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Keenan

Exploration: Part 1 - Public Testing!

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You get around 2-3 rare rolls on a day of digging at 90 skill and fast shovel maybe.so 20% chance to get a clue wich is not cumulative.that would mean it will take some time to get one. More likelly similar to diging a rare bone.friend of mine dug out like 30k clay.and i dug maybe 10k personally past few months.never seen anything.same as most players. So geting a chest once in a blue moon and having 2 coal, few leather and some tar as a reward?

Better make the chest sackable so we at least get a refresh and save the time

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22 minutes ago, Synjor said:

Keep in mind, on live even a novice clue will be uncommon to come by. The higher tier ones, even rarer and more difficult to complete. Lacking in some serious rewards will render them dead content. Nobody is expecting these rarer rewards to be common place in the drop table, but having familiar rare items there at a low rate will certainly be enough to entice players to put in the effort to complete them for the chance of finding some serious treasure

as long you get a sleep powder or two.. you'll be running over the hills and far away to 'cash' the treasure map, believe me;

that is in no way cheap reward on it's own.. for a random inspiration while farming/digging/etc.. these things happen in thousands of actions daily.. by multiple chars by same person... this can scale and generate a lot...;

doubt somebody's going to farm and just say.. "you know what.. I'll give these treasure maps to somebody in global or ca-help channel in a giveaway, yolo", makes no sense if you can take a small walk and turn it into something with ensured value;

the way this works, unless there's really tiny chance to obtain a map.. this will be thA bomb content to milk for months with only comparison to it being clapping rarity creation all day

 

clapping silvers is cool, but I see nothing engaging during the walk from A to B, etc.. checkpoints on the map.. call them clue spots if you like.. the whole content lacks lore, nothing deity related, no special random events, nothing spicy, it's just boring a->b->c->d->e.. and you're again with 3 sleep powders(for example);

it's cool.. coins.. yay.. but at the end of the day.. do you really play to generate pixel currency or experience something more than that

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  • Farming/Harvesting
  • Botanize/Forage Actions
  • Digging
  • Mining
  • Investigating Archeology Sites
  • Fishing/Dredging
  • (Not on Test yet) Praying

I Will definetly not do most of this actions

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6 minutes ago, Finnn said:

the whole content lacks lore

My apologies Finn, I keep trying to point this out to you and you keep missing it, so ill be ultra blunt.

WE PLAYERS ARE THE LORE

ya, you would think that the devs would have included that for us, but in their great wisdom they saw fit to have us create it. 

or you can word it any other way you like, point is its our actions in game that drives things. not that things in that direction move very fast... if at all

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16 minutes ago, Finnn said:

as long you get a sleep powder or two.. you'll be running over the hills and far away to 'cash' the treasure map, believe me;

that is in no way cheap reward on it's own.. for a random inspiration while farming/digging/etc.. these things happen in thousands of actions daily.. by multiple chars by same person... this can scale and generate a lot...;

doubt somebody's going to farm and just say.. "you know what.. I'll give these treasure maps to somebody in global or ca-help channel in a giveaway, yolo", makes no sense if you can take a small walk and turn it into something with ensured value;

the way this works, unless there's really tiny chance to obtain a map.. this will be thA bomb content to milk for months with only comparison to it being clapping rarity creation all day

 

clapping silvers is cool, but I see nothing engaging during the walk from A to B, etc.. checkpoints on the map.. call them clue spots if you like.. the whole content lacks lore, nothing deity related, no special random events, nothing spicy, it's just boring a->b->c->d->e.. and you're again with 3 sleep powders(for example);

it's cool.. coins.. yay.. but at the end of the day.. do you really play to generate pixel currency or experience something more than that

Ehh, no. Personally I would not be doing any of these for their current rewards, others have said the same. Sleep powder is nice but pointless when you consider the time it'd take you away from your normal gameplay/grind. 

You also still seem to be overestimating the rate of receiving the clues. A rare roll does not mean a clue is given. There's also the time and effort spent completing your clue, which varies greatly based on what server you're on as well as luck with step count and combat challenges.

The same 1-3 sleep powder as a guaranteed prize with some more valuable resources sprinkled in, with some sort of "mega-rare" drop table for some serious rewards would be a good step in the right direction imo.

 

Lastly, your complaints regarding what the update is lacking are irrelevant to what feedback myself and others have provided. If you're unhappy with things, there's no need to dig at other suggestions. Actually jump on the test server, play around with it then suggest what you feel should be improved or worked on. That's the whole point of this thread.

Edited by Synjor
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Spent about an hour on the test server.   I found a map very quickly and how to view the map.  Otherwise no clue except when the map would move in the direction I was going.  WU may have vague directions but at least I found the treasure.  Using the compass on the map at least gave you a direction to start in and kept you going in the right direction so you had a shot at finding the actual treasure tile.  Need something to keep the directionally challenged treasure seeker at least going in the right direction.  Too few places to go for clues.  

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it occurred to me here a bit ago: it is TEST. lower rewards on test seems a good idea tbh, no reason to give players a reason to stay there.

 

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8 minutes ago, Tomatoes said:

it occurred to me here a bit ago: it is TEST. lower rewards on test seems a good idea tbh, no reason to give players a reason to stay there.

 

TNaoJqD.png

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1 minute ago, Synjor said:

TNaoJqD.png

its not like the rewards transfer back to live....

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1 minute ago, Tomatoes said:

its not like the rewards transfer back to live....

... yes. No one is expecting to actively play on the test server. We're testing. You can't even access it unless it's made open by the devs. Why would it ever make sense to LOWER rewards, when they're something we're actively testing and giving feedback on?

 

You've gotta be the most elaborate troll I've ever seen.

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49 minutes ago, Zarame said:
  • Farming/Harvesting
  • Botanize/Forage Actions
  • Digging
  • Mining
  • Investigating Archeology Sites
  • Fishing/Dredging
  • (Not on Test yet) Praying

I Will definetly not do most of this actions

XD you will if you pinpoint the shortcut to make a few silvers and farm a few rare new drops while alternative is spending few hours home making bricks or some other boring chore,

what seems to be the trend is.. tending/gathering.. and for me wurm is mostly chat + random grind.. so while I spam improve+repair actions... I'll just have to rage, pause and go dig or mine like a madman or adopt a farmer's rake and tend a huge field to earn a few maps; balance to get into new content is not exactly present if you don't fit in specific bulk action type of playing

 

what I wonder is ...

@Keenanhave you guys recorded how many inspirations players get for a day or a week from the actions to which you plan to attach these maps, and run the numbers if that could somehow mess up the economy of the given rewards, the action count will go up as long spent time is worth the rewards

 

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the more maps i see in game the more i realize you have to REALLY know the server you are on in order to find anything. all the landmarks and what not that we see and not think of in game. i think the difficulty curve will go down on live when we are on home turf.

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All my excitement for this exploration addition has quickly faded into a "Wow they still don't get it" disappointment. From what I am seeing this just seems to be another chicken coup fiasco to me. Extra work for less reward does not make happy players. Pointless time wasting also does not a happy player make. And I foresee issues from players having to deal with the multitude of random holes that will be left behind. Where is the excitement? Where are the new encounters? Where is the "I solved the puzzle!" enjoyment? Where are the "Oh wow look what I found!" moments? 

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I think the NUMBER of iterations is too large.  For a "novice" level reward, 1-2 would be sufficient. For the others the difficulty of each iteration has been increased, so having MORE iterations as well seems a wee bit of a kick in the guts.  3-4 iterations at those higher difficulties would still make this a multi-hour quest event.

 

Or, keeping the current numbers of iterations, have the difficulty increase with each iteration, so that the first couple of rounds would be about the same difficulty for all, but after that each level gets more challenging, ramping up to the kind of champion guardians I have been seeing on my 72QL.  In other words, the higher the quality, the further up the difficulty chain you go.  (Heheh, imagine a QL90+ spawning a unique on the ultimate dig).

 

It also wouldn't hurt to throw in small amounts of loot in the intermediate caskets - trinkets and such.  I could even see people with low/middling skills and gear doing a couple of easy iterations for lowish level reward and then selling on the more challenging rounds to more adept adventurers.

 

Some of the clues seem to be a map, with some text overlay reference something that used to be nearby.  Does this mean that these are intended to require archeology to help solve?

 

2 hours ago, Finnn said:

as long you get a sleep powder or two.. you'll be running over the hills and far away to 'cash' the treasure map, believe me;

Considering the sheer amount of running over hills and far away, and the huge time-suck involved; no.  No, people wouldn't be farming this for the SP.  Why spend 3+ hours in non-skillgain activity to get 3 sleep-powders so that some other 3 hour period could have have double skillgain?  The SP is completely nullified, because you spend 6 hours to get 6 hours skillgain.

 

59 minutes ago, Finnn said:

XD you will if you pinpoint the shortcut to make a few silvers and farm a few rare new drops while alternative is spending few hours home making bricks or some other boring chore,

It isn't a shortcut.  The alternative to spending a few hours home on some other boring chore is to spending the same few hours (or maybe more) on madly galloping hither and yon gaining no skill.

 

59 minutes ago, Finnn said:

balance to get into new content is not exactly present if you don't fit in specific bulk action type of playing

I agree completely, albeit from the "other side".  I don't fit into grinding type of playing at all, and this rewards bulk action grinding - via turning "exploration" into a grind.  I agree it isn't engaging, spamming examine to find the next randomly generated tile; and then spamming the dig-for-treasure with it's timer because examine said I was "right on top of it" while the dig-check still has it out of range.

 

I so much want to NOT be disappointed with this.  I also don't want to denigrate the work the devs have put in.  I think this has the potential to be some good content addition and I do think some people will explore a bit more as a result, but I can't think of it as an exploration update.  It is more like an MOI enhancement.  Actually, if the treasure maps and clues were a bit more utile and there was at least a bit of directional cue (more than just one of nine server regions on some text-only clues) then I could have a ball at this.  I do thoroughly enjoy navigating by map, but found this tedious and mentally fatiguing - i.e. the opposite of what a game is supposed to do.  @Wulfmaerput it very well: "This is not the exploration you are looking for."

 

 

Edited by TheTrickster
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My suggestion would be to leave the distance clues as is, until you get to 'a stones throw away' then add a direction.  I fear adding a direction would make the maps totally irrelevant, but my god looking for the exact spot is NOT fun once you're close

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52 minutes ago, Sinnjinn said:

My suggestion would be to leave the distance clues as is, until you get to 'a stones throw away' then add a direction.  I fear adding a direction would make the maps totally irrelevant, but my god looking for the exact spot is NOT fun once you're close

I would do the opposite and remove the direction at "stone's throw".  

 

Imagine being on a large server and your clue is "very far away" in any direction!  Even taking out 600x600 less-than-far-away area that would still leave an area of over 16 million tiles that would need to be searched in some fashion, with never more than "you are [still] very far away.  Given that spamming examine looks to be the most reliable way to find the spot on a small server, a player is on a hiding to nothing on a large server.

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Players: the loots bad
Devs: Okay, we'll redo the loot
Players: 2 more pages of loot complaints

 

Why are you all like this

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55 minutes ago, Archaed said:

Players: the loots bad
Devs: Okay, we'll redo the loot
Players: 2 more pages of loot complaints

 

Why are you all like this

Archaed: Obviously doesn't read the feedback about mechanics properly but trolls anyway.

 

Why are you like this?

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Oh, just to be clear, I'm referring to the loot discussion, not the feedback about mechanics! That's good talk 👍

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4 minutes ago, Archaed said:

Oh, just to be clear, I'm referring to the loot discussion, not the feedback about mechanics! That's good talk 👍

Fair enough.  Although, even the loot discussion is good, if constructive and containing decent explanations and suggestions.

 

Once the devs said they would take another look at loot, there is an opportunity to plug for preferred types etc.

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5 hours ago, Finnn said:

as long you get a sleep powder or two.. you'll be running over the hills and far away to 'cash' the treasure map, believe me;

that is in no way cheap reward on it's own.. for a random inspiration while farming/digging/etc.. these things happen in thousands of actions daily.. by multiple chars by same person... this can scale and generate a lot...;

doubt somebody's going to farm and just say.. "you know what.. I'll give these treasure maps to somebody in global or ca-help channel in a giveaway, yolo", makes no sense if you can take a small walk and turn it into something with ensured value;

the way this works, unless there's really tiny chance to obtain a map.. this will be thA bomb content to milk for months with only comparison to it being clapping rarity creation all day

 

clapping silvers is cool, but I see nothing engaging during the walk from A to B, etc.. checkpoints on the map.. call them clue spots if you like.. the whole content lacks lore, nothing deity related, no special random events, nothing spicy, it's just boring a->b->c->d->e.. and you're again with 3 sleep powders(for example);

it's cool.. coins.. yay.. but at the end of the day.. do you really play to generate pixel currency or experience something more than that

I can tell you from the rewards posted here, there is no sense of "lottery" to win. This is outright required for this system to see success. As soon as maps start having a predetermined value without a jackpot lottery, there will only be a few people engaging with them. You'll instead have a system set up where players completely ignore the content and pass that burden onto a small group of players or even an individual that will game the system and trivialize it for profit.

  • Assume every map is worth 5 silver.
  • A player now makes offers on all maps for 4 silver 50 copper.
  • That player has 20+ alts spread across the server with mailboxes nearby.
  • When the player obtains a map, they mail it to the alt nearest the location.
  • The claim the 5 silver worth of items inside the chest, since it's well known what the rough value a chest is worth. They profit 50 copper for minutes of time.
  • Anyone who is not that player now has a choice:
    • Sell the map and immediately cash it out for 4 silver 50 copper.
    • Spend up to hours exploring the map and hunting for a reward of 50 copper. This is a valid argument to make, since engaging with the system now rewards 50 copper more than not doing so.

It's very likely this will be how the meta of maps develop anyway. However, an average player is far more likely to engage with the content for the chance at "jackpot" instead of immediately selling it. The closest thing I can relate it to in-game is cooking. Most players are not willing to go through the encumbering system of cooking to create affinity food. Instead, they pass the tip someone who has set up the infrastructure for it. That's exactly what you'll be seeing with this system as well.

 

So, no. If you get a sleep powder, players will not be running over the hills and far away to 'cash' the treasure map. They'll be selling it to the highest bidder and ignoring the system entirely.

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Which is why the process needs to be engaging, so those who are not simply minmaxers or grinders will be engaged.  I was going to say "and go on adventures" but that is part of the core disappointment for me in this.  No adventure; just a weird game of galloping about looking for a tile.

 

For the higher ql maps, I don't think "minutes of time" is really a true reflection.  It may be, but given the possible huge huge distances between the 4-6 different "clues" and the guardian mobs at each one, and spam-digging trying to find an actual right-on-top-of-it tile, I think the margin would need to be significantly larger, which makes the price and therefore the incentive to sell significantly lower.

 

The maps could always be made non-trade like coins and SP, but we all know how workaroundable that is.

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About those map hints, is there any possibility to add some graduation how much is seen on that map. Or is it always same amount, no matter is server Xanadu or smaller?

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2 hours ago, Archaed said:

Players: the loots bad
Devs: Okay, we'll redo the loot
Players: 2 more pages of loot complaints

 

Why are you all like this

 

Something that seems to being ignored is that this is the only way to get the pieces needed to complete a chess board, as they are not craftable, at least on the test server. Everything else is just packing, at least for now. It would be nice to see some more exploration only items, in much the same way as there are archaeology only items, to help sustain the interest, but I suspect that will be coming in part 2.

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7 minutes ago, Wulfmaer said:

 

Something that seems to being ignored is that this is the only way to get the pieces needed to complete a chess board, as they are not craftable, at least on the test server. Everything else is just packing, at least for now. It would be nice to see some more exploration only items, in much the same way as there are archaeology only items, to help sustain the interest, but I suspect that will be coming in part 2.

Honestly, loot averages are going to be a difficult thing to balance, because there's just not the scale that is in live. The journal refers to obtaining a unique item, which isn't a chess piece, so there are new things, but they're clearly rare. 

 

The speed of doing things on test, and the scale of doing them does not match the live servers, so you can't balance off "I did four and I got trash". 

 

There's going to be filler stuff, that's to be expected, but it may require tweaking when live to be sure that it's good. 

 

Archaeology took several updates to be in the great spot it's in now too. 

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