Achaea and Rewarding Play

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  • @Cooper every time it hits anyone it heals, it was entirely impossible for a group to take down. I’m not even sure what the legit way would be considered. I’ve not seen any denizen that heals that fast back up to full. We definitely didn’t have an easy go of it. 
  • So, as someone who used to do forays with Farrah, (and also kill Zsarachnor 3-4 times daily)... I can definitely say that things are ramping up.  As far as I am concerned, Forays have not been touched since we stopped doing them because they are incredibly unrewarding for the time and effort put into them.  RNG dictating the entire run on some things like Mirror Tower.

    Mirror Tower boils down to "Walk in room.  HOPE you can kill the few that are in the room (if there are 4+, you're already GG'd because more will wander in and stay there). Once you get past that initial hurdle, you have to do the RNG shuffle up the tower, hoping that the next room won't absolutely demolish you and your crew.  By the time you get to the 'boss', it becomes actually one of the easiest areas!  Some minor commands that are used everywhere else, and boom. you win!

    Ogre Fortress is awful for this as well.  Swarm of a ton of enemies, and then oops you're dead.  Got to the final boss? Well.  You might live through it.  If you get wiped out the first time you fight him, then try again?  Well... good luck.  It's going to be a TON harder now.  Hope you came prepared.

    Margam... Either Atalkez, Farrah, and I seriously missed out on something, or this is just "pray that you don't get RNG fucked and instantly killed."  Because that is what that foray is.  Getting RNG fucked and instantly dying.  Even if you survive for a bit, it becomes infinitely harder once more, and then you have to deal with all the extras.  To which.. they don't go away (iirc).. so enjoy not finishing that time. PS: there is a timer.  If it runs out, it kills you again! (though, fucking up once gets everyone on the ship insta-killed anyways.  So enjoy death).

    What do you get out of a lot of these?  1-use items, or limited use.  Mirror Tower gives you old Kai Banish, once.  Ogre Fortress is the stat-boosting artie vials you can purchase from the SoW... like 5 of them, at random.  Once all used, they go bye-bye.  Margam gives you a SUPER SECRET SEA MONSTER BOSS thing which is.. kind of lack luster, considering the fact that sea monsters are just a hassle, and exhausting to deal with.

    I don't even know what the boulder does, but I assume something that instant-kills, considering it's.. counterpart.

    You don't have to finish these just once to get it.  Not twice... but upwards of 16 times, potentially even up to 32 or more (for the Foray Map that leads to the mythical.. SIXTH FORAY!!!!!!!!! That is apparently "so ballbusting hard it's Margam + icosse + ogre fort, cranked up to 100" )

    The later Forays, namely Icosse and Margam, are the ONLY ones to give an honours line.  And.. guess what?  It's not to everyone who participated in the Foray.  (we'll get into THAT later).  It's only for the person who got the last hit.  That person is ALSO the only one to get the talisman pieces.  So, 2 or more people are doing it? Well billy bob.  Fuck you, it's my talisman piece now! It's not great.  What's more-so, is that the experience is.. honestly?  Awful for the reward.  There is barely a gold reward (something like 15k~ overall from total drops).

    Now, to difficulty.  Supposedly, these are "possible by people that aren't dragons, and are scaled down appropriately!" Which.. seems to just not be the case.  The difference between 2 people and 3, at least in regards for farrah, me, and one other, was horrendous compared to just two of us.  All of these require two people.  Barring potentially like... Ogre Fortress.  It's been awhile since I've ran that one (over a year).  The rewards are simply just not worth the experience loss of being insta-gibbed 10+ times every time you wish to do it.

    I adore forays, as when I started doing them, they were pretty reasonable and had a level of excitement about them from being the first person to do it... but if @Ahmet were here, he'd agree that these are still ridiculous.  

    Also, most forays go untouched because of just how obscene of a time requirement it is to get to them.  Not to mention the fact that some have you scouring the ENTIRE continent on Wilderness.  Ogre Fortress? Any forest.

    Margam? Does it have a coast? HAVE FUN.

    Icosse? "Ruined...." it's one of like 10 areas, have fun running around.

    The worst offender though, is the god damn bird.  It's any 'hill/mountain' area, or some such, meaning that it's an absolute pain in the rear to find, considering every damn hill/mountain in the entire continent.  It's reward?  Well.. it instantly teleports you and co ( i think ) to.. your.. next.. Foray location...

    The things are also supremely unfriendly to people who have a hard time navigating the wilderness, namely blind Achaeans.  If Mezghar could actually find them, he'd probably be doing em with Farrah now.

    Let's not even get into how ridiculous Zsarachnor is now-a-days, considering we took 20~ people, mostly dragons, to fight him and barely got him down to 70% before he insta-gibbed everyone.
  • Margam was not RNG. It was just very punishing. Atalkez and I managed to do it all right once, but it's still very difficult even knowing how we did it before, and we've never had the motivation to put in the effort it would take to get a second win. Ictinus implied we were making it harder than it actually was, though I never actually determined an easier way to do it. Some of the mechanics also might just be plain buggy. I don't know if they're intended to screw you over as much as they do, or just bugged (still not RNG though, you can deal with them if you take them into account).

    One sad thing about it is I do think it requires significant arties to win. I'm not sure if anyone less artied has completed it. Putting all the "tricky" mechanics aside with the ship, just tanking the denizens is really hard. This is true of all the forays, really.

    The fact that you can't actually find forays with a screenreader is pretty frustrating, too. I was trying to do one with Mez once, and the fact that I had to find it myself, and took like an hour to do so, made me never want to do one again.

  • SkyeSkye The Duchess Bellatere
    I haven't gotten into a lot of the new content because they're either very group oriented like the forays, or they're a level of challenging that doesn't appeal to me, bearing in mind that I think I'm pretty reasonably artied. 

    :/ 

    I mean, with my current playstyle and hours I guess that suits me just fine, but that means I'm mostly only involved with stuff that was released 3 or 4 RL years ago. It seems a waste. 


  • Nothing's success (when it comes to completing  content) should ever be predicated on beneficial RNG.  Straight up.
    Deucalion says, "Torinn is quite nice."
  • @Skye

    "reasonably artied" generally means sip 3, regen 2 (at least), lvl 3 con/reserves, deathcape doesn't help (due to a time limit and death will make you lose it)...

    If you have a "NO DAMAGE HAHAHA" stick, you might be able to survive longer, but again...

    If these are actually scaled down for people that are under 80, then they're either not scaling enough, or it's broken.  I have seen two or three groups of level 80ish people attempt it, and absolutely get curbstomped before they even got to the boss. Again, and again.  And again.

    Forays just aren't that rewarding, or are they really that fun after the first few times you do them.
  • edited February 2019
    What @Skye said.  Also, I haven't gotten into them or UW because it sounds/seems very much like they took some cool mechanics and then ratcheted the lulz to 11.   If I could be reasonably sure I could at least do it in under/around an hour (avg play time) without dying 1500x, I might be interested in them.

  • edited February 2019
    That... Isn't 'generally' what reasonably artied means. I think you need to look up what 'reasonable' means. That is literally high-end, when it comes to defensive arties. Not 'reasonably', the only thing you're really missing are resists rings. (safe to assume at lv3s you also have SoA/paragon equivalent).

  • yeah I think the point is that "reasonably artied" to hunt the recent endgame areas is vastly different from what the playerbase considers "reasonably artied". ie, endgame areas are overtuned massively
     <3 
  • Underworld's not really an 'endgame area' though. It's more of a 'never go there unless you're a masochist' area.

  • I'm not sure lvl 3s have much to do with whether you can bash UW, yeah.
  • I serpent bash UW now and can full clear unless a room is super stacked up. 

  • Cooper said:
    I serpent bash UW now and can full clear unless a room is super stacked up. 
    Think that says more about the ridiculousness of serpents bashing with your level of arties than anything else.
  • Just as an FYI,  When I said "Reasonably artied" I meant that forays require those arties more-or-less.  I wasn't able to last very long against pretty much any Foray boss (even with most of that list).  Farrah lived at least a little bit longer.

    They're overtuned, unless their 'scaling' is also based on escrow value.  In which case I can very readily go "What the fuck".
  • edited February 2019
    Yeah.  As a House Leader (the Order gets into that shit jus fine), I don't feel comfortable telling the handful of House members around "Hey let's foray". Mainly because I don't want to lead them to their deaths 100 times and make them quit or hate the game.  Especially the Scions who are already a very small House trying to build more. The same for the awesome Mhaldor-esque UW raids and stuff. I've been dying to do it, but the average level around is something like 65-80 and it is hard enough to get people to join up for aHouse Hunt which just gives them more XP.  

  • edited February 2019
    Caelan said:
    Yeah.  As a House Leader (the Order gets into that shit jus fine), I don't feel comfortable telling the handful of House members around "Hey let's foray". Mainly because I don't want to lead them to their deaths 100 times and make them quit or hate the game.  Especially the Scions who are already a very small House trying to build more. The same for the awesome Mhaldor-esque UW raids and stuff. I've been dying to do it, but the average level around is something like 65-80 and it is hard enough to get people to join up for aHouse Hunt which just gives them more XP.  
    Amen! The drawbacks outlay the benefit sometimes and people like to do the cozy stuff but for those who want to do it because of RP or other reasons are stuck doing most of the stuff solo which gets you murdered in some areas. I am all for doing the suicidal stuff. Kill the Dreapilar let's go for it!!! I love to explore these areas but sometimes solo is just not possible that I am not even reasonably artied

  • Torrent said:
    Caelan said:
    Yeah.  As a House Leader (the Order gets into that shit jus fine), I don't feel comfortable telling the handful of House members around "Hey let's foray". Mainly because I don't want to lead them to their deaths 100 times and make them quit or hate the game.  Especially the Scions who are already a very small House trying to build more. The same for the awesome Mhaldor-esque UW raids and stuff. I've been dying to do it, but the average level around is something like 65-80 and it is hard enough to get people to join up for aHouse Hunt which just gives them more XP.  
    Amen! The drawbacks outlay the benefit sometimes and people like to do the cozy stuff but for those who want to do it because of RP or other reasons are stuck doing most of the stuff solo which gets you murdered in some areas. I am all for doing the suicidal stuff. Kill the Dreapilar let's go for it!!! I love to explore these areas but sometimes solo is just not possible that I am not even reasonably artied


    Yeah. Been trying to do the whole Psion thing with the House.  Forays, get them into the Tree so they're all Elementals as well (myself included.. have never had the time to get there).  Then get everyone dragon...   but it is so difficult when everyone wants to guard their XP until they hit dragon and get a buffer (hence trying to get them to Dragon quicker).

  • Huh, I admit this thread kind of went in the opposite direction I expected it to go.  I get that certain things are super challenging and super dangerous, but are they really too much? Or are they only too much because they have no rewards to make it worth it?

    Would people really have a problem dying 20x to a foray if they got something out of that failure, other than just a negative in xp?  Would people really avoid the Underworld if it was lucrative enough in some way to be worth the chances of death or being jumped?

    Honestly, I think the popularity of elemental lord forms, especially water with how hard it can be to get, is evidence that people will engage in hard content if there's something worthwhile to get out of it.  I know this thread kind of got filled with people asking for a lesser challenge instead, but that's sort of the opposite direction I would want them to go in.  I'd kind of hate it if everything got weakened, and I sort of imagine that'd be terrible for the game.  I'd much rather a challenge, and be rewarded for it appropriately.
  • What popularity? Only like 10% of population have/want/think useful e-lord and a goodly portion were only motivated while it was still the 'shiny new thing'

    Meaning if UW and forays are even to approach that level of participation the reward has to meet or exceed e-lord in desirability
  • 86% of statistics are made up.

  • Penwize said:
    Huh, I admit this thread kind of went in the opposite direction I expected it to go.  I get that certain things are super challenging and super dangerous, but are they really too much? Or are they only too much because they have no rewards to make it worth it?

    Would people really have a problem dying 20x to a foray if they got something out of that failure, other than just a negative in xp?  Would people really avoid the Underworld if it was lucrative enough in some way to be worth the chances of death or being jumped?

    Honestly, I think the popularity of elemental lord forms, especially water with how hard it can be to get, is evidence that people will engage in hard content if there's something worthwhile to get out of it.  I know this thread kind of got filled with people asking for a lesser challenge instead, but that's sort of the opposite direction I would want them to go in.  I'd kind of hate it if everything got weakened, and I sort of imagine that'd be terrible for the game.  I'd much rather a challenge, and be rewarded for it appropriately.
    I don't really have enough perspective to talk about any of these things but the Underworld, but I can pretty confidently say that even if you increased the rewards for hunting there most people would still avoid it. Mainly because of the theoretically 'easier' mobs, not the honours denizens. No matter how high you hike the reward, there's still a line between 'enjoyably difficult' and 'so frustrating it feels unrewarding'.

    Now if you talked about a scenario where you got rewarded for -dying- in the Underworld, that'd be interesting.
    ________________________
    The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."

    (Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
  • I'm curious, are you basing your information on the Underworld before or after Ictinus retuned it?  When it was first unveiled, it was miles worse than it is now.  The retuning of certain things like blackout spam and clumping behaviour really helped make the place more approachable and less "die instantly when I walk in."  Like Cooper said, the general mobs there are entirely doable now in lesserform, and very forgiving in dragonform, for higher level people or people with a cape.  Some of it requires special curing or some active avoidance, particularly squinting around or pulling mobs, but that's the sort of thing you figure out and overcome.  Honestly the only reason I don't bash the Underworld right now is because the only reward is a slightly better gold rate, but with the gold cap being what it is that's not a real reward.

    If you're trying to do it as a baseline dragon with no cape or health/healing artefacts and without runes, yeah it's going to be extremely difficult. But I think that's okay, because there's already challenging content for that level of player.  Adding content for that level of player to aspire to is a good thing, but only if it's actually rewarding enough to be deserving of an aspiration.
  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    I think the problem is that they have shown they are unwilling to make things worth it, @Penwize, so people resort to simply ask for things to be made easier.

    And you won't understand the cause of your grief...


    ...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.

  • After.

    ________________________
    The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."

    (Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
  • My personal rule of thumb is any special verbs or nouns should be given to the player in some way verbatim.

    If the command is CLIMB DOWN, then those exact words should appear somewhere, eg. the room description containing "The cliff face looks treacherous to climb down."
  • Penwize said:
    Huh, I admit this thread kind of went in the opposite direction I expected it to go.  I get that certain things are super challenging and super dangerous, but are they really too much? Or are they only too much because they have no rewards to make it worth it?

    Would people really have a problem dying 20x to a foray if they got something out of that failure, other than just a negative in xp?  Would people really avoid the Underworld if it was lucrative enough in some way to be worth the chances of death or being jumped?

    Honestly, I think the popularity of elemental lord forms, especially water with how hard it can be to get, is evidence that people will engage in hard content if there's something worthwhile to get out of it.  I know this thread kind of got filled with people asking for a lesser challenge instead, but that's sort of the opposite direction I would want them to go in.  I'd kind of hate it if everything got weakened, and I sort of imagine that'd be terrible for the game.  I'd much rather a challenge, and be rewarded for it appropriately.
    When i'm active, I would absolutely got to a hard location in order to farm up worthwhile talisman pieces. Hell yes. I LOVE the idea of finding loot like that from bashing.

    Any day of the freaking week mate.
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