Promotions, Chocolates, Fireworks, and the 200 grind.

Illikaal

I'm aware this post is likely going to be controversial off the bat cause IRE needs monies, but I'm doin it anyway.

So we all know the trek to 200 is nightmarish. There are few bold enough dream about it and even fewer to actually do it. With even just one person grinding to 200, it can devastate bashing areas unless you have a full knife set (artifacts with extremely limited accessibility) and even this only mitigates it so much.

For the past couple of weeks or so I've been finding it difficult to hunt, as there are 3 people shooting for 200 either intentionally, or unintentionally right now. Other filthy casuals be damned, the 3 of them clear areas hard enough. And there's nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately as it stands there is very much so a first come, first serve situation going on with these desirable areas to hunt. Unfortunately this is going to continue to be the case with no end in sight as long as someone is trying for it, and especially because of the amount of time it takes to get there.

This brings me to my next gripe - promo items. In particular, you get a bunch of chocolates (that decay) and fireworks ( that also decay) to help make this already ungodly tough slog that much more bearable. It's completely illogical to use up these chocolates when you know you'll barely get any value out of them when you have to compete with bigtime bashers. The only way to offset this is by mesh bags, which are again, an artifact with extremely limited availability.

With this promotion in particular, you end up with a LOT of chocolates. But that also makes me feel like people are spending a lot of real $$$ just for...a bunch of chocolate that's gonna decay?

I think the 2 simple solutions to this issue are the following:

1. Either make revert chocolates to not decay(lol) or remove the mesh bags from a relic and make them a readily accessible artifact you can buy.

2. All 90+ areas should be instanced. Period.

I wouldn't mind if there existed a non-instanced version of these places still with like higher gold/exp drops, but as it stands right now, you can barely get any real bang for your buck on what comes in these promo items.

In conclusion, promos that give out tons of chocolates, fireworks, and or other bashing-related things look like a giant scam and will continue to be until things change.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

Borminchia

Wow I've never been @'d harder in my life. Also, if I had a level for every person who has said they're bashing to 200 in the last couple of weeks, I probably would have passed Rhyot by now.

And fwiw:

Shaped into a small triangle, this chocolate has the faint hint of a strawberry aroma.
It has 19 weeks of usefulness left.
It will decay regardless of where it's stored.
It is strangely weightless.
[HINT]: You can find out more about this item by using LOOKUP STRAWBERRY CHOCOLATE.

H:6738 M:6956 B:100% [csdb eb]probe 336999
Shaped into a small triangle, this chocolate has the faint hint of a strawberry aroma.
It has 23 weeks of usefulness left.
It will decay regardless of where it's stored.
It is strangely weightless.
[HINT]: You can find out more about this item by using LOOKUP STRAWBERRY CHOCOLATE.
H:6738 M:6956 B:100% [csdb eb]chocolate combine 301258 with 336999 for caramel

You use Combine Chocolate.
Taking both a strawberry chocolate and a strawberry chocolate you decide these flavours just don't interest you at all;
and after mashing them together, you create a caramel chocolate instead. Yum!
Balance Used: 2.79 seconds

Molded into a square, this chocolate has been filled with deliciously sticky caramel.
It has 30 weeks of usefulness left.
It will decay regardless of where it's stored.
It is strangely weightless.
[HINT]: You can find out more about this item by using LOOKUP CARAMEL CHOCOLATE.

Probably won't feel very good turning 2 caramels with 1 month left on them into 1 caramel with 30 months left, but it's better than having 2 caramels with 1 month left becoming 0 caramels.

Idk if instancing everything is a reasonable solution. I could see a knife-like artifact for the omegawhales that will instance any hunting area you want, or something. But having every 90+ area have some instanced version everyone bashes seems like a step to pulling everyone out of the game a bit too much. You may as well just give everyone a permanent globe of energy that recharges every 30 mins or something.

However, my understanding is that more bashing areas have been desired for a while. Right now, even without everyone on chocolates, if there are 2-3 efficient/whale bashers running around, the areas are always bashed out. Building more areas over time helps, but is a slow and resource consuming process, probably.

My suggestion would be to make something like the battlefield mechanic (the one that makes an area have aura if there's excess pk, idk what it's called), but applied to hunting areas and bashing.

Basically, when an area is bashed out repeatedly, some ylem eruption occurs that creates an instanced version of that area. Some fracture appears that you can enter, and you bash out the ylem version of the area, like how Majors work sort of. Exactly what causes the instance fractures could vary a little, some combination of number of people who have ran through the area, how fast the mobs are dying, how soon they die after repop, whatever. Maybe make it all a percent chance in some way. And maybe put some CD on it, like 4 hours. This way people don't just game the system to get instances whenever/wherever they want.

And after writing all that out I realize it's just a roundabout way to instance every area, but just have those instances not always be accessible, so honestly yeah sure w/e instance all the areas idk gl.

Illikaal

I think even having them all instanced, you still have to put in a tremendous amount of time and effort just doing the actual bashing in general. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the same as giving everyone a globe since you gotta move around at least (I guess?) and be in your instance away from people not doing whatever else you'd otherwise be doing.

And in regards to that chocolate command, yes its somewhat helpful, but assuming it's lasted the full 60 days or whatever, i'm still getting diminished value of my investments and plenty of folks aren't going to finish that 6-12 month trek in that time destroying everything

Edit: An interesting thing to add to instances is like a debuff that causes your willpower/endurance to drain faster. That could add some more use to phoenix hearts/bulls eye's. Or, even turning them into something that like resets the debuff timer that would otherwise decay slowly?

Savas

I can also back up the fact that it feels like I'm unable to bash at all about 80% of the time these days, and I'm not even shooting for 200.

We need WAY more 90+ areas, mobs need to respawn significantly faster, or as suggested, we need more instanced areas.

Rhyot

So I marked disagree and I will explain why.

Re: Chocolates
Borminchia already showed that you make COMBINE chocolates to keep chocolates longer. This is further perpetuated by the fact that you can get chocolates through multiple avenues: market, milestones, chocolate bags, and promos. Chocolates are not hurting in any capacity to acquire and are sold quite often.

That said, if you made chocolates non-decayable, then you've effectively made a relic item completely pointless. If you make the the mesh bag relic into an easily purchased artifact, you're effectively going to reduce the income of the game. That's a big no no. This might be a game we play, but Aetolia still has to make money and even if you made it into a readily accessible artifact, it will be a niche artifact that only a few people buy and then trade-in when they no longer need it. So why would Aetolia think "Let's make it a $20 item (200 credits) and they immediately have it." When the reality is "Let's make everyone spend $70+ in the chance to get these mesh bag pieces that other people will then purchase $30+ of credits to purchase from other people." Yeah, it's a game, but it's a business too. So I do not see that happening.


Re: Instanced bashing
This has been brought up many, many times over the years. Some of the players like it, some of the players don't. The criticism is pretty similar in one regard. If you make every bashable area instanced, you might as well be playing a single-player game. If I wanted to play a single player game, I'd go play Cyberpunk, Assassin's Creed, Elex, Dark Souls, or some other type of game. The same argument was brought up when people complained about the herbs constantly being picked out. All they did was modify how quick herbs regrew. Areas in Aetolia have anywhere from a 10 minute respawn to 2 hour respawn. Hell, one area in particular actually -allows- you to reset it at the price of 25K: Shattered Vortex. You can get some decent xp here, even if all you do is bash one side and it becomes a gold sink too... which a lot of people have complained about there being a lackthereof.



ULTIMATELY...
People who attempt the Mt. Everest climb to 200 eventually realize how time intensive it is, how expensive it is, and how exhausting it is. Ayukazi did it and she kinda doesn't like bashing much anymore. Mazz did it and he never EVER wants to bash again. Bormi's probably gonna do it and then she'll likely never bash again. Jhin did it and he pretty much quit afterward. It's a slog. Because when you do it, it's either an all or none type of thing. It affects what you do in game, it becomes a game of numbers, and then you get so concerned with losing xp (because you just spent all these hours bashing to get this progress) that it affects what you do even more!

Short of new areas being implemented, which Borminchia pointed out is very resource and time intensive on an admin level, you really just have to try to outsmart the people who are bashing and get the the area first.

Illikaal

Rhyot said:

So I marked disagree and I will explain why.

Re: Chocolates
Borminchia already showed that you make COMBINE chocolates to keep chocolates longer. This is further perpetuated by the fact that you can get chocolates through multiple avenues: market, milestones, chocolate bags, and promos. Chocolates are not hurting in any capacity to acquire and are sold quite often.

That said, if you made chocolates non-decayable, then you've effectively made a relic item completely pointless. If you make the the mesh bag relic into an easily purchased artifact, you're effectively going to reduce the income of the game. That's a big no no. This might be a game we play, but Aetolia still has to make money and even if you made it into a readily accessible artifact, it will be a niche artifact that only a few people buy and then trade-in when they no longer need it. So why would Aetolia think "Let's make it a $20 item (200 credits) and they immediately have it." When the reality is "Let's make everyone spend $70+ in the chance to get these mesh bag pieces that other people will then purchase $30+ of credits to purchase from other people." Yeah, it's a game, but it's a business too. So I do not see that happening.


Re: Instanced bashing
This has been brought up many, many times over the years. Some of the players like it, some of the players don't. The criticism is pretty similar in one regard. If you make every bashable area instanced, you might as well be playing a single-player game. If I wanted to play a single player game, I'd go play Cyberpunk, Assassin's Creed, Elex, Dark Souls, or some other type of game. The same argument was brought up when people complained about the herbs constantly being picked out. All they did was modify how quick herbs regrew. Areas in Aetolia have anywhere from a 10 minute respawn to 2 hour respawn. Hell, one area in particular actually -allows- you to reset it at the price of 25K: Shattered Vortex. You can get some decent xp here, even if all you do is bash one side and it becomes a gold sink too... which a lot of people have complained about there being a lackthereof.



ULTIMATELY...
People who attempt the Mt. Everest climb to 200 eventually realize how time intensive it is, how expensive it is, and how exhausting it is. Ayukazi did it and she kinda doesn't like bashing much anymore. Mazz did it and he never EVER wants to bash again. Bormi's probably gonna do it and then she'll likely never bash again. Jhin did it and he pretty much quit afterward. It's a slog. Because when you do it, it's either an all or none type of thing. It affects what you do in game, it becomes a game of numbers, and then you get so concerned with losing xp (because you just spent all these hours bashing to get this progress) that it affects what you do even more!

Short of new areas being implemented, which Borminchia pointed out is very resource and time intensive on an admin level, you really just have to try to outsmart the people who are bashing and get the the area first.

On Bags: People would trade in existing bags when they hit 200 anyway, assuming they only cared about mints. I certainly would. On the other hand one could argue they're worth keeping for, I dunno, other chocolates that don't relate to bashing. Like strawberry. Or Hazelnut. But once again, as I stated, you're combing chocolates, losing even more value, and you're still not guaranteed to even be able to use them in the most likely way (which is bashing) because people are going to be bashing and clearing out areas for -months-. But you're right, it's a business, greed has no boundaries, and so this is unlikely to happen, which brings me to my next point:

Instanced Areas: Really though? Turning bashing areas instanced are gonna make the ENTIRE game a single player game? Because people go bashing with other people just so often on their 200 slog. Or you know, nevermind the fact you can go into other people's instances and bash with them if you chose to. When I'm bashing I ALREADY feel like I'm playing a single player game with other people in it making it unnecessarily annoying.

ULTIMATELY: Of course nobody wants to bash past 200 lol. Well, I guess not everybody. I won't touch equating 'outsmarting people' to 'literally getting there first and clearing out the entire area leaving it bare for the rest of the -entire playerbase-". Unless you have like 7 knife sets of course.

Sessizlik

As someone who barely manages to bash to lvl100 because that is tedious enough, I just want to point out that it's not only lvl99+ people who suffer from empty areas when people keep bashing out the lvl99+ areas. Because when those areas are empty, or people keep track of when they respawn and go back and never let others get in and bash that area, you know what they do? They lower their standards. They go for the 90+ areas. Then the 80+ areas and then the 70+ areas.

The few times I decide to try and bash with any of my current chars, which are all pre-endgame, I always seem to run into plenty of endgame people bashing out areas such as Teshen Caldera, lvl65, (I suppose you can blame that on earning gold or something..), Mamashi tunnels, lvl60, the caverns of Mor, lvl70 and Sparklight rift, lvl75.

Not everyone has enough boosts to get to endgame in 3 days, or even WANT to do that, but it would be nice to hit lvl80 and at least get to dream about endgame at some point. So.. perhaps think of others before hogging everything for days on end?

Czcienn

I think people underestimate the climb. Experience required for each level is exponential. I've been grinding a at a level that would be exhausting for all but a handful of players. I'm at level 179 and I'm not even close to halfway there. Borminchia has been going much harder and more consistently and at level 188 she's not even 60% of the way. This is on top of the fact that as you get levels the risk is higher because each death is a lot more. When there was a mishap earlier that caused the entire game to die I was lamenting about the fact that I lost close to one million experience. This is with a level 3 soulbind artifact that reduced it by 35%.

Promotion items that people pay for with real money should just never decay. There are still other sources of chocolate that you can go in game and those can still be decay. I don't think this makes it unfair for people with the relic.

More bashing areas would be great. It's actually a problem IRE games have in general, and it's not limited to bashing. No matter if there is 1 person wanting to do an activity or 100 people, there is only a fixed amount that can be done in total. Some may argue it's "competition" but to me it's just putting artificial barriers on how many people can be enjoying particular aspects of the game at any one point. You don't see this problem in MMORPGs for a very good reason; players would quit playing.

I'm lucky I only really have to "compete" with Borminchia in the off hours that I usually play in. I can't imagine enjoying this experience at all if I was based in the US and had to compete with the majority of players who want to bash.

Iesid

Rhyot said:

So I marked disagree and I will explain why.
Re: Instanced bashing
This has been brought up many, many times over the years. Some of the players like it, some of the players don't. The criticism is pretty similar in one regard. If you make every bashable area instanced, you might as well be playing a single-player game. If I wanted to play a single player game, I'd go play [...] Dark Souls, [...]

While this might seem like I am cherrypicking, you listed a few single player titles and then this semi-solo, opt-in-multiplayer option as well and I'd like to drill into that. Dark Souls is an example of a solo experience that you can, at any time, choose to opt into multiplayer for. They make the 'separate instances' thing work to their advantage in how multiplayer - both co-operative and PvP covenants - operate. They specifically built the mood and environment to accentuate loneliness while still allowing glimpses of others via ghosts and soapstone messages. The game is assuredly not 'just' a single player game and it piqued my interest that this was included while we're discussing the struggle of instanced content.

This line of thought leads me to ask: why aren't we discussing how we can better integrate instanced content into the game so that we don't feel like we're breaking the population up into smaller and smaller unreachable places? Instancing bashing areas is a definitive way to make sure everyone gets theirs - it just seems like the real issue here is how to make sure 'everyone' is still a group and not 'everyone in their own little rooms' (though, tbh, that doesn't strike me as overly different from current Aetolia without instanced bashing...)

Safiya

I'm going to chime in and say that I agree. Even just bashing to level 100 was a pain because there were no mobs. I would have to wait until periods of low traffic on Aetolia to have a chance. More instanced bashing would be really great - the instance in Xaanhal is lovely. I do understand that this coding would probably be a pain in the butt/time consuming, and we really appreciate everything the admins do.

Xavin

I think it bears to mention that the advent of bashing route walkers has changed the game drastically in regards to PvE, especially how readily available they have become. At any given time you can pretty much guarantee that multiple people are bashing out any given area. And now with multiple people pushing to hit 200, you're going to have that issue more and more.

I don't know if instancing level 90+ areas would fix the problem but there is definitely a problem.