Belaric

Hello everyone,

It's been ages since I last posted. Looking at the boards it seems the energy has gone out of the place.

In the roadmap thread some posts by Toreth and others caught my eye. I also saw something in the locked PvP crystal thread I was unaware of.

Quick question then a suggestion I have made before, but maybe could do with being revisited. 

Did I read correctly in Wazzimoto's closed crystal league thread that the PvP Seasons code has been lost? I was going to suggest giving that a second go, as the code should be right there to implement. Grim said

"If you mean the old ranked PvP system we tried to implement, we've stated several times we no longer have the code."

Now, is that the seasons code, or one of the other ladder tweaks lost in the mists of time? I think it would be good to know for sure as I think the seasons now would be a very popular thing to see return, without the initial crazy smash fest, and as an event to opt in to with a decent amount of advanced warning so folk can prepare to participate.

So: just for clarification: has the PvP seasons code been lost completely?

My suggestion: many people say EoC hunting has become very rote. How hard would it be to code levels where certain buffs do not work? (Not ALL of them - unless the designers want to put a TON of thought into the stats of the enemies involved.) But for instance an enemy monster has high attack - flinch does not work. Random high arm/Hp enemies, smashing hammer does not work. Could that be done with a minimum of fuss? We have dark realms that require vision, why not chaotic magic realms where certain buffs that make hunting easier (DC, KE, Flinch, SH, CoAt, Codef, NMV, SW, AB etc.) are disabled? I would argue against the basic stat boosting buffs like Rage, Fury, Evade, Rock skin etc. but they could be included if folk liked the idea.

We already have the Soulless Enhancement that pretty much nerfs wither. So the mechanic could either be specific enhancements on creatures that neutralize some buffs, or, as I would prefer, a level specific toggle in the code that stops the buff working on that level - so it can remain active and be available for the next level/s. But if that is too tricky to manage in terms of code then sure, just switch it off completely and the player would have to recast when the buff can be used again on a higher level. I can hear the howls of protest as high level pot buffs get switched off, but do we want a challenge or not?

And this idea should only be for new levels, not introduced retrospectively.

I think the levels could be introduced with one buff switched off, then, as folk get used to it, combinations to make it harder. Instead of just flinch being switched off when an enemy monster has high attack, shield wall is also removed, etc. etc. Ratchet up difficulty over time.

And I think it would be better not to have runs of levels like that, but a level every say 5 or so with a different buff neutralized. Players say it is rote, let's make the EOC guys work again. The only problem with single levels is players could sublevel past them, which is why having them be obligatory to do via quest locked doors etc would be useful, but that is more work for the design team and I'm trying to keep it simple. So, on second thought maybe it should be 5 level bands of specific nerfs, so sublevelling would be a PITA for the stam economists among us.

Of course, being me, I would like this linked to a story element and/or quest cycle to explain why these levels are harder, but it isn't necessary.  I think of them as the veils in the pattern of Amber - where there is increased resistance to progress. It could be Shadow Lord related, a new incarnation of Xinderoth doing his thing, or a chaotic magic zone as mentioned before, or a new enemy sent to test the adventurers, go crazy. Obviously quest related content does then open the possibility of quest locked doors and narrower bands of obligatory difficult content - but that does mean more development team time, and this is a suggestion that I would hope to not be too hard to implement, hence my being okay without the storyline fluff and quests, though I think they would make the experience far more engaging.

So there you have it folks, a way to make levelling trickier again. What do you think?

Grim/devs: could this be implemented or is buff code/ enhancement coding (if that route was taken)  a nightmare no-one wants to touch?

Thanks.

I think this would be a fun way to reinvigorate the game for long-time players. It may be too development heavy to be done though - new classes and gear for those classes (like in SS) would be a lot of work. It would be great to have a way to play back through the game in different classes, with new class specific gear, class specific quests, enemies and story lines inserted into existing content, to make it new each time through, but that is a ton of new content to be created, and ultimately will it pay back the investment in time and resources for HCS? They'd need to do a feasibility study. 

Given we aren't getting some upgrades to chests and arena that have been asked about forever, I think a radical overhaul (essentially creating a new game as a continuation of the old) like this is unlikely to fly.

We can dream though! I like it.

As founder of a guild that often gets farmed, and we don't much care, (once in the bluest of blue moons someone decides to hit back and make a contest of it, can't remember last time we had a draw, let alone a win) I do not think an opt out is needed. Yes it's annoying having your gear chipped away/occasionally trashed, but that's what gold is for. Even guild gold, but I've never used it for that purpose. 

48 hour activity will restrict targets. Widening the ranges in response in GvG seems fair. Especially in the ranges mentioned. The problem remains fewer fish in the sea, but that's a structural issue. I'd love to know population numbers for the game now, and how many players are exclusively mobile.

Agreement on server times? I can see the appeal, but I think the initiating guild should still have some advantage, and negotiating a time could be like herding cats with guilds wanting their guys from X timezone on, and the other guild, that has done its homework, deliberately wants to avoid them. Agreements might be hard to come by!

Let's see how the 1 hour warning and time to prep (if you want to) shakes out. (I think that is a bit short, as I'm on a lot, but will still miss most 1 hour windows in a 24 hour period, especially when working, but don't mind trialling 1 hour at first. If it is insufficient, it can always be expanded.)

Thanks cows for working on this, and being open to a trial period. I'm up for giving it a shot. Trying something, tweaking it, trying again gives us all a chance to curate the experience so everyone has a chance to enjoy the game.

Look forward to the Arena tweaks and trials later this year! (Just for you, Shindrak, LOL!)

Congrats to the other winners, and to everyone who took part, there were tons of great ideas there, and I'm glad the cows may use some of them in the future!

We are seeking new players, we can't force them to play the way we played 10 years ago
 especially players using FS app,
 

My medal, your medal, his medal everyone's medal is worthless if we don't have an active game.

 

For example, look at the arena, i earned the first 10k wins in the hardest way when we had like 30 tourneys spawning only, and now more tourneys spawning and i don't care if new players earn their wins in the easier way and i can confirm many players joined Arena nowadays.

 

I hope some change happens to the ladder to stop players from promoting inactivity!

 

Sorry for off topic but everything connected together when it comes to stamina spending.

 

I personally can't negate any change that helps others to stay active or get more active.

 

I hear you. I want the game to be more active, and for the player base to expand.

But does making SE and chests easier to find achieve that? I think not.

Neither of those things are on a new player's radar. New players want to gain levels, to get access to new gear, to PvP when they get the chance.

Other aspects of the game open up after people get their feet under them, and start to look for new challenges outside of levelling.

That is where our/HCS's focus should lie. Get players past the inital level grind and get them to a place where they can choose different game styles.

I think new players should "grind" to 100 (which will be much easier once the epic quest line is expanded!) , then have perma DXP to 500 to accelerate them through those levels. Then they can look around and see what they want to do/how they want to play. I think this will make app players happy as it gives them gratification early, then the chance to try to do something different/ start tailoring their game experience to what interests them inside a large game ecosystem that gives them a lot of options. I think Gutie suggested this, or something similar, many years ago.

I'd actually be in favour of perma DXP to level 3000 for newbies, to hook them hard and get them to invest in their chatacters and the game.

So those are the parts of my lawn I'm ok with folk trampling on: early easy level gain. Medals should still be a challenge, however. Challenges also keep people interested. They give motivated players a target, a reason to spend stam. If you make everything easy, nobody cares to try. That is the balance HCS has to find.

I do not think we need a buff to make finding SE easier.

I do not think we need a buff to make finding chests easier.

I think this would constitute dumbing down the game: it would make something previously harder and/or tedious much easier.

I say this as a titan hunter who was within 50K of ruby when the titan doubler came out. I got ruby 2 weeks later, maybe less. I put in serious hours for those lower level titan medals. Folk who have earned diamond titan after the doubler came into existence have no idea how hard it was, or what the 6 hour grind you needed to do to secure the terror titan meant, when you were waiting, for hours, for a guild team to drop in and steal it. And sometimes they did, and you just had to suck it up. 1 HP at a time. I look back now and wonder why I bothered.

Get off my lawn. No really. I cut it nicely.

A long long time ago I made some suggestions about quest storylines driving content AND having implications for difficulty. I think it would be great to have a Shadowlord related storyline where we pass through lands he has prepared to test us, ("veils of shadow" or some such) with a major servant of his acting as the muscular, or more interestingly thematic, roadblock. I think I once envisaged "Shadow realms" of inverted existing content where some rules of the game do not apply - think a reverse Xinderoth where you work your way from the library down to the city (what cool storylines could be used there!), and have game areas where some buffs have been inactivated by the Shadowlord's power. I suggested the reverse realms when content drought was a big deal.

But imagine a crazed Shadow servant of negation, a Xinderoth that passd through a fractured mirror to escape our approach and went insane, but gained the power to negate magic. (This also allows there to be multiple Xinderoths, LOL) To get to him we would have to negotiate areas where Smashing Hammer is negated, areas where Keen edge or dark curse cannot work etc. We have dark realms - why not other realms where the Shadowlord or his minions block our acess to specific magics? More than warriors, the PCs are now all insanely powerful wizards (with 1000s of unused skill points) with access to potions and enhancements that crush standard opposition. Having areas that remove the buff based crutches we have leaned on for years would reintroduce real challenge, perhaps stop the automatic 1 hit approach, and have a storyline where we REALLY want to get to the bam that has caused us all this trouble and wring their neck.

For me this is the easiest way to generate a special in game experience - a good story tied to, (and that explains) changes in game mechanics that makes things genuinely challenging for EOC players for the duration of that specific storyline. Once introduced, those kinds of areas could later be replicated as part of future quests or special events. Yes, this might be a coding hassle, but as the team is overhauling the game for the app, it might be a good idea to build in the capacity to alter world areas and disable some buffs in some areas now, so it isn't a PITA later.

My 2 pence and 2 cents.

I haven't been able to play in Chrome or Firefox for a while - parts of the screen display, other areas black. I can play on the Microsoft Edge browser, (no extensions) but the lag has been awful, only stubbornness got me my kills in the GE, and that took hours of my life I could have spent re-watching Justice League.

Today I had a walking DQ. I had to key each step and wait for the mob list to load, or I got the walking too fast message and got no credit for the steps taken, though of course the stam burned in the unaccepted steps was still gone, a problem I've lived with for years, but remains irritating. So point and click walking is impossible. I had to walk 1000 steps. It took an hour I could have spent watching Doom Patrol.

It's bad when FS is less playable than SS2. Played that again recently, and it was fun! The mission storylines are so much better. Crazy times.

In many threads, across many years, I have argued against this.

I have said this is akin to fishermen, who, having exhausted the stocks of fish in their waters, argue for bigger nets, or ones with smaller holes so they can catch more fish to boost their catch.

All it does in the end is exhaust supply and kill off the stocks.

HCS, based in Elgin, should appreciate the analogy, I think.

If the fishermen get what they want, they fish well for a few seasons, then the well runs dry again. And they argue again for wider nets, always more so they can keep catching their fish. Even as the fish stocks die off, and in the end the fishermen destroy their own industry.

This has happened. Scotland has the largest fishing reserves in Europe. French and Spanish fishermen are desperate to come into our waters to fish, because their own waters are barren. Odd, that.

PvP players in this thread all think it would be a good idea to spread the ranges, widen the nets.

I'm sure it would be good for you, for a while.

I leave it to HCS to decide if they can risk the hit to their dwindling player reserves.

Was this really the last posted new level content? Seems like. I know it was a huge chunk (175!!), and that was awesome,and I stopped well short of EOC so I could gold hunt a few times, but closing in on 4 months later no new levels have been released. Will we get any before the next DXP?

Yes, to follow on from my Diamond artisan/no fragmenter medal ridiculousness, I have, after 3 1/4 years proved my empty point that you can get to level 60 composing without needing to break down items for frags. You just take forever to do so!! (I started composing a year after it started, and then on a whim decided to see how far I could go with no fragmenting medal, and here I am! Top of the world, ma!)

My thanks to WeeRapll and Lahona in my guild for getting to 60 way, way ahead of me and handling the composing duties for real while I fannied about on my pointless mission, now accomplished!

Now maybe I can do those DQ's that tell you to break down items...

I would like to know if HCS have analysed the results of this past winter titan hunting season.

I would like to know if they've paid any attention to how the personal cool down rule effected the number of secures. Up or down. Especially in those titans that were available in previous years.

I would like to know if all seasonal events going forward will operate under the same rules.

I'd really like to know that in advance.

Thanks.

I note that my personal cooldown on Wyld Mari was reset when my guild cooldown ended and I was allowed to hit Mari for TKP - so, in my experience, the personal cooldown does NOT last for the full 7 days, the Guild cooldown coming to an end also ends the personal cooldown. I am not surprised at this, given the activity of other titan hunters over the course of the seasonal event.

That pattern of resetting was as Hoof worded it way back on Page 1 or 2 as I quoted before. I do not think it should reset in that fashion, if it is to be kept at all.

I remain hopeful Hoof and HCS will review the titan activity over the season and see if this experiment worked as they wished, and adjust mechanics according to the data they observe.

Interesting you now want this thread locked.

Not sure why you had to start talking about forum posters. Nobody here is claiming to be a majority opinion, as far as I can see. I certainly am not. I hadn't noticed any screaming either.

Everyone has the same chance is simply not true. Everyone with TP200 maybe. And a good connection. That quite rapidly stops being everyone. Not that I was making the argument that everyone should have the same chance. This is a game and people can work for/buy advantages as they wish. I was saying that too many individual members of larger guilds are dominating the titan drops, and that this probably isn't healthy for the game, in my opinion. I was saying that personal cooldown is in effect a work around the Guild cooldown that was brought in for a very good reason, and should be reconsidered by HCS based upon the evidence of this season's activity.

Activity is good, if it is diverse across our community. I'd argue we don't have diversity of activity right now. I admit I may be mistaken. Again, HCS can look at the logs and see if they like what they see. I'm just asking them to take that look.

The only Ogliopoly I see is the one being newly formed by the larger guilds whose individual members are dominating the seasonal titans. Of course these individual guildmates would never dream of talking to each other about their plans for selling their items. Why ever would they? I'm sure they shall compete and undercut each others' prices to the benefit of buyers everywhere. Even if they did not talk to each other, the fact is that most sales of epics from this season will now come out of a smaller number of guilds, as so many individuals within larger guilds have succeeded at getting individual drops. I congratulate them, but I'm not sure it is healthy for the game. The smaller guilds actually were a wider spread of sellers, not smaller, so the Ogliopoly example you hold up does not hold, in my opinion, of course.

Recipes feeding SE and chest activity is good. I agree there.

When you personally secure a titan it's personal it's yours nothing to do with the guild whatsoever. Monopoly... Each guild can only get one drop of each titan each week? Definitely doesn't looks like a monopoly now and with the system continuing to age i don't see the possibility of it . Sorry i just can't agree because there are facts staring me in the face saying otherwise. If you look very carefully BG made the tkp cash out very efficient as well. So for those smaller guilds that simply cannot field the numbers it's no worry it's very cheap tkp-wise. The titan was well thought out. If a guild want's to secure a titan they need to recruit more members so they can field more members. But sticking to grinding TKP is almost just as good.

 

How can you call this a monopoly when you look at the logs and your seeing multiple different entity gaining TKP cashing out and various different entities securing the titan personally etc. Your misrepresenting what a monopoly is. There isn't a monopoly and it frankly really isn't even possible.

 

Just finished up a titan session a little while ago and this deep into the seasonal event there were 6 different people on the titan. Such a positive for the game to see this kinds of activity. Hoping the new updates encourage more activity across all facets like this .

Yes when individuals solo claim a titan they get the drop direct. So technically it is not going into the guild. But they are part of their parent guild are they not? So effectively those epics go into that guild system, or, at the very least, they do not go to any other guild. Multiple individuals from one guild gather up a bunch of drops from one titan over the season. Are we to imagine there will be no co-operation among guild members who are presumably friends to 1) help each other maximise their chances of acquiring these epics and then 2) sell them at best price (for those who wish to sell theirs, of course). Are we further to imagine that these large numbers of secures from guildmates within one guild, but who are for the purposes of your argument acting as individuals will have no effect on other guilds and individuals attempts to secure those same epics?

Of course they will. They will crowd out other hunters, other guilds. The numbers you speak of on each titan. Those are the facts that speak obviously to me. Quite different from yours, of course, but we can't have agreement on everything. And once you have a group of like-minded individuals acting in concert around one activity, you know, like a guild might, you have the possibility of collusion and creation of cartel-like conditions.

Again, I'm making this point for HCS - it is their call. But to try to say you are individuals when you want to be and guildies when you wish to be sounds a little like trying to have your cake and eat it. Which right now is what is happening. If it stays this way I'll adapt, but I don't think it will be good long term. You can of course disagree, and we'll find out how it goes. I'm just asking HCS to look at the pattern of drops and the guilds and individuals that have claimed the drops, and see if the pattern that emerges is okay with them.

Good to hear on the personal cooldown not being reset - thank you for that information. I was waiting to see what happened with mine, but felt the language Hoof used should be flagged for clarification, as it gave the impression that when the guild cooldown ended personal cooldowns would end too. Of course, the fact that personal cooldowns are in effect and we are still seeing so many personal secures just tells me that there will be very little to stop large guilds filled with individuals who like titan hunting to as guilds and as individuals from dominating titan drops in future. Cooldown was originally created to prevent that kind of dominance from guilds. So now we will have a return to that, under the guise of letting individuals in big guilds hunt freely when once they couldn't. I suppose we'll have to see if anyone else in the community finds that to be a problem!

How long before arguments are made for personal TKP, and that trying to secure and getting nothing is unfair? Six months tops, I'd imagine.