The Revelation

Eidra

Did the tide creatures get stronger again?
I just got tanked by a beetle.

Leviticus

The reason question is how do these shrines work? Because I unwinded the thing and after like 10 billions tide creatures it's still standing.

Siduri

I stopped caring about splinters when it became evident there was no math involved, just a Deus Ex Machina button press.

Xaden

Siduri said:

I stopped caring about splinters when it became evident there was no math involved, just a Deus Ex Machina button press.

Fear not Siduri! It can get (and has gotten) worse.

Klendathu

From reading the MSC logs, I can only assume there's been another surge. Seeing RL days' worth of effort disappear in a couple of hours is frustrating.

Cooper

I left at 10pm last night, came back at noon today.

When I left, the Tide was in the Savannah and Central Wilderness, but about 10 rooms in either direction from getting onto the path to Mhaldor.

Log in today, it's one room away from defendable and just a few rooms away from our shrine.

It's also taking 5 kills to clear each room.

What. The. Fuck.

Silvarien

Cooper said:

I left at 10pm last night, came back at noon today.

When I left, the Tide was in the Savannah and Central Wilderness, but about 10 rooms in either direction from getting onto the path to Mhaldor.

Log in today, it's one room away from defendable and just a few rooms away from our shrine.

It's also taking 5 kills to clear each room.

What. The. Fuck.

I think we're dealing with narrative tension. Event is logically ending soon so the tide has to be at its worst before we put an end to it. I think there may have been a miscalculation on the Garden's part on the amount of tension involved because stress is high, anger is high and fatigue is high. I read some of these posts in the various threads, and I know these people to be awesome people but it's kinda looking like some of us are going out of our minds at this point. I know I am.

Epifania

Being processed sounds pretty amazing right now. 

Siduri

@Silvarien - Agreed on the dramatic tension bit. However, you can't pretend that a certain mechanic is mathematical, and have your players work on that assumption for a full RL month, if it's not really in their hands. That's causing a severe trust rift and completely undermines the player agency that we saw emerge with the Coalition (or any other faction, really).

Cooper

Siduri said:

@Silvarien - Agreed on the dramatic tension bit. However, you can't pretend that a certain mechanic is mathematical, and have your players work on that assumption for a full RL month, if it's not really in their hands. That's causing a severe trust rift.

No idea where you're getting information that the shrines aren't based on math/essence relinquished. The shrines have automatically gone to partial/fragmented/etc. every time, and Makarios has given insight on the forums as to essence works.

Siduri

Cooper said:

Siduri said:

@Silvarien - Agreed on the dramatic tension bit. However, you can't pretend that a certain mechanic is mathematical, and have your players work on that assumption for a full RL month, if it's not really in their hands. That's causing a severe trust rift.

No idea where you're getting information that the shrines aren't based on math/essence relinquished. The shrines have automatically gone to partial/fragmented/etc. every time, and Makarios has given insight on the forums as to essence works.

Yeah, that's what I meant about a severe trust-rift. Hard to take it at face value.

Silvarien

Siduri said:

@Silvarien - Agreed on the dramatic tension bit. However, you can't pretend that a certain mechanic is mathematical, and have your players work on that assumption for a full RL month, if it's not really in their hands. That's causing a severe trust rift.

@Siduri : I don't really know, in my role, what is going on mechanics-wise as well as some of you. I tried hunting shadow monsters with Carmell and Szanthax, got 7% at lvl 99 hammered out of me in under an hour, I tried to collect shards and couldn't do that too well either, and thankfully was able to do support when Lady Czan suggested it. I am a lot more out of the loop than most of you because I just stand on clouds and sprint to you guys if you need me. Not really a slacker thing, but I don't understand the mechanics.

Silvarien

Daeir said:

We were never going to "win" this phase of the event. People are going to be forced to make some VERY difficult decisions in the coming days if the Tide keeps at its current strength. If it surpasses it, I'd say we're starting to enter the Tsol'teth victory condition phase.

We've seen that the shrines repel the Tide even when broken - the fact that we're over 3 weeks in and still have no shrine fully raised despite that revelation is a testament to how utterly and intractably fucked we now are.

And you know what? That's perfectly okay. We've not even really seen any "mass" casualties since the Tide hasn't breached into a city yet. The Tide's maybe knocked off a hundred denizens, absolute tops. Wait until it starts getting into cities and we see deathsights of entire districts of people and regiments of guardsmen being lost. Then you'll know shit's getting real.

I say this entirely unironically and without a shred of sarcasm - if this event potentially leads to the dissolution of a citystate because they were unable to form a sufficient defence against the Tide in any reasonable capacity, then it'd be totally acceptable from a lore standpoint. The Tsol'teth are serious business, and I think people have forgotten that.

@Daeir : as a writer, I assure you that anything, even the most unlikely outcome, is possible. Plot twists to the totally unexpected are essential to good storytelling. For example, all of our shrines' powers might flow to the one most developed, repair it, empower it, give it the power to trounce the tide. It would be our work because we chose which one to fill the most, but the God so empowered does the rest. Not saying this is going to happen, but stuff of this sort is memorable, and this game is constantly described as a book being written by the players. I have no clue what's going to happen, but it'll probably be big. Let's wait and see.

Kresslack

I think the whole intent is to have people exhausted and at their wits end, their judgement starting to cloud, starting to second guess whether or not this new imminent threat can be stopped in time. While it may be a frustrating experience, seems like it lends the needed seriousness to the event and sets the stage for the big finale.

Who knows, maybe another city gets destroyed.

Aereidhna

Epifania said:

Being processed sounds pretty amazing right now. 

This.

Tahquil

Not every book is written by J. K. Rowling. Sure the heroes maybe getting tested now but instead of coming out victorious and glorious there is a chance our asses will be George R. R. Martin'd.

Frederich

I think it's mostly just frustrating to go to sleep for 3-4 hours (because we absolutely have to eventually).  Having numerous areas surrounding your city completely clear.. and then waking up to...

"TEMPLE OF SLEEP AND DREAMS HAS A MELD SHRINE.
BARONY OF DUN VALLEY HAS A MELD SHRINE.
TEMPLE OF THE SKY HAS A MELD SHRINE.
THRAASI HAS A MELD SHRINE.
AALEN HAS A MELD SHRINE.
MOGHEDU HAS A MELD SHRINE
ACTAR HAS A MELD SHRINE
CAER WITRIN HAS A MELD SHRINE
SOUTHERN VASHNARS NOW HAS A MELD SHRINE"

Like.  We worked our ass off (myself especially included for coordinating people and sobbing grossly to myself) for days upon days.. and in the span of 2-3 hours.. POOF.  GONE.  BYE TONS OF WORK!

At first, whenever this happened the first few times, it was slightly interesting.  It made us go "hoshit" and have to actually watch our ass and plan carefully..

But after numerous days upon days of this happening time-and-time-again.. it isn't making the event fun.  It's just making us go "Why the fuck do we even bother to be here if nothing we do actually means shit in the end?"

Take tenith'oru for example.  He's hiding in [REDACTED] and gave us a new ability to combat the tide.  Why did he do this?  So we can better defend him.  What doesn't he tell us?

How to break the god damn protection from the meld to get the bodies so we can protect him.  But no, he's just like "fuck off i gave you a new toy.  You just have to find out how to get it to work through a mechanic that hasn't been discovered/hasn't been talked about at all."

The Coordination is at it's wits end, and not because of 'bad choices'... because there's been some pretty damn good choices, and we're pretty much all, barring a select few, working to get Prospero's shrine up... but with 500k+ essence being dropped in for the sundered state... (which is probably the 75% marker)... and still nothing occuring and fog just getting everywhere.  (PS: Lord Prospero's shrine only had fog on it twice.  Once for all of 10 minutes, the 2nd time for maybe 2-3 hours.)... It just becomes a "Why are we even trying?"


tl;dr

The event stopped being fun after the 5th or 6th 'surge' that takes place and in 3-4 hours undoes 3-5 days of work (if not more).  Unkillable tsol'teth (mostly unkillable.  Gotta use dem short-wind-up insta-kills) with 3-4 of their own insta kills and ability to instantly vanish if there's even a smidge of a chance they might get fubar'd.  Tons of ganking and "well I ATTACKED YOU WHILE YOU WERE AN AVATAR.. AND YOU DEFENDED YOURSELF FROM ME (solo)... SO NOW I CAN ATTACK YOU WHENEVER I WANT!!!"... and just.. The tide.

Don't get me wrong.  Some people are really enjoying the event here.  However whenever we try our best, and get shot down/rail roaded at every corner, the event doesn't feel like it's actually an event, and more just a "fuck you that's why".  Our choices don't seem to really matter/influence anything, because that 'choice' will be undone in about 2-3 hours.


On that note though, I won't be around for the next few days because I'm in the hospital undergoing some testing because they think my cancer is coming back.

Yay.

Aegoth

I mean... you guys wanted the event to be more dire, have more consequences, have more -realism- to the danger. Here it is... and now you're complaining? Come on. Just accept that it's utterly hopeless, bow to your new Tsol'teth overlords, and pray that Cooper will save you all.

Frederich

Cooper's getting gang-banged on all sides in Mhaldor from the fog.  I don't think Cooper's gonna be able to help.

Also; if this event leads to a dissolution of a city state ( "WHICH CITY HAS THE LOWEST AMOUNT OF PEOPLE WHO CAN DEFEND?!" ) I'm gonna be.. kinda upset.  Shallam fell from a thing that literally killed gods.

Cooper

Oh yeah? We cleared the entire isle, Harae, Creville, Xhaiden, and push the fog back to almost the savannah :P We're good again.

YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER! (Our power since lots of people have been working hard at it).

Frederich

Now watch, and be amazed, as in 3 hours.. it's entirely undone.

Frederich

Update:

Looks like the way to get corpses was bugged.  (and was the first thing I guessed).

Now it's fixed. Rejoice, and watch people try to hunt the tide and end up getting ashtani-ganked.

Also... in the first post, I remember saying that avatar's can't dragon form because it's 'a lesser state' but... I really beg to differ.

I mean, I can have 25 con with p. respectable stats everywhere and dragon armour and a ton of defenses to hunt the tide in.. or I can be a weak and feeble monk-avatar with a lot less health, sass, and a lot more of my ass getting beaten because #Level99.

Aegoth

Avatar-status is shitty because no arties. Arties make a huge difference, especially while PKing. 

Frederich

Yep...

It's a great status for people sub-dragon... But once you hit dragon, the difficulty spike in the tide monsters require you to be a dragon with arties, or else you flat out get rolled... and Avatar Status also means #OpenPK so... yeah...

Atalkez

They seemed to be weaker while I was Avatar.

Edit: I bashed as Avatar for nearly 2 hours, 50+kills. Alternating between sub-80 and dragon level fights. The fights weren't scary,  even took 2 at one point.

Frederich

Oh sweet, is that change new, or did I just jump on the bandwagon of people saying "BEING AN AVATAR AS DRAGON LEVEL AND HUNTING TIDE IS WORSE THAN BEING A DRAGONNN"

I'm leaning towards the latter, in which case.  "Oops my bad".

Melodie

Sort of hilarious this is apparently the thing, I remember trying to help @Taraus with a group of ours do this really, really early on when the monsters were new. Was fairly much impossible and didn't seem to do anything special at the time.

Florentino

Daeir said:

We were never going to "win" this phase of the event. People are going to be forced to make some VERY difficult decisions in the coming days if the Tide keeps at its current strength. If it surpasses it, I'd say we're starting to enter the Tsol'teth victory condition phase.

We've seen that the shrines repel the Tide even when broken - the fact that we're over 3 weeks in and still have no shrine fully raised despite that revelation is a testament to how utterly and intractably fucked we now are.

And you know what? That's perfectly okay. We've not even really seen any "mass" casualties since the Tide hasn't breached into a city yet. The Tide's maybe knocked off a hundred denizens, absolute tops. Wait until it starts getting into cities and we see deathsights of entire districts of people and regiments of guardsmen being lost. Then you'll know shit's getting real.

I say this entirely unironically and without a shred of sarcasm - if this event potentially leads to the dissolution of a citystate because they were unable to form a sufficient defence against the Tide in any reasonable capacity, then it'd be totally acceptable from a lore standpoint. The Tsol'teth are serious business, and I think people have forgotten that.

Forget destroying one city, pull a Negan and blow up two. That'll teach our playerbase to eventually tire of participating in a never-ending free-for-all brawl with no apparent win conditions and Dark Souls-like difficulty progression, mwahaha

Skye

Atalkez said:

They seemed to be weaker while I was Avatar.

Edit: I bashed as Avatar for nearly 2 hours, 50+kills. Alternating between sub-80 and dragon level fights. The fights weren't scary,  even took 2 at one point.

One of the things that definitely made it easier was that Avatar has passive aff healing (thanks @Antidas lol) so you don't get stuck in blackout, for example.

Taszya

Hey I know I've arrived and started playing the game late in this event but can I ask about the Unwind cooldown. 24 hours is a bit much for one, in comparison to how fast this is progressing...is there a reason for the restriction or can it be lower? Just seems demanding...Thanks.