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Grinding Sucks 2
#1
TL;DR

There is far too much of an overlap between what finished, high level characters want to farm and what low level characters wanting to progress want to farm to level comfortably. Especially when the high level players are often incentivized to solo so as not to lose desired drops to other characters, as outside boss fights the bonus for having other party members (10% IDR) is negligible compared to the cost (1/4th murai gain + 25% per member chance to lose your item to another character, vastly increased fight time if others aren't ending/taking their turn immediately).

We have far too few items that can be crafted that are only obtained via the global drop pool.

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Why it sucks.

Here we are again. Trex complaining about how much they hate grinding, yet they do it anyways. Curious!

How far have we come since the last thread? Well, Dev gave all non Terra Flamma dungeons extra spawns (1 extra mob per 5 levels) in the 5-60 range. It helped a little bit for the earlier grind so I must concede we have made at least some progress.

But why am I making a whole new thread again?

The most recent update, the Dark Amplifier, introduced Dark Shards as a desirable currency which comes, primarily, from random mobs that spawn with a suffix called Wrapped in Darkness that guarantees a Dark Shard. Some mobs were given a 5% drop chance but as it stands it isn't lucrative to target farm these specifically for dark shards compared to farming content you can more comfortably clear and hope for the suffix to appear.

This is a problem in that we now have yet another incentive for high level players to be farming content far beneath them and depriving lower level players the means by which to progress because someone's hosing down all the easily farmable mobs for dark shards. This isn't a unique problem to this update, either. Before it was for the sake of farming random drops quickly since the drop table, by nature, does not care what the mobs are. So naturally power farmers will take whatever is fastest and easiest. Thus when you are levelling, you are often stuck with the content no one wants to do, that is slow and tedious. Making the already slow and tedious nature of grinding for levels even worse.

"But Trex" you say, "You can farm an LE out in about two hours in Lava Lake!". Yeah. If literally no one else goes there for two hours. Someone else is going to go there, almost always, likely for that reason if not to farm gunpowder/dark shards/random nine stars.

Of course, as touched upon in my prior thread, levelling isn't the only issue when it comes to grinding. What comes after. Item farming. Is made extremely tedious due to the absence of determinism in how one obtains the majority of items in this game. The vast majority of items come from the global drop pool, with a very small number made craftable. Not a single non-puzzle item added post Korvara (2022 Q2) has been made craftable. We were at least given new material kits for the new materials, that's about it.


How it can be better.

I've already made numerous suggestions, including making more difficult mobs like those in the Minotaur Labyrinth have a much higher if not 100% rate of Dark Shards to make them a desirable target for those farming for Dark Shards.

Ultimately, whatever provides levelling characters a path to progression that wouldn't be contested by already finished characters is what we're aiming for. How this manifests is up to Dev. Ideally we'd get something akin to the Badlands Arena where you can farm mobs that only award badges + experience so players can always access something for EXP without competing with players for mobs that yield drops.

As for items, it's pretty straight forward. Making more crafting recipes would help alleviate the issue of determinism when it comes to finding the items you want. It would create more desirable items in the market, and reduce people's compulsion to bank swathes of almost never desired items in the off chance someone might want an otherwise uncraftable item. Another suggestion I made in another thread was to have dropped 8-9-10 stars break down into material to make other items of the same rarity, so it sucks less to drop the undesired high rarity items. Since Raremetal stopped being special as soon as we got a vendor that just sold you 8 star items straight up.

Oh yeah. And it'd be great to get the crafting recipes we're still missing from G6. Such as those for the hand-slot items like Ghosthands, Green Gloves, and the Bands of <x> series.
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#2
I dread making new characters, I just stay at 60 without LEing these days. When I need a new guy I just recycle one I don't play. I'm really glad I reached this critical mass cause I can't take another lava lake grind.
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#3
It's about 2 hours from level 1 to level 60 as a grindmage with vera wa 2 + Deja Vu + greensoles + tactician + Rebia Grindmage + brainfood.

More if you're competing for spawns. Less if you have dummies you can place on the downtime post level 45 (usually 55+). Over the past 3 days, I went through about 11 LEs. If I decided to use the build I planned for the character for each LE, it would have taken exponentially longer than the (effective) 26 hours it did to finish LEing-- likely somewhere in the 5-6 hour range per LE.

The grind is awful man. The grind is so awful. I understand LEing is a core component of the game, and (generally) how Dev makes a bit of money from donations (Brain Food. Fruits of Fluidity so you can avoid having to regrind to change your stats).. but the fact that if you want to have your character be a crafter? You have to do at least 1 LE. If you want to be able to get a free 50~70 hp.. you have to LE multiple times to save on stat points invested. Etc etc.

The entire system feels scuffed, and there generally is very little RP that actually goes into the grind. If I saw someone in Lava Lake? It was a quick "Hey you want help?" "Sure." invite to the party and tell them to just end turn constantly so I can mass-murder enemies with 0 recourse because I, as a water grind mage, did it better than they could. Walking for the grind also means that the party leader has to stop every time they want to talk.

There are a lot of things that are frustrating / annoying with the Grind, and generally speaking. I'd love if we got more Legend Inks that are easily accessible to cut down on the number of grinds we have to do. Or Korvaran-Only Legend Extending gave 3-4 inks, rather than two.

Literally anything to make the grind better.
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#4
At least if there was some sort of reward for doing dungeons other than lava lake it wouldn't be that bad. The game used to be fun when you had random dungeons with different modifiers. I used to enjoy grinding through a whole dungeon, getting that massive reward at the end, the core with the gear... It was rewarding and felt like the time invested was balanced with the reward. Nowadays I can't be bothered to grind at all. I don't wanna make an optimized grind mage just to make it less miserable, it just feels wrong. Even though I've done it before. It just doesn't feel like you're playing a game, you're just putting in work and waiting for it to be over.
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#5
It doesnt need to be shorter. It needs a feeling of reward and progression. I propose korvara bosses present a client side treasure chest upon completion that works like old cores did.
OOC Devourer Of Souls: it makes me feel like someone slipped me acid laced water
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#6
(06-20-2024, 01:46 AM)Raigen.Convict Wrote: It doesnt need to be shorter. It needs a feeling of reward and progression. I propose korvara bosses present a client side treasure chest upon completion that works like old cores did.

This solves the loot issue.

But also 100% just becomes "Why aren't they dropping Cores?"

A lot of curses being made into Enchantments would be nice, because a lot of them really aren't as strong as Vorpal/Divine. (the prospect of items without enchantments that are dropped gaining Misplaced whenever they are found in the Bandit Den is a fun idea).

But also.... THIS STILL DOESNT CHANGE THE GRIND FOR LEVELS. WHICH AUGHHHHHH
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#7
(06-20-2024, 02:08 AM)Rendar Wrote:
(06-20-2024, 01:46 AM)Raigen.Convict Wrote: It doesnt need to be shorter. It needs a feeling of reward and progression. I propose korvara bosses present a client side treasure chest upon completion that works like old cores did.

This solves the loot issue.

But also 100% just becomes "Why aren't they dropping Cores?"

A lot of curses being made into Enchantments would be nice, because a lot of them really aren't as strong as Vorpal/Divine. (the prospect of items without enchantments that are dropped gaining Misplaced whenever they are found in the Bandit Den is a fun idea).

But also.... THIS STILL DOESNT CHANGE THE GRIND FOR LEVELS. WHICH AUGHHHHHH
Honestly? Yeah. Why don't korv bosses drop cores?
They require you to wait to fight them and there are significantly fewer bosses on Korv compared to G6. All in all, Korv bosses should have more rewards than G6 bosses, not less. Not just gold and maybe a boss-specific drop.
[Image: orDF4cJ.jpg]
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#8
(06-20-2024, 10:52 PM)the REAL Minos Prime Wrote:
(06-20-2024, 02:08 AM)Rendar Wrote:
(06-20-2024, 01:46 AM)Raigen.Convict Wrote: It doesnt need to be shorter. It needs a feeling of reward and progression. I propose korvara bosses present a client side treasure chest upon completion that works like old cores did.

This solves the loot issue.

But also 100% just becomes "Why aren't they dropping Cores?"

A lot of curses being made into Enchantments would be nice, because a lot of them really aren't as strong as Vorpal/Divine. (the prospect of items without enchantments that are dropped gaining Misplaced whenever they are found in the Bandit Den is a fun idea).

But also.... THIS STILL DOESNT CHANGE THE GRIND FOR LEVELS. WHICH AUGHHHHHH
Honestly? Yeah. Why don't korv bosses drop cores?
They require you to wait to fight them and there are significantly fewer bosses on Korv compared to G6. All in all, Korv bosses should have more rewards than G6 bosses, not less. Not just gold and maybe a boss-specific drop.

I think I have a good answer for this, it was likely to better facilitate a roleplay environment by making it so you would need to stop in town to sell your things much more often, and fill a gap that was left by Korvara not having access to Silver treasure chests, that being gold bars being inaccessible during testing, this was an important distinction as they're a material used for ascension.
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#9
(06-21-2024, 02:52 AM)Autumn Wrote:
(06-20-2024, 10:52 PM)the REAL Minos Prime Wrote:
(06-20-2024, 02:08 AM)Rendar Wrote:
(06-20-2024, 01:46 AM)Raigen.Convict Wrote: It doesnt need to be shorter. It needs a feeling of reward and progression. I propose korvara bosses present a client side treasure chest upon completion that works like old cores did.

This solves the loot issue.

But also 100% just becomes "Why aren't they dropping Cores?"

A lot of curses being made into Enchantments would be nice, because a lot of them really aren't as strong as Vorpal/Divine. (the prospect of items without enchantments that are dropped gaining Misplaced whenever they are found in the Bandit Den is a fun idea).

But also.... THIS STILL DOESNT CHANGE THE GRIND FOR LEVELS. WHICH AUGHHHHHH
Honestly? Yeah. Why don't korv bosses drop cores?
They require you to wait to fight them and there are significantly fewer bosses on Korv compared to G6. All in all, Korv bosses should have more rewards than G6 bosses, not less. Not just gold and maybe a boss-specific drop.

I think I have a good answer for this, it was likely to better facilitate a roleplay environment by making it so you would need to stop in town to sell your things much more often, and fill a gap that was left by Korvara not having access to Silver treasure chests, that being gold bars being inaccessible during testing, this was an important distinction as they're a material used for ascension.
would the solution here not just to have silver chests. I dont see why everything in Korvara needs to be so much less convenient.

And really, if it was that important to not have suspiciously abandoned chests, why not have them drop both gold and cores? Again, there are fewer total bosses on Korvara. They should have more rewards, not less.
[Image: orDF4cJ.jpg]
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#10
While I appreciate the discussion on implementing spatial core lootboxes, I do not believe that would be the answers to the problems I've posed.

We'd still be stuck in the same situation, we'd just have a few more spins on the bloated item pool gacha.

For posterity's sake, let me clarify how boss drops currently work:


Quote:For every 10 levels a boss monster has, it will have an item added to its drop table at a 10% chance, increasing by 10% for every item added to the table. This does not apply to rematch fights, they have their own drop tables.

I.E. A level 20 boss will have the following:

10% chance for 1 drop.
20% chance for 1 drop.

A level 80 boss will have the following:

10% chance for 1 drop.
20% chance for 1 drop.
30% chance for 1 drop.
40% chance for 1 drop.
50% chance for 1 drop.
60% chance for 1 drop.
70% chance for 1 drop.
80% chance for 1 drop.



So in a sense, they already act a bit like spatial cores. Yet as more items get added to the pool it becomes far less effective at attaining what is actually desired.

Which is why the best solution would be adding additional crafting recipes, and if rarity is a concern the drop rate for the materials to make higher rarity items could be low. At least if you managed to get a drop of it you could get what you want instead of being left holding your fifth Boltstruck Gi.

As for the levelling process, simplifying it to 'it should be shorter' is misleading. Yes, while that isn't entirely incorrect, I'm not saying the grind should be inherently faster than it already can be in optimal conditions. I'm saying that there should be more accessible means to consistently level that aren't monopolized by finished characters the vast majority of the time. The fact a single person can lockout the entire server from accessing a dungeon is absurd when we have so few of them that lower level players can reasonably use to level.
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