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Darnok

Improved rifts & players failure

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I saw a rift yesterday, it was more interesting than fighting a unique mob, but I still miss something there.

 

The easiest change, if mob is pulled too far and then after he is pulling back he changes to ranged attacks for few hits.

 

The rift area is a square, in corners I would suggest adding 4 seals that players have to defend against mobs.
If mobs are on seal, they score points (something like capture the flag, but the flag is both mob and player).
If at least one player is standing on seal simultaneously with mobs, no points are added.

 

Portal spawns mobs in each wave with random orders, they can be orders for a group of mobs or different for each mob. The order is simple go to corner 1/2/3/4.

In this way, players will have to divide into 4 groups and, during every wave, balance strength of each group so that all of them can fight off mob attacks.

 

If mobs charge all seals players lose and portal stays and spawns mobs in a fixed amount there, they cannot migrate, but players cannot receive resource access reward.
Points for killing mobs are given, but lower than in the case of a victory. Also next rift will be in same area.

 

Mini-rifts

Upon players defeat, mini-rifts are opened in random locations on map, which spawn 2 type of rifts mobs (2 weakest should be enough), 1 per hour and after a few hours mini-portal disappears and spawns elsewhere.
Mobs from mini-rift have an additional ability, each of their hits will impose a status on player that prevents magic healing, so LT and healing spells will not work for 20-30 minutes after mob attacks.

 

If players fail and mobs unlocked all seals, a maximum of 4 mini-portals will spawn at same time randomly on map.

If players won, but mobs managed to unlock any seal, one mini-rift-portal is spawned for each unlocked seal.

 

 

 

Edited by Darnok
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omg no, lol

this sounds like something needslessly complicated and atrocious to participate in.

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5154339.jpg

This does not fix anything, it makes it slower and more annoying, doesn't add to the mechanics being more fun to deal against or solve something complex and rewarding..

So Why?

What's the point of it at all?

What exactly is "improved", who needs "player failure"?

 

 

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34 minutes ago, Finnn said:

5154339.jpg

This does not fix anything, it makes it slower and more annoying, doesn't add to the mechanics being more fun to deal against or solve something complex and rewarding..

So Why?

What's the point of it at all?

What exactly is "improved", who needs "player failure"?

 

 

 

1. Because group fight is a mess, this idea will not solve this problem, but it will reduce it, because smaller 4 groups is less mess.
2. Players will have to cooperate better, because if they lose, they will get smaller rewards and their map, after rift is over, will be a bit more difficult place.
3. If you want to play game of asking ridiculous questions then I suggest you start with, what's a rift for? If points and rift materials can spawn in each player's inventory when logging in? 🙂

 

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Seldom read more incompetent and useless stuff about rifts. -1

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2 hours ago, Darnok said:

If mobs are on seal, they score points (something like capture the flag, but the flag is both mob and player).

You've ever soloed a rift to see just how atrocious the pathfinding - aggressive range of a rift mob is? Or just do a rift in a few players? The way rift mobs move is reminiscent of pre 2000 old games with buggy pathfinding. It's the "dragoon" from starcraft 1 from who knows the reference. 

 

I've recently soloed a rift on Desertion and for the love of me I was annoyed as heck to try to pull 4-5 rift mobs at once, only to see 4 suddenly back away from the rift edge while just one managed to keep aggro on me. In other circumstances, rift ogres chased me out of the rift perimeter 20-30 tiles away then became "stuck" as in they stood still waiting to be gunned down by a bow. 

 

Rift mob AI is .... well it's worse than the dragoon from starcraft 1 to be honest. At least in starcraft, their AI would work half the time. 

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I never soloed but frequently fought rifts with groups of 3 or 2, both in the old (pre jackal) rifts and later. There have been a lot of changes to rift mob AI and abilities, some to the better, some not so much (in particular I miss the old ogre mage's internal wounds, together with their lower hp, they were more interesting). I also like the very dangerous pack behaviour of beasts, taunting in turn so stealing your focus and relieving the attacked beast.

 

Agro range as well as adds behaviour has changed several times. The old behaviour was that a player could pull maxadd creatures (26 or so iirc) which was a disgrace frequently abused by noob "heroes" loving the many foes and dragging them on the fighting party, intentionally or not. Nowadays only a limited number of mobs pursue a single player, 5 or 6 max, and often a sensible mix of beasts, 1 or 2 jackals, and an ogre or summoner/caster. This can be a dangerous mix for a single player but avoids mass pulls. I very much appreciate that change despite your rant.

 

Rift mobs nowadays do not indiscriminately attack creatures outside the rift, which is a great boon compared to the hitch and mount massacres of unpenned horses earlier, also no more mobs straying far away from the rift in regions with many creatures, especially mobs. They also do not pursue very far. After the Jackal launch, especially ogres and the WM used to pursue in excess of 150 tiles which I would not call advantageous.

 

In general I frown upon your polemic only because soloing is hard (it certainly is). There has a lot been done and changed in rift mob behaviour, and much of it to the better. Of course one may criticize the one or the other aspect. 

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Soloing rifts I agree it's a rare occurrence and mostly happens on Epic for obvious reasons. But for me, any suggestion for rifts has to come with a few things attached, namely the things that are either not working properly (mob pathfinding for me is just ugly to look at ), or things that have been reported in the past and ignored. 

 

What about the fact that a server  /uptime restart, does one of two things: 

 

1) It completely screws up the location of rift mobs (aka they start wandering across the map in all directions). 

 

2. ) It deletes the entire wave even after they've spawned. I actually submitted a ticket about this one on wave 4 on Desertion on a rift. The wave just finished spawning then a server maintenance restart kicked in. When I logged in, all rift mobs were gone, WM included. Personally I didn't mind, basically I closed wave 4 in a few minutes but still...

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3 hours ago, Darnok said:

 

1. Because group fight is a mess, this idea will not solve this problem, but it will reduce it, because smaller 4 groups is less mess.
2. Players will have to cooperate better, because if they lose, they will get smaller rewards and their map, after rift is over, will be a bit more difficult place.
3. If you want to play game of asking ridiculous questions then I suggest you start with, what's a rift for? If points and rift materials can spawn in each player's inventory when logging in? 🙂

 

what do you win or lose from the mess, beside it bothering you somehow, it's obviously working perfectly fine.. 

it's an event with spawns that a group of people fight, it's not strict like the dumb blizard raid systems.. that's a bless and a curse, but it works.

 

bigger difficulty and same or worse rewards.. sounds like a nerf

 

no thanks

 

3. I'd hope to one day see rift gear improveable.. but so far it's junk that is not.. socket system that is wasted and only used on few items that are questionably reasonable to use, unless you're determined to have and use them on few nonmaintainable items, by mending and placing gems until they are completely spent.. only to then smelt them for mm lump. 

So far the suggestion is ridiculous, it's the usual format of solving non existing problem, with no problem to solve, just replacing something because a random thought have happened and turned into a forum post that suggests mechanic replacement with alien to the native game style into something different and questionably fitting this game universe.

 

without changing the rewards into something epic... there's 0 reason to put more effort into rifts... ppl already hate the vent because of the time sink that it is.. and the low usability for the rewards

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Just open Jackal server again with 1:1 skill transfer with no skill resets.  That's your exploration update right there.

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7 hours ago, elentari said:

You've ever soloed a rift to see just how atrocious the pathfinding - aggressive range of a rift mob is? Or just do a rift in a few players? The way rift mobs move is reminiscent of pre 2000 old games with buggy pathfinding. It's the "dragoon" from starcraft 1 from who knows the reference. 

 

I've recently soloed a rift on Desertion and for the love of me I was annoyed as heck to try to pull 4-5 rift mobs at once, only to see 4 suddenly back away from the rift edge while just one managed to keep aggro on me. In other circumstances, rift ogres chased me out of the rift perimeter 20-30 tiles away then became "stuck" as in they stood still waiting to be gunned down by a bow. 

 

Rift mob AI is .... well it's worse than the dragoon from starcraft 1 to be honest. At least in starcraft, their AI would work half the time. 

 

You are right that this idea would make it impossible to win rift solo, but game has information how many participants there will be before the rift starts.

So you can take some value which will be a minimum team size like 5-6 characters and if there are fewer participants, only one seal is created in one corner.

 

As for mob AI, I've already given various suggestions, so I have nothing to add here.

 

5 hours ago, Archaed said:

But what happens if we want to beat the seals up too? 

 

 

 

Choose one option:

A - nothing

B - points scored by mobs will drop to zero if players can hold on for that long

C - players increase their points and rewards

 

OR all of them and game will randomize what kind of rift it is.

 

5 hours ago, Finnn said:

bigger difficulty and same or worse rewards.. sounds like a nerf

 

 

1. If each change will make it easier, I will ask for a change that instead of 120x30 second progress bars I will get a 1x60 minute bar and after one click and waiting my character will get a few points for a given skill.

2. If you reduce amount of runes and metals from a rift, what will happen to their prices? As long as there is no alternative source for these raw materials, it will not be a nerf, because by reducing quantity you increase their value.

 

5 hours ago, Finnn said:

 

3. I'd hope to one day see rift gear improveable.. but so far it's junk that is not.. socket system that is wasted and only used on few items that are questionably reasonable to use, unless you're determined to have and use them on few nonmaintainable items, by mending and placing gems until they are completely spent.. only to then smelt them for mm lump. 

So far the suggestion is ridiculous, it's the usual format of solving non existing problem, with no problem to solve, just replacing something because a random thought have happened and turned into a forum post that suggests mechanic replacement with alien to the native game style into something different and questionably fitting this game universe.

 

without changing the rewards into something epic... there's 0 reason to put more effort into rifts... ppl already hate the vent because of the time sink that it is.. and the low usability for the rewards

 

It's interesting that a few times I saw the argument that my ideas does not fit sandbox game, but when we get points for which we can buy shoulder pads, it's a 100% sandbox 🙂

 

If we are writing about equipment and rift, I would rather be able to buy runes for these points instead of shoulder pads from store. Some runes might be non-craftable by players, but with new properties and could be inserted into normal items.
And shoulder pads could be common items that can be crafted like any other piece of armor.

 

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12 hours ago, Davih said:

omg no, lol

this sounds like something needslessly complicated and atrocious to participate in.

 

translation: boom boom tired

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13 hours ago, Darnok said:

I saw a rift yesterday, it was more interesting than fighting a unique mob, but I still miss something there.

I hate rifts, but.... you barely touched rifts and next day got deep change suggestion for it?

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8 minutes ago, Wilczan said:

I hate rifts, but.... you barely touched rifts and next day got deep change suggestion for it?

 

This is a game like many others, not NASA equipment destined to land on Mars.

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NO. And because I got warned already that's all I'm prepared to say to any of your suggestions, but OMG if you could read my mind...

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4 hours ago, Archaed said:

 

 

If rocket scientist makes a mistake, several people can die and a rocket worth hundreds of millions of dollars will explode.

If brain surgeon makes a mistake, one person may die, but most often they end up in long-term rehabilitation.

If accountant makes a mistake, someone could go to jail.

If game developer makes a mistake, bug arises that can cause players to lose pixels, time and they will cry, so...

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"As long as there is no alternative source for these raw materials"

 

Who wants to tell him?

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