Can you please find some other gating mechanism that's not "bash this area endlessly forever to spawn a boss"? I am finding it harder and harder to get involved in these kinds of things when the first step is "mindlessly bash these crappy areas until something happens".
How about something like small-group PvP objectives that spawn bosses? A circle aligned group of 4-5 players begins the ritual for summoning a boss in a room, another group can go interrupt it. Yes, we wouldn't invite lowbies to go to the boss objectives here, but this isn't a lowbie area and it would be a nice change of pace from "turn on autobasher and watch it roll in the background".
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
There are currently bosses that are always available (bosses from the fourthage event), bosses that are spawned as final spawnwaves (underworld), and bosses spawned from area drops (strigoi/wraith). Other boss spawn mechanics are being considered for the future. I don't want to get into too many specifics this early in some of the design processes, though.
A PVP-specific summoning mechanic is an interesting idea, but it may be difficult to keep interesting in the presence of dominant factions. It's definitely something we'll put on the list and discuss.
The reason I suggested small group is because sources of conflict that limit the sheer numbers would be largely immune to that kind of thing. Septus/Ultrix/Khizan/Shou aren't going to win against 15 Magickers(which is why they do Obelisk fights that way), but we've got a pretty good chance against any group of equal size.
Inactive as it seems to be in world conflict, even Demonic could field a decent group for small group scenarios.
I'm usually hesitant to suggest limiting team sizes for world PvP events, because things like shardfalls and sect conflicts are things you want to get everybody involved in. But for something like an optional boss, I think that limited group sizes might work out well.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
@Aakrin - this is why we have credits that are out of reach for the new players - if you expect to make 10k gold an hour, this game has done something wrong somewhere - 22k/pop does no one any favours for the population base - what is so wrong about working for months on an achievement? Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's wrong; it is, after all, completely non essential.
Bosses of permanence like the troll and etc should be put on spawn timers and their spawn be very relevant to the going ons of the game. Then they become PVP bosses like the statue sort of did.
Edit: For instance, the troll leads a huge band of his lesser troll buddies to attack a random towne. The towne's guards become distracted by fighting these trolls, and the towne becomes a conflict point to fight over who fights back the boss for xyz points/trophies/prize points. Edit: control of these victories might turn the Townes toward the city who trends on saving them. Only small bands could enter the towne to secure these victories. Townes loyal to ciities does.. Something????
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Would it be possible to make the quests turn-in based? It's a little sucky to kill 930 underworld celidonians and then realize you forgot to get the quest first. After all, the mob for this quest does say "Very well. Go to Celidon and return with 250 of their corpses."
Could we possibly have an option, after the first time entering the Underworld, to re-enter through our respective city/council graveyards? It seems to only make sense, since we're somehow able to escape that way. Let me be lazier.
I thought I'd take the time to compile my feedback on the Underworld. I think I've bugged most of it. Hopefully it helps!
1. Ilom Marcell
Note: Highly recommend UW bashers avoid Ilom until the 'deathloop' is resolved.
The statues may be an issue, or at least, that's what I assume is doing this. When we went to kick Ilom over, anyone who died had a chance of what we're calling 'the infinite death loop'. When this happened, after being resurrected in-room, out of room, or returning from death the normal way in the UW, the player is killed about 2 seconds afterwards from misadventure.
This happened anywhere between 6-17+ times per person that had the issue, with as many as 3 people in a 'deathloop' at one time, and could have been more problematic if we had not had favours, as that's somewhere between 198,000 - 561,000 belief a person. We could have stopped attacking him, but there was a definite concern that the 'infinite death loop' would persist until he was dead.
Logging out/logging in may or may not have resolved the issue. @Aleutia tested this, but we didn't end up with anything conclusive.
2. Mairya
The leechwood sprites that spawn don't appear to attack on every turn, if that makes sense. While the entire group will aggro on an individual, they seem to only attack quite sparingly.
The fireflies also seem to spawn at a very rapid rate. This wouldn't be much of an issue, as they have lower health, but they also steal .70 eq en masse at a very high rate, which in unfortunate instances, makes it entirely impossible to move or attack until you are dead. The cap on fireflies seems to be about 680 (if @Ferrus, @Ashani, and I yank-bashing them is any indication).
I also noticed that Mairya doesn't seem to attack you herself. While she goes aggro on entering, I don't believe she has done any damage to me in the duration of killing her 2-3 times.
3. Ik'taru
Much like Mairya's fireflies, Ik'taru's bodyguards spawn at an incredibly high rate. These, however, have a much higher health than the fireflies. Earlier tonight, the combination of @Fia, @Isadarr, @Aleutia, @Ahkan, @Caelya, and I were unable to kill the bodyguards by the time the next wave of them spawned. These also appeared to aggro, but only sporadically attack. By the time we had successfully killed Ik'taru, there were approximately 350 bodyguards in the room with us.
4. Kalika Aisling
When Kalika throws a player into the whirlwind, it doesn't do any damage (not sure if this is intentional). You are also able to remove the player from the whirlwind before the entire message for the removal has elapsed, enabling them to re-enter the fight before they should be able to.
5. Lira
Note: I would highly recommend avoiding this right now if you are Underworld bashing. At the moment, Lira is made of death.
I went into the fight as an athletic DK, undead form of ghoul, with putrefaction and weathering up, wearing a surcoat, hunter's belt, diamond bracelets, and wielding level 2 shield. Even with my 640+ health, two other artifacted aspect-level hunters, and an 80+ DK, we were dead inside a minute and a half.
The wolves currently do about 80-120 damage (not raw) and afflictions. They have high health and resist damage on hits.
Example of damage:
Damage Taken: 113 blunt (raw damage: 322)
Damage Taken: 104 cutting (raw damage: 317)
Example of high damage resistance (this was the first hit on a wolf):
17:44:24:472 | You slash viciously into a black dire wolf with a curved sabre.
17:44:24:476 | You have scored a surprisingly effective hit!
I am not sure if this is intentional, but there is also not a message that warns you that the instakill is about to happen - as there are with some of the other boss mobs. We attempted to use a shardwall to prevent it, but this was ineffective.
The combination of high damage/resist wolves and instakill with no message made it impossible for us to complete this boss.
6. Shah Gelor Antioch
This is trivial in comparison to the others, but the syntax to remove the spit and avoid being instakilled was a bit difficult to figure out in the heat of the moment. I like to think that we could have figured it out faster, but we were busy panicking like lemmings.
7. General Quests
At the moment, the way that the quests are described is a bit deceptive. For instance, with the quest "Decimate Khandava", it shows me that I have 250 out of 250 kills that I need to acquire in order to complete the quest.
Decimate Khandava the Underworld Caanae 250/250
However, the quest information tells me that I need to return 250 corpses to Mathardan in order to complete it instead.
If this is meant to be a by-kill quest, the quest information could use some rewording. If it is meant to be turn-in, it currently does not require you to do so.
I noticed this with Achron's quest, as well, when you have to 'Strengthen Your Soul' to receive a charm bracelet. When he tells you that you need to bring him 25 corpses, you instead need to achieve the killing blow on 25 creatures yourself. This can lead to some confusion. I couldn't understand for a while why the corpses @Aleutia and I had hunted up weren't being accepted, but it turned out that she had gotten more kills on creatures than I had, and I needed a few more.
8. Spawn Waves
It feels like the waves in the Underworld are despawning too quickly. With the way the mobs are scattered through the rooms, it's easy to move through a decent amount of the area without encountering the mobs you need to kill to advance the next wave. While hunting UW Khandava with the entirety of Khandava, we still triggered most of the spawn messages at least 2-3 times before they 'stuck'.
I hope that this information helps some with the issues we've been seeing and isn't too much all in one place.
While it does seem that there are some kinks that need to be worked out in a few areas, I'd also like to note that it's awesome to have something fresh to do, not to mention a seemingly infinite hunting ground. I've spent the last week or so dragging guild lowbies through the charm areas and into the Underworld, and they've all seemed to have a blast doing it. Thanks for the new content!
#1. For some reason, fighting Ilom caused repeated insta-kill misadventure deaths. This would automatically kill you upon rezzing.
#2. Fireflies and caanaite guards seem to spawn with no rhyme or reason. This leads to having 397 guards in a room in a boss fight that lasted 5-10m.
#3. There are some overly cryptic hints for syntaxes. "You should wash off this spit somehow."
#1 The remote death issue with Ilom should be fixed.
#2 There are some issues with removing the boss adds upon group wipe. I'll get on fixing that this week, but I have a lot on my plate.
#3 With the ability to trigger boss fights once the strategies are discovered, we tried to give hints that could lead you to the solution, but that didn't just give it away. In this case, "wash" is a hint to use the syntax that every other wash-related action in Imperian uses. Since your group figured out the proper solution within a reasonably short time frame, I would say that was a reasonable hint.
E: I've read all the posts this thread. In some cases, things need to be adjusted (particularly in the amount of damage some things do, and in spawn rates), but it's also true that in some cases you haven't discovered the full strategy for the bosses and that is also impacting the outcomes. In some cases, I'll work on clarifying the messages to make them more obvious, but I don't want to just give the solutions away.
This happened anywhere between 6-17+ times per person that had the issue, with as many as 3 people in a 'deathloop' at one time, and could have been more problematic if we had not had favours, as that's somewhere between 198,000 - 561,000 belief a person.
Just as a note, it doesn't work like that; mobile deaths will not take more than you have. Once you hit 0% personal faith, further mobile deaths will not cause a loss of belief. The most you stand to lose from a protracted series of mobile deaths is 100k per person.
This is why you should burn your faith on favours before doing something that may result in a series of bashing deaths; it is better to burn 100k belief on favours and get something out of it than to burn 100k on deaths and get nothing.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Just as a note, it doesn't work like that; mobile deaths will not take more than you have. Once you hit 0% personal faith, further mobile deaths will not cause a loss of belief. The most you stand to lose from a protracted series of mobile deaths is 100k per person.
This is why you should burn your faith on favours before doing something that may result in a series of bashing deaths; it is better to burn 100k belief on favours and get something out of it than to burn 100k on deaths and get nothing.
Aha. I knew that you couldn't lose more than you put into a sect's belief, but I wasn't aware the hard cap was 100k on loss. I was more so stressing that without favours, this shouldn't be attempted right now.
10/10 agree that the belief loss on favours is more than worth it, especially if you're hitting boss mobs or doing aspect bashing. We were lucky enough to have favours before we went it to it (thank you @Nyrohi). Although I have to admit that it was kind of funny a lot of the 'undeath' cult to caught in an infinite death loop.
Made a load of changes to address a lot of the issues with bosses. Give it a spin and let us know if anything is still not working correctly (but keep in mind that some cases are user error!)
When you get a group of about 8-10 people, the waves get ridiculously tedious and actually make the gameplay un-fun. At a certain point, you have enough people that you're killing faster than the spawner spawns. Could we tie speed or # of spawns to number of people in area or something?
Would it be possible to make some of the mechanics scale to party size? I dislike how many of these fixed mechanics are large-group specific. Impossible to do with a small group, trivial to zerg down when you get 8-10 people rolling on it. The design seems to encourage just flinging bodies into it and I hate that.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Would it be possible to make some of the mechanics scale to party size? I dislike how many of these fixed mechanics are large-group specific. Impossible to do with a small group, trivial to zerg down when you get 8-10 people rolling on it. The design seems to encourage just flinging bodies into it and I hate that.
Boss fights are designed with different sized groups in mind, but are all designed to take at least 3 people - fewer than that and it just doesn't feel like a boss encounter. Some scale upwards as more group members are present, and some do not. It really depends on the boss.
Keep in mind that aspect perks were designed as long-term goals. That they take a long period to collect for is intended. The gold fee assigned to them is roughly equal to the gold drops from mobs yielding the experience cost of the perk.
Can you explain why the harvesting gloves upgrade is twice the cost of everything else? Could this be revisited especially now that we are in chronic herb shortages?
Comments
Can you please find some other gating mechanism that's not "bash this area endlessly forever to spawn a boss"? I am finding it harder and harder to get involved in these kinds of things when the first step is "mindlessly bash these crappy areas until something happens".
How about something like small-group PvP objectives that spawn bosses? A circle aligned group of 4-5 players begins the ritual for summoning a boss in a room, another group can go interrupt it. Yes, we wouldn't invite lowbies to go to the boss objectives here, but this isn't a lowbie area and it would be a nice change of pace from "turn on autobasher and watch it roll in the background".
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
The reason I suggested small group is because sources of conflict that limit the sheer numbers would be largely immune to that kind of thing. Septus/Ultrix/Khizan/Shou aren't going to win against 15 Magickers(which is why they do Obelisk fights that way), but we've got a pretty good chance against any group of equal size.
Inactive as it seems to be in world conflict, even Demonic could field a decent group for small group scenarios.
I'm usually hesitant to suggest limiting team sizes for world PvP events, because things like shardfalls and sect conflicts are things you want to get everybody involved in. But for something like an optional boss, I think that limited group sizes might work out well.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Edit: For instance, the troll leads a huge band of his lesser troll buddies to attack a random towne. The towne's guards become distracted by fighting these trolls, and the towne becomes a conflict point to fight over who fights back the boss for xyz points/trophies/prize points.
Edit: control of these victories might turn the Townes toward the city who trends on saving them. Only small bands could enter the towne to secure these victories. Townes loyal to ciities does.. Something????
No, you should scrub off the spit. P.S. It's scrub in fountain.
A little play testing goes a long way, I guess.
1. Purple square charm.
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
I've read all the posts this thread. In some cases, things need to be adjusted (particularly in the amount of damage some things do, and in spawn rates), but it's also true that in some cases you haven't discovered the full strategy for the bosses and that is also impacting the outcomes. In some cases, I'll work on clarifying the messages to make them more obvious, but I don't want to just give the solutions away.
Just as a note, it doesn't work like that; mobile deaths will not take more than you have. Once you hit 0% personal faith, further mobile deaths will not cause a loss of belief. The most you stand to lose from a protracted series of mobile deaths is 100k per person.
This is why you should burn your faith on favours before doing something that may result in a series of bashing deaths; it is better to burn 100k belief on favours and get something out of it than to burn 100k on deaths and get nothing.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Edit: There are now 24 following me around.
When you get a group of about 8-10 people, the waves get ridiculously tedious and actually make the gameplay un-fun. At a certain point, you have enough people that you're killing faster than the spawner spawns. Could we tie speed or # of spawns to number of people in area or something?
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."