Toreth

Since the dialogue is open in regards to Relics being changed, currently, it’s too easy to capture Relics as an attacker and very difficult to defend relative to the effort needed to attack/capture them. One noticeable mechanic in Relic Defense is the “Lead Defender Nerf” from holding multiple relics. Currently, the lead defender stats down to 40% after 6 relics owned is a big burden for any guild aspiring to hold more than a couple of relics and defend them. To make Relics more balanced between attack and defense, I think we could adjust the Lead Defender Bonus to make it less punishing to hold more than a couple of relics:

# of Relics            Lead Defender Bonus

     1                                 150%

     2                                 120%

     3                                 100%

     4                                  90%

     5                                  85%

     6                                  80%

Adjusting will allow guilds to fight for Relics while still suffering from a penalty by holding too many. The scaling proposed will still give the advantage to guilds holding less Relics while keeping it competitive for those who want to hold more.

Arioche, it seems HCS has, again, gone silent here aside from the predictable Double Composing Experience, 25 Levels added to the “cap,” and a Global “Kill the Critter” Event. With the (presumed) Double Experience Event quickly approaching, we can also all assume that there is going to be a “new content release” of levels for those at End of Content to level through as well. This is where your voice could (and should) come out to help the community of FS.

You want feedback from the community but aren’t providing the community with the ideas you may have logged for the game. The community is merely going through motions most days now; whether it’s SE hunting, going through the new 25 levels of content, or only just using the stamina on Globals because there’s nothing else to use stamina on should be pretty telling. The innovation is nearly gone. HCS has left it in the players’ hands to figure out how to make fun out of the mundane; those who are remaining have done that, but the community has been “building their side of the bridge” for a good time now, while the community feels as if the other side isn’t being built at all for whatever the reason may be.

At the risk of sounding cross, there has been a catastrophic failure on the community relations portion front of the game in regards to HCS to player interaction. When the customer service area of the game is subpar, though, it’s hard to put full faith into HCS moving forward in regards to keeping the players’ best interests in mind. The community wants to see progress; the community isn’t holding HCS back, HCS is holding HCS back. There is nothing that we, the community, can do to help you all if HCS is going to continue to sabotage itself and the relationship it has with its players. What more does HCS want from the players? I’m not sure there’s much else the community can do.

Aside from being a broken record, I can say that the only reason I log in anymore is to speak with friends which I don’t necessarily need FS for. I WANT to be able to play the game and for the game to be fun, but as I said, there isn’t anything that requires any thought or general strategy outside minor niche situations. This is a game, after all, so why not make things better and more “game-like” requiring a bit more from the player aside from the mindless “going through the motions” actions each individual takes now?

Good afternoon Toreth!

 

I understand there may be frustration around how long it takes to get through the changes that the Players have asked for. There are indeed a number of buffs that still need to be looked at, but instead of throwing them at you all at once, we wanted to be a bit more cautious and allow Players to try out what we do change and then begin to give us feedback   I am very much aware of Tilley10's post. It is a great resource and full of constructive criticism that kickstarted these changes in the first place.

 

There are a few things we are working on in the background, so this has ultimately affected some other areas. 

 

What I can say though is that we do plan to bring some updates to the Arena Store, as well as tackle some of the gear issues.

 

We only ask that you bear with us! The team are also working hard on making the app the best it can be.

While I appreciate the quick response, there still lies the underlying issue of transparency with changes. As others have said, HCS should keep some of their cards to their chest - showing everything would take some of the excitement of surprises out of the game. And yes, while surprises are good, having EVERYTHING be a surprise could be detrimental.

A lot of the issues where changes need to be made comes down to a simple principle: We, the players, see and feel the effects of the changes first-hand whereas you all, the developers, generally gauge what needs to be changed based on numbers and project what's going to happen based on those.

I am a firm advocate for numbers as numbers don't lie - how they're presented can. We, the players, are the ones who are going to be the ones to provide the guidance needed for FS. You want ideas on navigating arena? There are players who know the arena. You want ideas on fixing the bounty board? There are a slew of players who have potential ideas. Yes, you all sit and brainstorm ideas to fix various aspects of the game that we all play, and that is greatly appreciated. The key component that's missing, though, is OUR input. We are the ones who are going to be divulging in the various aspects; I'd wager to say we're also the ones who have an idea about how to go about making overall better changes for the game we want to see succeed.

I tend not to post on the forums unless I find something that strikes as “necessary” as evidenced of the Frag Finder “findings.”  That said, I do believe it necessary to bring up the elephant in the room regarding the state of Fallen Sword yet again. Nearly two months ago, you created this thread to ask for general feedback and ideas, however, there has been little to no traction on anything. When asked about specific things in your original post, there was already a previous forum topic posted by my dear friend Tilley10 providing a list of the buffs which could most notably use a rework or fix; what has come of any of that? Naught.

We received the update to cap the buff-able levels of “Unbreakable, Deflect,” and “Fumble,” at 175, and while the overall change to “Deflect” and “Fumble” were met with mixed feelings, the changes to these three buffs have been largely negligible.

Aside from the aforementioned negligible change to these three, the only additional thing that has happened since is the Easter Bunny event (twice), due to the server and lag issues. While I understand that probably detracted from some of the progress in certain areas, we, the players of FS, still haven’t heard from game admins about any other potential change, improvement, or addition to the game we all choose to partake.

Now, as EpicPiety has pointed out, is the time for more transparency from the Hunted Cow Staff. The players understand, to a point, that things happen sometimes, but when you come in to provide an outlet of communication for the players directly to the admin staff only to “pull the rug out from under” the players, it doesn’t help the lens of the vast majority. The “ball” is now and has always been in HCS’s court, so when you decided to reach out to the community, it was a breath of fresh air, so to speak. It’s now gone silent once again, and FS has fallen into a deeper lull as the issues over two months have caused a few of FS’s prominent players to be met with bans. We aren’t asking for you to divulge why they were terminated – we know that won’t happen. Why are we in the dark when it comes to the future of FS, though?

We can’t continue to fall into the vicious cycle of the same events that come and go on the weekend-ly basis. It isn’t necessarily “spicing” the playing aspect of the game up for anyone outside a possible select few who choose to play everything that comes out because “well, there’s nothing better to use my stamina on.” The fact that this is even a thought should be an issue already, but the cycle of “LE event -> Global Event -> Composing Event -> Rinse/Repeat,” is so drilled into the player that it’s nearly expected what’s going to happen. There isn’t a driving force to get excited about coming here outside of seeing any potential new Legendary creatures and the gear they drop. Even still, the rate at which Legendary creatures spawn and gear is dropped is so high, that anyone can farm for their own doing. The incentive is lost.

I believe there is a major component that gets lost when it comes to the producer and consumer relationship; we are here for you just as much as you are here for us – if not more. We all play this game for many different reasons and all have different goals and aspirations moving forward. What are HCS’s goals with FS? There still isn’t any transparency and the players, as they’ve always been, are in the dark. We’re all running on fumes as it is – it’s time for that transparency and change.

Mythbusters is back! Albeit without its founder, RJEM - may his FS account rest in peace. That said, I will never be able to replicate, exactly, what the wonderful RJEM was able to produce during his time with FS, I would like to make an attempt to carry even just a slight portion of the giant mantle he created for something of this magnitude.

Now, let’s get to what everyone came here to see: the results!

When Frag Finder was introduced with the new Composing Levels, it was a sign for potential “easier frags” for all of those looking to make big moves on the frag farming front:

Frag Finder: +0.1% chance per point that a Fragment Stash will drop the maximum number of Fragments

This sounds like an easy win for those looking to maximize their frag gain during our beloved Global Events that HCS so graciously provides to us. The question proposed here, though, is, “is Frag Finder worth using to maximize my optimal frag gain?” To answer this question, two separate hunts were done initially to see what effect Frag Finder would have on the optimal frag income as opposed to the original frag hunting way.

As we can see by both of the graphs here, the amount of frags gained per 1 stam and per 1 kill is actually GENERALLY LOWER when using Frag Finder during your hunting sessions. When using Reckoning and the usual frag farming buffs, you actually still yield more frags than when taking the chance by adding another potential buff for Reckoning to activate on.

Hmm...well that doesn’t look right. Farming with Frag Finder actually yields less? Well, then what’s the point in having Frag Finder around as a buff at all? That brings us to question number two: is there a feasible use for Frag Finder, and if so, where?

What if we were to turn off “Auto Open Fragment Stashes,” farm frags without Frag Finder first, then, when our hunt was over, use Frag Finder on the stashes that we have allowed to drop to our backpack? Seems like a lot of work, but let’s think a little more about it: I gain the positives of only using Reckoning, Conserve, Animal Magnetism, Lady Luck, and Find Item without having the added buff of Frag Finder for Reckoning while also gaining the benefit of Frag Finder at the very end for the frag stashes that have dropped to my backpack. That seems like a lot of work for minor benefit. On top of that, how many people would benefit from using Frag Finder this way? Probably only the minority who are able to keep a large number of open Backpack spaces to allow those frag stashes to drop.

While looking at some of the numbers throughout the farming process and testing Frag Finder, it was also thought to take a look at just how often Frag Finder would potentially activate throughout the time it was used. Three separate farms were conducted over the course of the Piñata Global Event that just occurred: 3000 kills were completed without Frag Finder while auto-open frag stashes was turned on, 3000 kills were completed with Frag Finder DURING the hunt while auto-open frag stashes was turned on, and 3000 kills were completed where Frag Finder was used ONLY AT THE END as frag stashes were allowed to drop to the backpack. The overall yield here shows that Frag Finder at the END is the best option, no Frag Finder AT ALL is the second best, and lastly, using Frag Finder during your hunt actually provides the least benefit. Wait, what!? That also can’t be right, can it? There must be something wrong.

Let’s take a deeper dive here: when manually opening frag stashes, you are provided a log message that shows when Frag Finder activates as such:

With the use of Find Item and Lady Luck throughout the 3000 kills, a drop was gained 821 times; out of the 821 times, using Frag Finder 200, a log message as above was displayed only 15 times. 15 out of 821 times sounds a little low at level 200. Revisiting our skill description, we should hope to achieve an activation rate of around 20%, but 15/821 = 1.82704%. A-ha! That might be a little bit of a problem. Is there a misplaced decimal point, or is the lower activation rate intended and the skill description is what needs to be adjusted?

While I do believe in outliers, the difference between 20% and 1.8% (2%), is much too large to be a simple outlier - stealing a page from the great RJEM’s Find Item findings, I hope something here gets taken a look at for the benefit of the newly introduced buff. HCS, we could really use your input here, even if it’s just taking a little look over it to ensure things are working correctly.

While generally I prefer to be the "counter-argument" type of person, I'll bite first here. I voted "no," and while those before me have listed a few reasons, I'll either reiterate or put my own perspective here instead.

If you want to "hold" a relic as it currently is, you have to work as a guild to do so, and I think with your proposal, that wouldn't change. What would change, though, is a simple move of who the "lead defender" is based on either an "elected" or "appointed" position, but then I would have to ask why that would be necessary. As it stands, the highest level player is the "lead defender," and rightfully so, in my opinion. In what way could the highest level player being the "lead defender" be a negative outside of them wearing Epics all hours of the day? Your highest level player has access to ALL of the gear available to them not to mention the best possible stats given access to their potential Level Up Points which would then be inflated by the buffs and potions that affect them.

From my perspective (and only mine), this seems like a guild-only "strife" and not something that affects the game as a whole as most everyone else seems to have coped or figured a "work-around."

There are a couple of "fixes," for the lead defender, though, and both are rather easy, again, in my opinion:

• Have the Highest Level Player Wear Appropriate Defending Gear Instead of Epics
  • This seems like the easiest solution as it only requires a simple change of gear, not to mention it maximizes your potential as a guild for defending the relic
• Have the Higher Level Players Who Wear Epics Move
  • Again, a fairly simple fix, and while it may decrease the defending stats marginally, if you want to defend effectively, higher level players can move over to different relics.

I haven't put much thought into potential other "fixes," but these two were off the top of my head. The "strategy" and "interest" are moot here as holding multiple relics already has the defending guild suffer stat penalties as it is. There isn't really "strategy" involved if you can just run "Reign of Terror" with some of the potions and swing into a guild holding 4-6 relics. It's ALMOST an "easy-button."

I agree with Grim. If people want their added bit of XP, have them participate and earn it themselves.

Like he said, if you give people an option to buy it, it removes them from that aspect - sure, they'd like that, but there has to be give and take. You want the XP gain? Earn it.

I recently came back to the game due to a long spell of being inactive only to find that more and more people have been, and currently, are leaving due to the QoL of the game. There are differing opinions from each individual about how they think a certain aspect should or shouldn’t work. Spot on – we’re all humans – we all have our own opinions. That being said, we haven’t had too much interaction with the Cows on where the game is going in certain aspects or what we can expect from them. We, as the community, have questions that aren’t really being answer unless there is a definitive answer right away (see buying reserve stamina post from earlier). There are aspects of the game that are dying little by little, and there doesn’t seem to be much that is being done about that.

GvG has long been on the back-burner, but the community has been working diligently on trying to come up with solutions to fix it. Ryebred has an amazing thread that he started where the community has really put in a solid effort into making GvG better collectively:

https://forums.hunte...showtopic=75384

Here, we have been told that the Cows have been monitoring this thread (this comment was made in April of 2017 and again in May of 2017), but we still don’t have anything to show for it. We’re going on a year of a truly, well thought-out idea to overhaul an aspect of the game that has been here since the game’s inception. Please let’s show it some love.

Titan Hunting is another generally stagnant part of the game (albeit with the exception of the new Gospa Perchta). The supply for these items is always high while the demand has become so low, it’s almost like people would rather not waste their time with going after them. In order to inject some life into this, there has to be demand for those items. Gospa was a step in the right direction with being able to invent multiple items across different levels. Maybe even cycle titans out or use the current Titan drops the way the Inferno Hammer and Writhing Ward were done. There just has to be a way to increase the activity for this without creating too much hassle. Yes, Gospa has created hassle, but only because she’s only around for a limited time. This doesn’t have to be the case for every titan.

PvP Ladder – a great way to try and test the might of those who actually prefer to fight against each other without the frustration of “Ah! He hit me for my gold!” You can look at the ladders and there are very few that are active. In fact, a lot of them look like people opt in simply because there’s only 1 or 2 people hitting. Hey – 3^rd place is still accruing tokens, right? Somehow, I don’t think this was the intention behind the PvP ladder bands, but here we are. Again, just injecting something to “spice it up a little” would do the ladder wonders. The potions are by far the best reward from being on the ladder.

PvP Arena seems to be fair overall and I know items are added every so often, but I’m not sure as to how often. Just setting a precedence would be wonderful. Again, give the community something to look forward to.

Leveling is leveling – Content comes and people blow through it. Then it comes again, and people blow through it again. I'm not going to dive into this because I can't speak intelligently about how the leveling content is going.

FS is a wonderful game. ‘Tis why I came back after years of inactivity (due to RL). I had some friends welcome me back with open arms and can say I’m glad I’m back and active again. On the other hand, I’ve also had friends that have gone completely inactive – a lot due to the QoL of the game. The community knows that HCS is busy producing for all of their games, but FS has been the staple in the HCS network. The community isn’t really asking for much – just don’t let the game we love keep dying.

What are the odds we will have anything reported on before the new year or even Easter? Surely since it's being actively developed you have projected dates for things and theoretical deadlines. Nothing has to be promised just a estimation on when you think. Just something to up our enthusiasm.

 

Even something as little as you might see an update in the next say 3 months.

This. Yes please.

I know I asked in Global Chat about a possible roadmap, and the answer was a "negative." Due to the fact that it's more of a hassle than what it's worth.

Maybe not a whole roadmap, but what EP is hinting at is maybe just "give the players an inch."

I like the thought of the app as I play from mobile a bit, and even being able to more easily buff or 100-stam someone would be absolutely wonderful - we just want to be kept in the loop is all. 

First of all, let me be honest in saying I didn’t read all 10.5 pages so far, so if I’m reiterating some things, I apologize.

Stealing your format, Rye <3

Format: The idea of seasons sounds wonderful. It would definitely bring a competitive side out of the guilds who actively participate in GvG now and should breath some air into it for the guilds that don’t. The amended 3 month season with 1 month tournament seems like a grand idea as well - a timeframe that is long enough to give everyone a fair chance to make that top 25. Having seasons would garner more attention overall, I feel, and keep the conflicts going.

Recognition: Guild Trophies. Yes. They’re small enough that they warrant very little benefit overall, but still provide a sense of pride.

I’m going to add to this, though. Whatever happened to Guild Accomplishments? In introducing seasons and the trophies/medals that could go along with it, what about adding (a) Guild Accomplishment(s) to go with them? Win X seasons? Place top 25 in X seasons? Obviously the reward for completing the accomplishments would be in line with the accomplishments already presented but catered more towards how the accomplishment was achieved. Maybe something along the lines of: “Increase Duration of RP buff packages by 120 minutes?”

Player Medals concurrent with Guild Trophies? Yes, again, if for nothing else but for pride and for use with Pride. Another way to increase potion duration is never a bad thing. In fact, it helps tremendously in all facets of the game.

Rewards: It may not be a popular opinion, but this is also a perfect way to introduce new RP items. Make them worthwhile, though. They don’t have to be used to invent epics. Look at the top few GvG guilds - how many use epics the way those who don’t GvG do? I’m not saying they CAN’T be used to invent epics, but new GvG/PvP oriented sets/potions would be nice as well. With as many items that are floating around in-game, using resources from the PvP ladder or whatever else may be, could also be an option. This helps the market for those items as well. Watch the trade between players commence, right?

With the Trophies, I saw where it was talked about doubling or tripling RP gain. I think that’s a big no-no. Not because it diminishes the value of RP, but because double and triple just seems like too much in general. A flat rate increase of 5-10 would be okay, though. Yes, I’m aware that 10 would still be a triple RP gain of a standard 50 hit conflict, but to gain 60 from a 100-hit conflict is too much. A marginal 5-10 increase for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places seems more than fair. Even then, an 100-hit conflict garners 25-30 RP.

As I read some, the top 25 would still be able to GvG those outside the top 25 for normal RP without rating transfer. I completely agree with this. This will cut out farming those guilds who don’t care or weren’t quite able to make it for rating gain. In addition to this, I read where RP gain would be halved against guild who have less than 1,000 Rating. Why not take this one step further to cut out obsessive farming? 900-999 is 1/2 RP gain, and under 900 would be 0 gain. It is a competitive aspect of the game, and making it so those who really have no desire to participate don’t have to get hit after X losses and 101 Rating loss. Not to mention in doing this, you cut out RP farmers and make them hit people who might care a little and, at the very least, would buff one or two of their guild mates.

Added Bits: Updated RP buff packs NEED to be added. Rye addressed it, so I’m just reiterating, but they are long out-dated. As I’ve said above, this is a competitive scene. Let’s keep it that way.

Rye, you also talked about only gaining RP for the initiator if the initiator wins. This is how it currently is and needs to stay. Nobody should gain RP on ties. The fact you didn’t lose rating should be enough.

Overall, this is well thought out, and I support it. Obviously with a few tweaks, but it will definitely breath air back into a dead aspect of the game. Wonderful job, Rye.

The sale could still be in effect until the 22nd, and there could be options for instant delivery or delivery on the 22nd.

This.

This would appease both sides of the players. Those who planned to level with their boxes would have them, and those who just buy the FSP on Christmas because it's the best deal all year will be fine with them coming out later as well. Hell - those who use the boxes on the other 2XP event in the summer could save their boxes for then.

I feel like it's fairly straight-forward as to what the best option is.

I also want to say thanks to HCS, though, in even letting this be up for discussion. After seeing some gaming communities absolutely die because of lack of dev involvement, seeing the moo-moo's active is a breath of fresh air for the game. Well done. I think I speak for all (most?) by saying thanks for the involvement you all do have with your players.