think single target leveling should be on point with AoE, but having single target be around 60-70% as effective as AoE cave leveling would perhaps encourage players to drive away from the AoE meta leveling and give them more freedom as to places they can do decent XP (have drones, pistols and rifles be all viable ways to cap your character, drones being the fastest, but the two others being slightly behind and not completely behind).
Specifics
- Monk DEX: It's nice to get some when in a team, but the rate should be way higher, still too easy to baet with Rhino repair/TL150 ress missions
- Monk INT: I will never understand why Monks gain less INT xp than Spies. In the current leveling system, I wouldn't even dream of reaching INT 100. Too slow!
- Global CON: I find CON to be painful to level up still, could make it better for other classes (except Tanks).