The only incentive to hit the newbie areas is a quick doubloon/credit tic. The gold/xp is far inferior to the high-level areas. I don't think the solution is to block people from areas but instead to change the incentive to encourage aspects to stay where they belong.
Last night when there weren't too many people around I hit RWC, Shulgaran, and Ironwood before going to Necrop. In the first hour-ish, excluding credits from mob kills, I got 12 (5,4,3) credits for bashing 3 areas. The second hour-ish was one area for 5 credits.
I'd rather keep the faster credit generation so that you can spend your time doing things other than grinding. This is especially important for people who can only be around for a bit every day.
What could be changed is to divorce spawnwave bashing from the 'main' dailycredits generation route:
So: leylines, champion time, caravans, boss mobs, shardfalls, raid objectives; these will continue to generate credits at the 5-4-3-2-1 curve.
Spawnwaves will generate credits depending on difficulty. RWC/Shulgaran/Ironwood/Blighted might generate 1 credit, Nagmara/Dregs might go for 3?
And then the mob kills generation remains the same.
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Unless they changed it since I had Anette (which they might have) anything 80-110 was considered within your level for an aspect. And Anette was like 109, too, to boot.
Unless they changed it since I had Anette (which they might have) anything 80-110 was considered within your level for an aspect. And Anette was like 109, too, to boot.
Min Max Area
70 any Khous Village
80 any Ancient Sewer Ruins
80 any Demon's Pass
80 any the Mavitt Woods
80 any the Vorrak Mines
90 any Al'drym Woods
90 any Nagiri Caverns
90 any Strengmire Orc Camp
90 any the Gongen Stronghold
90 any the Isle of Llus
90 any the Necropolis
100 any Beneath the Ancient Sewer Ruins
100 any Crevonix's Tower
100 any Skegdald
100 any the Domain of Magglix
100 any the Iaat Valley
These are the "Aspect" areas.
Except for maybe Al'drym and Mavitt (neither of which are spawn wave areas)... Good luck clearing literally any of those areas in a reasonable amount of time, if you're unartied and not a knight. If you don't have evasion either (let's face it, you're unlikely to at the current rate of earning credits/lessons, unless you hard out game a lot of them).
Even Nagiri and Vorrak have gotten harder to do in a similar amount of time to the other spawnwave areas. I'm not particularly fond of having Aspects clearing places like Redwood or Ironwood for their daily credits... But I sure as hell am less fond of forcing people into level-restricted areas. That isn't going to help keep players.
Like I said, you do that and you're forcing Aspects (people who should, by the nature of the game, be bashing 'better' than a low level in terms of speed) to take anywhere from 3-6x as long to get the same amount of credits. Necropolis having a higher yield than the lower areas doesn't mean shit, when you clear 3-4 of those areas in the time it takes you to clear Necropolis.
Key point of what I said, right there. Jeremy said, when the changes went live, he expected people to get their daily credits in around 2-ish hours. You level lock people, and the aforementioned people are gonna be lucky to get theirs in 4-5 hours. Look up at Rokas's post; he's one of the more artied people in the game, including having a maxed (I think) scepter, and he still takes a long time to actually get the credit from places like Necropolis. That's also with sect shrine bonuses.
I think you're grossly exagerrating but I don't really care to have this discussion. You're not going to retain people if all the newbie areas are getting bashed out by aspects because it's objectively a better use of their time. If you don't like my suggestion, propose your own.
I think you're grossly exagerrating but I don't really care to have this discussion. You're not going to retain people if all the newbie areas are getting bashed out by aspects because it's objectively a better use of their time. If you don't like my suggestion, propose your own.
I'm 86, no arties. Tri trans, trans evasion. Sect high favour, enough of a shrine bonus that almost doubles my damage in Necropolis (98 damage at 1.37s for reference). Bone images etc, that bring me to 16/16 int/con. + shard defences.
It took me a little over an hour to get the spawnwave reward from Necropolis, which was 5 credits. That was with almost 0 running, except on the wight wave when I got 3+ in a room. It takes a little over 600 (or maybe slightly under) kills when going from start to finish - that's 10 mobs per minute, roughly. Which is fast, when you consider everything I've just said. Again, read Rokas's post at the top of the page.
No, I'm not exaggerating. You don't care to have this discussion, because you're wrong. You're not going to retain people if you impose silly restrictions like that, either. I never said I had a better idea; I rather openly said both sides aren't good. Your "solution" simply isn't better. At best, it's exactly the same.
eta: I also haven't actually had a problem. Literally any time I've gone to redwood, or ironwood, or shulgaran dunes, they've been open (or, at best, one other person was there, and I have been there at virtually all times of the day, through all kinds of 'logged-in' populations. Meaning I'm still going to get credit for the area, because it only takes 30%). So I'd wager you're just speaking hyperbolic nonsense, or taking 1 person's complaints as the entire state of the areas.
I think you're grossly exagerrating but I don't really care to have this discussion. You're not going to retain people if all the newbie areas are getting bashed out by aspects because it's objectively a better use of their time. If you don't like my suggestion, propose your own.
You're not going to retain people with your suggestion, either.
And I have proposed my own.
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When I read about the mob kills thing, my thought was "well, big guys will definitely go to low areas, but will hopefully be fine in that respect, because they'll knock it out pretty quick". Imperian areas seem to have a really robust respawn rate in general, even though I am not much of a basher, but that is my sense of it. That -will- help people get a lot of their credits.
I currently don't have a strong opinion on blocking areas outright. I do think you could possibly make a list of areas that could definitely be blocked off as "for non-aspects only". In other words, if you were admin, you could say "are there at least a few areas that aren't currently outright newbie areas, but are still areas aspects just have no business in, even the "little" ones?", and cordon those off if you liked. This is sort of what I had in mind when I casually mentioned it. It really might not be necessary.
But when I made my post I forgot about one thing I like in general, that I am guessing might be doable as far as "how much work would it be to put in". It's a possibility. You could make certain areas work very well for meeting daily requirements, but give little to no gold, possibly no XP or faith, if necessary. Just remove every single incentive to ever bash there if you're not doing dailies, if it came right down to it. But you really might only have to remove -some- incentives.
It's nice to have areas that are tailored to different needs. For example, there are times that I love areas with great XP/faith and shit gold, because I don't ever have to compete with the autobasher people if I need to bash a little for whatever reason (monoliths, at one point). Making certain areas reward someone trying to complete dailies (but not someone on hour whatever of their daily bashing marathon), opens up those areas for dailies.
To most people it seems like competing demands must be a zero-sum game, that if their personal goals and desires are not met, it is a failing of the game. This is counter-productive. "I dont have a problem" does nothing for the people in this thread that have.
I think you're grossly exagerrating but I don't really care to have this discussion. You're not going to retain people if all the newbie areas are getting bashed out by aspects because it's objectively a better use of their time. If you don't like my suggestion, propose your own.
I'm 86, no arties. Tri trans, trans evasion. Sect high favour, enough of a shrine bonus that almost doubles my damage in Necropolis (98 damage at 1.37s for reference). Bone images etc, that bring me to 16/16 int/con. + shard defences.
It took me a little over an hour to get the spawnwave reward from Necropolis, which was 5 credits. That was with almost 0 running, except on the wight wave when I got 3+ in a room. It takes a little over 600 (or maybe slightly under) kills when going from start to finish - that's 10 mobs per minute, roughly. Which is fast, when you consider everything I've just said. Again, read Rokas's post at the top of the page.
No, I'm not exaggerating. You don't care to have this discussion, because you're wrong. You're not going to retain people if you impose silly restrictions like that, either. I never said I had a better idea; I rather openly said both sides aren't good. Your "solution" simply isn't better. At best, it's exactly the same.
eta: I also haven't actually had a problem. Literally any time I've gone to redwood, or ironwood, or shulgaran dunes, they've been open (or, at best, one other person was there, and I have been there at virtually all times of the day, through all kinds of 'logged-in' populations. Meaning I'm still going to get credit for the area, because it only takes 30%). So I'd wager you're just speaking hyperbolic nonsense, or taking 1 person's complaints as the entire state of the areas.
Just gonna add here that I agree, don't think you're exaggerating. In fact it's really easy to see. All you have to do it go spawnwave <area> and it shows you the top 10 times and who did them. You can see most of the time the top 10 people are very artied people. I'm there cause i borrow's Galt's stuff sometimes which almost halves my bashing times, at the very least a third of the time. So... most people's times in the areas would be MORE than say the 10th best time there which I have put below
Necropolis - 47 mins 6 seconds
Nagiri Caverns - 36 mins 58 seconds
Gongen - 25 mins 29 seconds
Demon's Pass - 46 mins 4 seconds
Khous - 23 minutes 46 seconds
Schrov'ik - 1 hour 29 mins46 seconds
Without borrowing any arties I take at least an hour at all these places.
Just as a random point of reference, I'm level 76. Demon stone took me 2 hours and 16 min. (damn crows). ironwood or shulgaran dune took me 17 min. The Dregs take me 36 min. I have yet to get 20 daily credits. I don't know how I'll ever be able to get 20 in 2 hours until I'm a much higher level. I also haven't had any competition.
I'm sure as people get used to the new system it will sort itself out and you don't really need to ban people from areas. Just need to add other ways to get credits.
It is, in essence, a supply issue. Adding more ways to generate credits would help resolve it so long as the additional means are tenable. Restricting abusive access to supply is the other way to go, but that idea is never going to be popular.
You can try working with others to do the non single player things. Plenty of bosses can be 2 or 3 manned even without arties. You just have to be willing to figure out the strats for them.
You can also become a champion. Not as many people are going to attack you as you seem to think. Especially when it's obvious as to why you became one.
Fixing the kill credits will help get that last 5 credits at least. Barring that there is already plenty of supply.
There are so many worthwhile places to bash in Imperian that no one should have any issues with finding a place spawned and ready to go, especially with how fast they all repop. Unless you're limiting yourself to a handful of areas and refusing to try others, you should not be having an issue.
It seems like people are assuming the "Get all your daily credits in 2 hours" refers solely to bashing, when there are other things you can do to earn them that overlap with clearing areas or don't involve bashing at all. Bashing already pays out a decent chunk of gold, so having it be the most efficient way to grind out daily credits would be kind of weird. Mix and match. Do multiple things.
P.s: Anything you do to make it easier for others will likely make it easier for the faster people to get their daily credits. If you're focused solely on bashing for your daily credit needs, then you've got to consider the variance in bashing speeds - That one to two hours figure doesn't necessarily mean everyone will be able to get their 20 credits in two hours or less, because it would be nigh impossible to constrain bashing speeds enough to keep both the fastest and slowest bashers within those bounds. This isn't a huge problem, though, as the way daily credits are earned is very much front loaded so that you can get the bulk of them in an hour, then the rest in another couple of hours, if you diversify your bashing areas and activities.
I think you're grossly exagerrating but I don't really care to have this discussion. You're not going to retain people if all the newbie areas are getting bashed out by aspects because it's objectively a better use of their time. If you don't like my suggestion, propose your own.
I'm 86, no arties. Tri trans, trans evasion. Sect high favour, enough of a shrine bonus that almost doubles my damage in Necropolis (98 damage at 1.37s for reference). Bone images etc, that bring me to 16/16 int/con. + shard defences.
It took me a little over an hour to get the spawnwave reward from Necropolis, which was 5 credits. That was with almost 0 running, except on the wight wave when I got 3+ in a room. It takes a little over 600 (or maybe slightly under) kills when going from start to finish - that's 10 mobs per minute, roughly. Which is fast, when you consider everything I've just said. Again, read Rokas's post at the top of the page.
No, I'm not exaggerating. You don't care to have this discussion, because you're wrong. You're not going to retain people if you impose silly restrictions like that, either. I never said I had a better idea; I rather openly said both sides aren't good. Your "solution" simply isn't better. At best, it's exactly the same.
eta: I also haven't actually had a problem. Literally any time I've gone to redwood, or ironwood, or shulgaran dunes, they've been open (or, at best, one other person was there, and I have been there at virtually all times of the day, through all kinds of 'logged-in' populations. Meaning I'm still going to get credit for the area, because it only takes 30%). So I'd wager you're just speaking hyperbolic nonsense, or taking 1 person's complaints as the entire state of the areas.
Just gonna add here that I agree, don't think you're exaggerating. In fact it's really easy to see. All you have to do it go spawnwave <area> and it shows you the top 10 times and who did them. You can see most of the time the top 10 people are very artied people. I'm there cause i borrow's Galt's stuff sometimes which almost halves my bashing times, at the very least a third of the time. So... most people's times in the areas would be MORE than say the 10th best time there which I have put below
Necropolis - 47 mins 6 seconds
Nagiri Caverns - 36 mins 58 seconds
Gongen - 25 mins 29 seconds
Demon's Pass - 46 mins 4 seconds
Khous - 23 minutes 46 seconds
Schrov'ik - 1 hour 29 mins46 seconds
Without borrowing any arties I take at least an hour at all these places.
Ideally, yes, you should be able to find something to bash when you want. If you are (1) an Aspect, (2) moderately artifacted, or (3) relatively experienced (for example, a returning player), this is true. However, for the people who do not fall into the above categories, you are limited to a handful of areas whether you like it or not.
Furthermore, they are the ones who are more likely to rely solely on the bashing methods. Almost all the rest involve dabbling in PvP, and let's be honest: the ratio of people who stick around vs those who don't after getting killed out of nowhere is not great. We want to entice people to join and stick around, and trial by fire is not an effective way to do this.
What's worse is that not only are the newer players limited to the areas they can hunt, they also have to contend with (1) (2) (3) for the ones they can hunt, too. There are still established players that routinely and repeatedly hunt out the Fab Four of spawnwaves, and thereby lock out new players. On the other hand, locking spawnwave areas according to their level range as listed in AREAS will simply constrain the upper end too much: a vast majority of players are in the 80-100 range, and only 15 areas are listed as such.
The 50-100-250-500 mob kills method of credit generation is a step in the right direction. It divorces dailycredits from a handful of areas that are likely to be camped by (1)(2)(3).
edit:
Necropolis - haven't done it
Nagiri Caverns - 1hr 4m
Gongen - 38m
Demon's Pass - 1hr 52m
Khous - 42 mins
Schrov'ik - too ouch
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I don't often find myself agreeing with Galt on a lot of things but he pretty much nailed it.
Thanks to @Ohm half of Khandava doesn't have to purely do spawn waves (at least not everyday) plus we get temp arties. Yay group content, some of the bosses have been pretty interesting even if we've failed a bunch of them.
Oddly enough (for someone used to mmos) the fails haven't been due to being squishy or lack of damage. Not sure why people don't do them more often. They don't exactly take a ton of people.
We have so many bashing areas that aren't on spawnwaves that if they were, would help alleviate this pain point. For example, the sanctuary with all the beetles in the Shaahri, or Magglix's Domain on the other end of the level spectrum.
What the heck are the drop rates on the "other things" you can get from spawnwaves, that were announced? I've heard some people got 1-2 tokens the first day, and absolutely nothing since. Have heard people getting nothing whatsoever.
Seems super duper low rates, provided that too isn't bugged...
I just wish there was a help file explaining what spawnwaves are.
Edit: I'm confused about resets and amounts.
I'm in Australia, for timezones. Last night, I logged in and did two doubloon areas (I think). I earned 12 credits and went to sleep. I just did an area now:
You just earned 5 daily credits. You can earn 13 more.
Ahoy! You've earned a golden doubloon. HELP DOUBLOONS for more information.
You have 3 golden doubloons. You've earned 3 of 10 today.
Is the cap higher than 20? Do the doubloon areas reset at a different speed? Why is my cap only 18 today?
Can't edit. I think I got credits for the 50/100 mob kills, but I'm confused why credits reset and doubloons didn't (never done these before, is there something obvious I am missing?).
Also some sort of command would be helpful to show stuff like: current credits for the day, source, current progression (eg for mobs or other things you add), the diminishing returns, etc
You can get a doubloon from a spawnwave area once every 24 hours. If you got one from Shulgaran at 2pm today, you can get another from that area at 2pm tomorrow.
You can get dailycredits from spawnwaves once per spawnwave per turn. The turn change is at GMT 0. If you got a dailycredit tick from Shulgaran at 2pm today, you can get another from that area after midnight GMT.
DAILYCREDITS shows you what you've gotten for the day so far.
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Oh that makes sense with the 24 hour. I'm glad I didn't do something wrong
Ah cool, dailycredits command was exactly what I needed, thank you. I also just found HELP DAILY CREDITS - is that accurate? I made a newb for the 1000 challenge, failed, and haven't really played much, so the announces are a bit of information overload as I don't know what a lot of the mechanics are and stuff is still being tweaked.
HELP DAILYCREDITS seems to be accurate, except that shardfalls are still not giving credits (that I know of), and it doesn't include generating credits from 50-100-250-etc. mob kills.
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Comments
Last night when there weren't too many people around I hit RWC, Shulgaran, and Ironwood before going to Necrop. In the first hour-ish, excluding credits from mob kills, I got 12 (5,4,3) credits for bashing 3 areas. The second hour-ish was one area for 5 credits.
12/hr vs 5/hr is why this is happening.
What could be changed is to divorce spawnwave bashing from the 'main' dailycredits generation route:
So: leylines, champion time, caravans, boss mobs, shardfalls, raid objectives; these will continue to generate credits at the 5-4-3-2-1 curve.
Spawnwaves will generate credits depending on difficulty. RWC/Shulgaran/Ironwood/Blighted might generate 1 credit, Nagmara/Dregs might go for 3?
And then the mob kills generation remains the same.
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is no better.
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These are the "Aspect" areas.
Except for maybe Al'drym and Mavitt (neither of which are spawn wave areas)... Good luck clearing literally any of those areas in a reasonable amount of time, if you're unartied and not a knight. If you don't have evasion either (let's face it, you're unlikely to at the current rate of earning credits/lessons, unless you hard out game a lot of them).
Even Nagiri and Vorrak have gotten harder to do in a similar amount of time to the other spawnwave areas. I'm not particularly fond of having Aspects clearing places like Redwood or Ironwood for their daily credits... But I sure as hell am less fond of forcing people into level-restricted areas. That isn't going to help keep players.
Like I said, you do that and you're forcing Aspects (people who should, by the nature of the game, be bashing 'better' than a low level in terms of speed) to take anywhere from 3-6x as long to get the same amount of credits. Necropolis having a higher yield than the lower areas doesn't mean shit, when you clear 3-4 of those areas in the time it takes you to clear Necropolis.
And I have proposed my own.
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I currently don't have a strong opinion on blocking areas outright. I do think you could possibly make a list of areas that could definitely be blocked off as "for non-aspects only". In other words, if you were admin, you could say "are there at least a few areas that aren't currently outright newbie areas, but are still areas aspects just have no business in, even the "little" ones?", and cordon those off if you liked. This is sort of what I had in mind when I casually mentioned it. It really might not be necessary.
But when I made my post I forgot about one thing I like in general, that I am guessing might be doable as far as "how much work would it be to put in". It's a possibility. You could make certain areas work very well for meeting daily requirements, but give little to no gold, possibly no XP or faith, if necessary. Just remove every single incentive to ever bash there if you're not doing dailies, if it came right down to it. But you really might only have to remove -some- incentives.
It's nice to have areas that are tailored to different needs. For example, there are times that I love areas with great XP/faith and shit gold, because I don't ever have to compete with the autobasher people if I need to bash a little for whatever reason (monoliths, at one point). Making certain areas reward someone trying to complete dailies (but not someone on hour whatever of their daily bashing marathon), opens up those areas for dailies.
I have yet to get 20 daily credits. I don't know how I'll ever be able to get 20 in 2 hours until I'm a much higher level. I also haven't had any competition.
I'm sure as people get used to the new system it will sort itself out and you don't really need to ban people from areas. Just need to add other ways to get credits.
You can also become a champion. Not as many people are going to attack you as you seem to think. Especially when it's obvious as to why you became one.
Fixing the kill credits will help get that last 5 credits at least. Barring that there is already plenty of supply.
It seems like people are assuming the "Get all your daily credits in 2 hours" refers solely to bashing, when there are other things you can do to earn them that overlap with clearing areas or don't involve bashing at all. Bashing already pays out a decent chunk of gold, so having it be the most efficient way to grind out daily credits would be kind of weird. Mix and match. Do multiple things.
P.s: Anything you do to make it easier for others will likely make it easier for the faster people to get their daily credits. If you're focused solely on bashing for your daily credit needs, then you've got to consider the variance in bashing speeds - That one to two hours figure doesn't necessarily mean everyone will be able to get their 20 credits in two hours or less, because it would be nigh impossible to constrain bashing speeds enough to keep both the fastest and slowest bashers within those bounds. This isn't a huge problem, though, as the way daily credits are earned is very much front loaded so that you can get the bulk of them in an hour, then the rest in another couple of hours, if you diversify your bashing areas and activities.
Furthermore, they are the ones who are more likely to rely solely on the bashing methods. Almost all the rest involve dabbling in PvP, and let's be honest: the ratio of people who stick around vs those who don't after getting killed out of nowhere is not great. We want to entice people to join and stick around, and trial by fire is not an effective way to do this.
What's worse is that not only are the newer players limited to the areas they can hunt, they also have to contend with (1) (2) (3) for the ones they can hunt, too. There are still established players that routinely and repeatedly hunt out the Fab Four of spawnwaves, and thereby lock out new players. On the other hand, locking spawnwave areas according to their level range as listed in AREAS will simply constrain the upper end too much: a vast majority of players are in the 80-100 range, and only 15 areas are listed as such.
The 50-100-250-500 mob kills method of credit generation is a step in the right direction. It divorces dailycredits from a handful of areas that are likely to be camped by (1)(2)(3).
edit:
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Thanks to @Ohm half of Khandava doesn't have to purely do spawn waves (at least not everyday) plus we get temp arties. Yay group content, some of the bosses have been pretty interesting even if we've failed a bunch of them.
Oddly enough (for someone used to mmos) the fails haven't been due to being squishy or lack of damage. Not sure why people don't do them more often. They don't exactly take a ton of people.
Edit: I'm confused about resets and amounts.
I'm in Australia, for timezones. Last night, I logged in and did two doubloon areas (I think). I earned 12 credits and went to sleep. I just did an area now:
Is the cap higher than 20? Do the doubloon areas reset at a different speed? Why is my cap only 18 today?
Also some sort of command would be helpful to show stuff like: current credits for the day, source, current progression (eg for mobs or other things you add), the diminishing returns, etc
You can get dailycredits from spawnwaves once per spawnwave per turn. The turn change is at GMT 0. If you got a dailycredit tick from Shulgaran at 2pm today, you can get another from that area after midnight GMT.
DAILYCREDITS shows you what you've gotten for the day so far.
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Ah cool, dailycredits command was exactly what I needed, thank you. I also just found HELP DAILY CREDITS - is that accurate? I made a newb for the 1000 challenge, failed, and haven't really played much, so the announces are a bit of information overload as I don't know what a lot of the mechanics are and stuff is still being tweaked.
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