Forays: A Review.

Veldrin

Yeah, no, there's absolutely no point in buying artefacts if you're adding them into the scaling. The way forays are now there's no point in me trying to engage in them. I've spent hundreds, if not thousands on upping my survivability in PvE and you're downright just telling me that it's a waste of my money and my time because you're gonna negate their effect. As I posted before Aran'Kesh just outright annihilated me doing over 70% of my max health in a single hit

Silas

Absolutely bewildering stance. People pay thousands of dollars for artefacts to give them an edge on whatever part of the game they enjoy. By counting any artefacts into the calculations for foray scaling, you're negating that edge and devaluing those artefacts to those players who bought artefacts.

If you were doing it in an interesting way, by having foray bosses act differently if the party is wearing certain artefacts, doing different attacks or changing their mechanics in some way, then sure, you're creating challenging and rewarding content. Having everything just have a fuckton more health and do a fuckton more damage will just make people stop doing forays - especially with people with those artefacts, since now someone having those artefacts negatively affects their group if the group isn't also mega-artied.

Astounding that anybody would think this is a reasonable way for the admins to look at forays.

Astarod

Phaestus said:

Astarod said:

Why wouldn't you just make it easier? You want people to enjoy this, right? The point is to create an activity that will generate logins and possible purchases.

There's a difference between easier and trivial. The point is to create difficult and engaging content that feels rewarding when you complete it.

Astarod said:

Why would people buy your stuff if when they possibly need it most, it negatively impacts them.

No artefact impacts you negatively. As I've said multiple times at this point, most artefacts are entirely unaffected by the scaling, and those few that are still offer you advantages, just to a lesser degree than standard hunting. This isn't going to change.

 I enjoy the difficulty. I don't want them to be trivial. I just feel that every time we figure out a way to complete it, there's 10 completed attempts and then you guys tweak the system to lower completion rate. Fortress is my favorite foray, and I don't want it to be obscenely easy, but I don't want to be damaged out every three seconds with no way to mitigate via curing/runes/defs. I'm not asking for these to be trivial, but I think your definition of trivial and mine are entirely different, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't reply with a smart remark to that. 

I just don't see why these guys have to hit for obscene amounts of damage. SoA doesn't proc enough to make up for it. My Sip and Con gets overrun. Instead of making these forays more accessible, people are seeing their best PVErs get brutalized by the grunts, and then obliterated by the boss (should they make it to the boss).

I don't see why you guys are so insistent on making these difficult and unenjoyable. I don't mind difficult and enjoyable, but the way you're speaking to people asking questions here and altering these forays makes me feel like I'm talking to an attendant at a mall iPhone repair kiosk. I don't really have faith at this point that you'll fix the problem, and the amount of bad customer service leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Archaeon

i like it

Phaestus

Astarod said:

Phaestus said:

Astarod said:

Why wouldn't you just make it easier? You want people to enjoy this, right? The point is to create an activity that will generate logins and possible purchases.

There's a difference between easier and trivial. The point is to create difficult and engaging content that feels rewarding when you complete it.

Astarod said:

Why would people buy your stuff if when they possibly need it most, it negatively impacts them.

No artefact impacts you negatively. As I've said multiple times at this point, most artefacts are entirely unaffected by the scaling, and those few that are still offer you advantages, just to a lesser degree than standard hunting. This isn't going to change.

 I enjoy the difficulty. I don't want them to be trivial. I just feel that every time we figure out a way to complete it, there's 10 completed attempts and then you guys tweak the system to lower completion rate. Fortress is my favorite foray, and I don't want it to be obscenely easy, but I don't want to be damaged out every three seconds with no way to mitigate via curing/runes/defs. I'm not asking for these to be trivial, but I think your definition of trivial and mine are entirely different, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't reply with a smart remark to that. 

Every change to the system since it has gone live has been to make forays easier across the board, not harder in any way.

I just don't see why these guys have to hit for obscene amounts of damage. SoA doesn't proc enough to make up for it. My Sip and Con gets overrun. Instead of making these forays more accessible, people are seeing their best PVErs get brutalized by the grunts, and then obliterated by the boss (should they make it to the boss).

It is designed intentionally so that the healing of a single person will be outpaced by stacks of foray mobs. You're not meant to be able to tank foray mobs endlessly, especially in larger groups.

I don't see why you guys are so insistent on making these difficult and unenjoyable. I don't mind difficult and enjoyable, but the way you're speaking to people asking questions here and altering these forays makes me feel like I'm talking to an attendant at a mall iPhone repair kiosk. I don't really have faith at this point that you'll fix the problem, and the amount of bad customer service leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Most of the foray complaints in this thread are either things that have already been fixed and continue being brought up, things that were addressed publicly and keep coming up, or are intentional design decisions and have been stated as such. My replies aren't meant to be terse, simply short posts to address concerns and announce fixes, as we're keeping track of multiple discussions, actively making changes, and monitoring and keeping up with the live game while trying to keep forums up to date (which is half of what this thread has been asking for). There's also a very fine line between "difficult and enjoyable" and "difficult and unenjoyable", and this line is different for each player. We're doing what we can to tweak things so that they're well-balanced while still offering sufficient challenge across the board, and we're open to feedback and ideas all the while.

Iocun

I agree that the artefact scaling can be considered problematic, but truth be told: that applies to any scaling. Level scaling devalues all the time spent on becoming a dragon. Group size scaling devalues actually playing the game as a multiplayer game. And so on.

That's the reason I've never been a fan of pretty much any scaling in games. Challenges cease being something you work towards overcoming when they always remain similarly hard, no matter how you prepare.

Sobriquet

Silas said:

Absolutely bewildering stance. People pay thousands of dollars for artefacts to give them an edge on whatever part of the game they enjoy. By counting any artefacts into the calculations for foray scaling, you're negating that edge and devaluing those artefacts to those players who bought artefacts.

If you were doing it in an interesting way, by having foray bosses act differently if the party is wearing certain artefacts, doing different attacks or changing their mechanics in some way, then sure, you're creating challenging and rewarding content. Having everything just have a fuckton more health and do a fuckton more damage will just make people stop doing forays - especially with people with those artefacts, since now someone having those artefacts negatively affects their group if the group isn't also mega-artied.

Astounding that anybody would think this is a reasonable way for the admins to look at forays.

It's a problem they've created themselves and now having trouble balancing. 100's of Talismans, cards, artefacts and promo items and they are now having to find a way to stop the power creep we've been shouting about for years, yet refused to do anything about. RNG within RNG for my to get a Deathcape, the Maya Figurine (Which I assume would count?), I have an SOA + the SOA Paragon, Crit Paragon and Lvl 3 Pendant.. Heaven forbid spending 16yrs building a character give me an advantage within a small instanced foray. Made worse by the fact they've made it worth 10 (20 at times) credits so people feel there is more at stake than just completing it.

Gallida

Rather than obscure scaling which discourages people from even trying them, why not just rescale them to a doable difficulty and limit forays to one per day per person?

If people want a challenge, let them try it unartied. If people want to spend $Switzerland to trivialize it, let them, they only get one per day.

This would also increase the number of forays accessible, rather than have everybody loitering in Thera waiting for Aran'kesh or Fortress to come back.

Thaisen

Forays will probably, unfortunately, go down in a long line of created content that nobody engages with anymore...except for the handful of people who spend untold hours min/maxing and getting it down to a science...

And in the end...those people will probably be shrubbed...

Astarod

Phaestus said:

Astarod said:

Phaestus said:

Astarod said:

Why wouldn't you just make it easier? You want people to enjoy this, right? The point is to create an activity that will generate logins and possible purchases.

There's a difference between easier and trivial. The point is to create difficult and engaging content that feels rewarding when you complete it.

Astarod said:

Why would people buy your stuff if when they possibly need it most, it negatively impacts them.

No artefact impacts you negatively. As I've said multiple times at this point, most artefacts are entirely unaffected by the scaling, and those few that are still offer you advantages, just to a lesser degree than standard hunting. This isn't going to change.

 I enjoy the difficulty. I don't want them to be trivial. I just feel that every time we figure out a way to complete it, there's 10 completed attempts and then you guys tweak the system to lower completion rate. Fortress is my favorite foray, and I don't want it to be obscenely easy, but I don't want to be damaged out every three seconds with no way to mitigate via curing/runes/defs. I'm not asking for these to be trivial, but I think your definition of trivial and mine are entirely different, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't reply with a smart remark to that. 

Every change to the system since it has gone live has been to make forays easier across the board, not harder in any way.

I just don't see why these guys have to hit for obscene amounts of damage. SoA doesn't proc enough to make up for it. My Sip and Con gets overrun. Instead of making these forays more accessible, people are seeing their best PVErs get brutalized by the grunts, and then obliterated by the boss (should they make it to the boss).

It is designed intentionally so that the healing of a single person will be outpaced by stacks of foray mobs. You're not meant to be able to tank foray mobs endlessly, especially in larger groups.

I don't see why you guys are so insistent on making these difficult and unenjoyable. I don't mind difficult and enjoyable, but the way you're speaking to people asking questions here and altering these forays makes me feel like I'm talking to an attendant at a mall iPhone repair kiosk. I don't really have faith at this point that you'll fix the problem, and the amount of bad customer service leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Most of the foray complaints in this thread are either things that have already been fixed and continue being brought up, things that were addressed publicly and keep coming up, or are intentional design decisions and have been stated as such. My replies aren't meant to be terse, simply short posts to address concerns and announce fixes, as we're keeping track of multiple discussions, actively making changes, and monitoring and keeping up with the live game while trying to keep forums up to date (which is half of what this thread has been asking for). There's also a very fine line between "difficult and enjoyable" and "difficult and unenjoyable", and this line is different for each player. We're doing what we can to tweak things so that they're well-balanced while still offering sufficient challenge across the board, and we're open to feedback and ideas all the while.

Alright, I'm sorry- that metaphor was rude. I'm not arguing with your stance that stacks of foray mobs should be challenging. I just did the Fortress Foray and felt it was pretty balanced. I'm not sure if it was just the AoE that was toned down, or if it was because me and Tia have less artefacts between us than me and veldrin (who might also suffer from being high level). That last completion did feel, alright. 

I think a lot of us are frustrated because honestly it felt like a buff when you guys announced that they were more accessible, causing us all to go foray happy into awful deaths with 90% AoE damage. This frustration is compounded sometimes with the fact that we don't know if the way we're completing it is 'correct' or if we're abusing a bug, or if something else is at play that will devaluate our strategies.

To top it off, the way to get forays is completely awful. Every time I go to try fortress, there is an Aran'kesh group waiting patiently. 

I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate on the changes, because it is something you've done to keep us in the fold so we can be updated on what's going on. 

Sobriquet

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/n4iLFsuS

Not to mention Icosse doing over 5k a pop. But sure, it's balanced, engaging and challenging but fair.

These are not fun, regardless of credit reward. 

Edit - Neither is scouring the Wilderness and having to hoist / drag / carry non dragons up north. I don't see the point of having that barrier at all. 

Armali

I noticed in some earlier logs, a six-man Aran'kesh faced mobs that attacked at one second, while when I did Aran'kesh with only three, they attacked at around two seconds.

I'm not sure a 100% increase in people justifies an effect 100% increase in DPS from mobs. I assume they also scale up their damage along with the attack speed.

Phaestus

Armali said:

I'm not sure a 100% increase in people justifies an effect 100% increase in DPS from mobs. I assume they also scale up their damage along with the attack speed.

You assume incorrectly, in more ways than one.

Aegoth

I, and many others, paid to trivialise PvE. That's the entire purpose of buying these arties... to make PvE loads easier. What we did NOT pay for: any sort of scaling to our artefacts. If we want a challenge, there's a solution: take off the arties. Let us make the choice ourselves instead of making it for us. Not sure why this is even an argument.

Artefacts have already been effectively devalued multiple times in the life of the gsme without their monetary values going down alongside. Continuing to further negate the impact of these immensely expensive bits of code is just baffling

Saonji

You know you have a tonedeaf and absolutely absurd approach to game concepts, when your biggest and most constant spenders, are beginning to regret supporting you.

Generally it's the whales who defend such ridiculous decisions.

Aegoth

I think the obfuscation of how things work also plays a tremendous part in the problem. Cryptic responses from the admin about player hypothesis sometimes come off as arrogant when it's not intended to be. Transparency regarding these things would probably be a blessing for both sides, insofar as frustration is concerned

Vinzent

Iocun said:

I agree that the artefact scaling can be considered problematic, but truth be told: that applies to any scaling. Level scaling devalues all the time spent on becoming a dragon. Group size scaling devalues actually playing the game as a multiplayer game. And so on.

That's the reason I've never been a fan of pretty much any scaling in games. Challenges cease being something you work towards overcoming when they always remain similarly hard, no matter how you prepare.

I'm not sure I agree with this. The intent (as far as I can tell) is not to make the difficulty identical for everyone through scaling, but to make things harder in such a way that items are accounted for, yet not harder than it would be for a person without similarly accounted for items.

What you're saying leaves all forms of progression on the table when a game has any form of opposition that would generally engage and scale with the player as well, even when such things might be limited by area.

Mizik

There's two ways to tackle problems: react emotionally and publicly, or find solutions like an adult.

I look forward to solving this myself without being fed immersion dampening mechanical details.

Thanks!

Astarod

Mizik said:

There's two ways to tackle problems: react emotionally and publicly, or find solutions like an adult.

I look forward to solving this myself without being fed immersion dampening mechanical details.

Thanks!

Lol ok dude. Wait till the way you figured it out was a bug. Then it gets changed to be easier, then harder, then easier. Then get insta'd by regular foray denizens. When you catch up I'll be here waiting. 

Mizik

And when I do any of this, I'll provide data and suggestions to productively bring it back in line.

We play the same game, so not sure where your pointless sarcasm comes from. But even that is my point. Your emotional frustration doesn't really encourage support. Be useful. Or not.

Astarod

Mizik said:

And when I do any of this, I'll provide data and suggestions to productively bring it back in line.

We play the same game, so not sure where your pointless sarcasm comes from. But even that is my point. Your emotional frustration doesn't really encourage support. Be useful. Or not.

Edit: Just try the forays out. Seriously. I'm sure you'll find some good lines/data. I think it's a bit more problematic than you think, honestly. 

Edit 2: Though as of RN, duos look to be feasible again for foraying.

Minifie

Why not just remove artefacts from scaling and disable them, then add an honours line for each foray and make the talisman rewarded make forays easier? Forays feel like they should be learning a new raid fight: you go in blind, die a while, slowly tinker with your strat until you get further until you land a kill. The foray becomes easier until you can do it in your sleep, but taking new people requires some teaching unless you can wholly carry. 

Wanting to make forays engaging is good, and not just another grind, but once you have solved it and can recant it from memory without prompt, it should be a breeze. 

Mizik

Astarod said:

Mizik said:

And when I do any of this, I'll provide data and suggestions to productively bring it back in line.

We play the same game, so not sure where your pointless sarcasm comes from. But even that is my point. Your emotional frustration doesn't really encourage support. Be useful. Or not.

Edit: Just try the forays out. Seriously. I'm sure you'll find some good lines/data. I think it's a bit more problematic than you think, honestly. 

Edit 2: Though as of RN, duos look to be feasible again for foraying.

You're starting to get it.

I'll be patient. 

Iocun

Vinzent said:

What you're saying leaves all forms of progression on the table when a game has any form of opposition that would generally engage and scale with the player as well, even when such things might be limited by area.

Not meant as a criticism towards you, but I've read this sentence about 10 times and still have no idea what it means. It may be because I'm not a native speaker, or because it's 3 AM, but either way: please excuse that I cannot respond adequately!

(I do however understand the first sentence and can more or less agree with it!)

Accipiter

Making deathcape scale the foray is pretty dumb. You have to kill ~15 things to make it equivalent to getting an extra point in con and this has to be done inside the foray since you will lose the stacks on the hunt for the location. It will also fall off somewhere in the middle of the boss and so suddenly the last half of the fight is harder for no benefit.

What actually scales should also be very carefully considered. Mob health going up is fine but increasing damage much just because you have an extra person along will result in a very unfun experience because you very rarely slowly grind down your health. Most classes don't have a way to mitigate damage more than passive effects so the heal per second is set for each character. If the mob exceeds HPS you die, if it doesn't you live. Unless some way is put in for all classes to reliably change the tank or healing abilities are spread over more classes there is very little point in taking more than the minimum amount of players in if damage increases.

I also don't think it would be too out of line if we could be told what artefacts actually do affect scaling so we can have a reasonable discussion about it and provide feedback that is relevant for the situation. It isn't like anyone is going to trade in stuff to make forays slightly easier but with multiclass being a thing it is entirely possible that artefacts that your character can't use in a foray are being included. Artefact armour in the easiest example that would trivialize damage but may not be available in the class/form that you choose to do the foray in.

Vinzent

Iocun said:

Vinzent said:

What you're saying leaves all forms of progression on the table when a game has any form of opposition that would generally engage and scale with the player as well, even when such things might be limited by area.

Not meant as a criticism towards you, but I've read this sentence about 10 times and still have no idea what it means. It may be because I'm not a native speaker, or because it's 3 AM, but either way: please excuse that I cannot respond adequately!

(I do however understand the first sentence and can more or less agree with it!)

If you play a traditional RPG or JRPG (other genres apply, these two are what came to mind), there are probably two ways challenge will occur in terms of PvE. Enemies will have particular levels based on their location, or they will level based on your player character. There are variations on this, of course, but I can't think of any that change the principles of those two modes. In either case, based on what you said (or at least based on how I understood what you said) there is no incentive to progress because the 'progress' you make in levels/equipment is invalidated by enemies changing to compensate your increasing capabilities.

I used vague language because I didn't want to write a long post addressing each part in detail and that's probably why it was confusing.

Accipiter

Scaling generally only happens in MMOs to keep the content relevant. I would argue that the P2W mechanic is to make content easier and the people who have paid money to do so don't really want to keep it relevant to their investment but rather to what they would have without their investment and the money applied to making that content easier.

Minifie

Vinzent said:

Iocun said:

Vinzent said:

What you're saying leaves all forms of progression on the table when a game has any form of opposition that would generally engage and scale with the player as well, even when such things might be limited by area.

Not meant as a criticism towards you, but I've read this sentence about 10 times and still have no idea what it means. It may be because I'm not a native speaker, or because it's 3 AM, but either way: please excuse that I cannot respond adequately!

(I do however understand the first sentence and can more or less agree with it!)

If you play a traditional RPG or JRPG (other genres apply, these two are what came to mind), there are probably two ways challenge will occur in terms of PvE. Enemies will have particular levels based on their location, or they will level based on your player character. There are variations on this, of course, but I can't think of any that change the principles of those two modes. In either case, based on what you said (or at least based on how I understood what you said) there is no incentive to progress because the 'progress' you make in levels/equipment is invalidated by enemies changing to compensate your increasing capabilities.

I used vague language because I didn't want to write a long post addressing each part in detail and that's probably why it was confusing.

Sometimes games use pretty interesting ways to manipulate these too (Final fantasy VIII basically made it only scale off Squall's level, which was. . . Interesting, or Dark Souls basically has "This is boss, here are ways to make it easier, but if you want to go face first into Quelaag as a starting pyromancer with fire enchanted axe w/e not gonna stop you). I feel the foray system wants to have so many different types of cakes all mashed into one, but instead of ending up with a slice of chocolate, vanilla, cheesecake and you can just pick your flavour, every flavour is combined and some bits are undercooked, or overdone. I applaud the concept and attempt behind Forays, I can't sit here and say, "You failed stop failing" because they are actively trying to tweak and make them match their vision, but I think all the tweaking has just shown, for the current set of forays, that it's time to go simple, and add more with what you've learned.

Don't be afraid to think outside the box, or make things incredible weird or unique, and have them be completely shite, but be prepared to stop and go, "okay this hasn't worked idealistically, and it just isn't reaching that point. Time to set it to the simple mode, retweak rewards (aran'kesh from 600 renown, icosse is 2k) and scale them based on that, unartied so Minifie will curbstomp it into the ground with 1 person, but Mizik will need a friend (based on their arties, not skill in this instance). I think the devs have some incredible creative talent, but I think they need to be willing to just stop on something, tweak rewards, and just refine the next batch.

Tl:dr Don't try to save the burnt cookies, make a new batch with the lessons learned. Let us eat the burnt cookies though!

Meriet

Re: the person a few pages back saying dragon quest was gone
It isn't
You just need someone who hasn't done it to go through their usual steps and that should show you the new way to do it, which I BELIEVE will always need at least 1 person who hasn't done it at least
Still counts as a foray, it's just not on the board, I think because higher folks were just doing it whenever it was up and lower folks weren't able to get their first times done?

Sobriquet

Phaestus said:

Armali said:

I'm not sure a 100% increase in people justifies an effect 100% increase in DPS from mobs. I assume they also scale up their damage along with the attack speed.

You assume incorrectly, in more ways than one.

This kind of reply is frustrating and comes across as arrogant and unhelpful, I'd rather you not reply at all if your intention is to keep mechanics hidden.  

I appreciate the effort going in to create these but how is the player base supposed to work out these mechanics when you are constantly changing the damage output, healing, afflictions and it has been riddled with bugs. 

We then have a very active and intuitive player (Top 3 quests and excellent understanding of skills and abilities) suggest something they've seen and they get dismissed with a reply like that because the Admin have inherent desire to make things as obscure as possible.

Also, in my log above we have Shades, which I assume as also scaled on the group, walking in as groups (from and in rooms you can't squint into due to your very own "Engaging and fun" mechanics) which you've already said you can't fix in reply to a comment Cooper made about mob grouping in the underworld. How are you working on that?

Or have I assumed incorrectly?