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Blacklotus

Make uniques an event similar to rifts

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28 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

The social events from it are too valuable to be destroyed

I think that is a large assumption - were/are rifts not community events?

 

Sheffie's suggestion would definitely make these events much better, and allow for plenty of community planning!

 

31 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

the greed for hide/scale

Don't you own a full set of hide/scale?

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Rifts are typically visited by teams not larger than private slaying teams, frequently less. The reason is that those fights are time gated, and require long traveling times to the locations. It might be more with uniques, but certainly less than with the planned and negotiated public events now which require penning.

Making unique spawn like rifts would only allow those with virtually infinite disposable time to appear fast and slay the unique.

As to greed for hide/scale, nothing wrong when one can afford it. The proposal would cause more scattering of scale and hide, in effect making it less accessible.

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I would like to see the spawn area increased to include an entire server, making a bit more difficult to prepare and find new spawns.  Like rifts, uniques are spawned in the same general areas of the map which are normally central, desolate areas.  On Melody some private slayers have tents hidden around the known spawn areas for when they believe the next spawn may occur.  Mix it up a bit, move the spawn area from coast to coast to coast to coast and all points in between.  This may be the easiest solution until a true unique rework can be done.

 

Private slaying still may occur, but perhaps there will be more than the current 2 groups on NFI doing the slaying.          

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On 10/30/2022 at 12:04 PM, Ekcin said:

As to greed for hide/scale, nothing wrong when one can afford it. The proposal would cause more scattering of scale and hide, in effect making it less accessible.

I disagree.

 

This suggestion, as indicated, would turn the system into a points system.

 

This means players can accrue points as needed to get their sets - it isn't going to scatter it, it is just going to make it more attainable for the wide population and not just those who can "afford it".  I nessence, it becomes less of a prestige item (a sense of pride an accomplishment) and more of an attainable endgame goal (an actual accomplishment).

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The idea with the point system would be terrible to balance. Recently, there is some rebalancing of rift points, and it seems to be hard and complex work of planning and implementation, and may require still some rounds of evaluation and adjsutment. The "proposal" is just a wishlist "there should be", without any reflection of the consequences, and the implementation efforts, and not at all of balancing.

 

The fact that it would wipe out pleasant social events like public slaying is not even been reflected, nor commented.

 

That "everyone can buy scale and hide, and bloods" requires that there will be a glut of points for the participants, else not "everyone". Still, they would only be available to participants, and my objections, that the "ususal suspects", those with disposable time to appear at the location,  and would grab the event, still remains valid.

 

Either the resulting stuff, scales, hides, bloods, would stay scarce, in which case nothing would change. Or they are ubiquitous, thus losing much of their value, but damaging the value of leather, plate, and chain armours. And after not short time, grabbing those points would lose interest. We had the situation with rifts already, when less and less players appeared.

 

I welcome a lot the new PvE events like treasure hunts and the upcoming other two parts. I agree a lot to Tor (though I judge it less hard):

Quote

I am more in for just leave uniques as is, as they are broken for like a dekade now and no one is going to fix that thing, better push for something brand new 2025-2030 thingy

 

Edited by Ekcin

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A points system would likely be designed around accruing enough points to buying a scale set as the current amount of scales gained from slayings would take. getting 0.03 from a public slaying would mean you'd get enough points to purchase .1 scale every ~3 slayings 

 

Add in the inability to purchase small scraps as everyone is working to accrue enough points to redeem that piece (as it would most likely be x points for x weight, meaning having to attend a certain amount of slayings to accrue enough points to be able to get even one piece) would likely slow the process drastically. 

 

I think that's something people would need to consider with this system, it would be a horrible system if it were designed to make getting scale faster, and is more likely to simply be slower. 

 

Add in the "timed" events meaning that it's not a time that works best for everyone, but instead is a time the server generates at random to be fair would mean that public slayings that are at a beneficial time would be a thing of the past, and we'd be stuck with 3am slayings for the US or EU and windows where no slaying is in a prime time for several months. 

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All unique should be public event always never private.

I could jump on a point system like the rift but hide and bloods have to be separate. and new items to be added to the point system like new skins that are dragon like example the priest staff skin.

If you don't do damage you get nothing no points no hide/blood nothing nada. Only people that should be at these events are those who have earned the skill to be there. no alts sucking up anything so goes back to no damage no goodies awarded. This would prevent the greed of alts selling hide and bloods after each event for profit. I hate when someone brings a cart load of alts lagging the area and getting something for doing nothing. you want your alt to get something take them in with your main and have them fight the unique to and take the same chance of dying as everyone else and if they don't have the skill to do damage then don't take them in there.

 

The system is unfair and used as a money grab for a lot of people just like world traders where used back in the day thank god that is gone now this needs to be gone as well.

 

I show up to the public stuff when I have time and i don't cry when it don't meet my time frame. I have to choose do I go and loose sleep before work or sleep and have a better day at work.

Stop giving out trophies for just showing up an start making people earn the stuff.

 

There my 2cents on the matter

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7 hours ago, icenrns said:

u want one get off your ass  and go find one

 

Oh I have several in fact...

First one was a Green Hatchling (old graphic) during Gold before Wurmageddon, which was killed by other players after I logged off.

Found a Black Dragon on epic, obviously not in on the kill for that since i was just having a look around...

Found a Black Dragon on Cad with my Northern alt, lost the rights to it because I didn't know about Wurm Online - Unique Hunting Guidelines - GM Hall - Wurm Online Forum

Found a Red Hatchling on Xan, while on the way to a rift, never made it to the rift, arranged a private slay.

 

So yeah the way it is now is really balanced and fair to everyone...not

 

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I like how people like to talk about horrible stuff while keep pushing for status quo on bugged mechanic to be maintained for a decade all in name of "public slaying" that are probably just a little fragment of all the slayings. On SFI only 1 server have consistent public slaying, that's like 1 in 7. This suggestion is far from ideal but in same time far better then current one.

8 hours ago, icenrns said:

u want one get off your ass  and go find one

 

It's pretty lame to say to a wurm players "get off your ass" as this game have most labor intesive mechanic and gameplay in wich majority of the remaining playerbase sink so much time of their lifes. Pretty much everyone put so much effort into everything.

How about someone else go off their ass and do something about what was majority of players see it as unfair and wanna see changed, improved or replaced.

 

 

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How do you come to say that " majority of players see it as unfair"? I am not sure who is majority and who not, we forum ranters are clearly a minority, all together. I can say that players participates in public slayings which take place on at least 3-5 of 7 servers, not just one (speaking of SFI, and all three on NFI). And there obviously is a majority of active players participating in. And that would be gone. As to the "getting your ass off" I am one preferring grinding, rifting, and attending public slayings (also treasure hunting on my server Xanadu) instead of "getting my ass off" for unique hunting. But I am not complaining. My alliance has organized a public slaying everytime they found a unique, and it was fun. So are the public slayings.

 

And that is why I oppose that half bred terrible proposal.

Edited by Ekcin
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You and me wearing different pair of glasses. It would be nice if someone come up with some kind of specific statistic about it and prove me wrong about me talking from my own perspective. Which other server have a public slaying consistently other then Release?

43 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

And that is why I oppose that half bred terrible proposal.

I would be so much into anything you can suggest about it, really, even more if it include something about players being actively included/involved and not just attending

Edited by Tor

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When the majority of active players on a cluster hops on their carts and boats, that is more than "just attending", it demonstrates the significance of such events for the community. Organizing such events of course is ways more effort, and I know what I am speaking about. The infrastructure Stanlee and his team have created on Release is priceless, so is their creativity. Public slayings on other servers occur less often, but they occur, and are always highlights of gathering, performances, sermons, and other activities, not much less than those on Release.

 

What I suggest is not to destroy them by a stupid time gated "event" distributing some points to the casual participants happening to be in the same timezone. That said, I love rifts despite these undeniable disadvantages, because they are a real PvE fighting event, not just some execution by a mass.

 

(That said, while the fighting part of a public slaying is somewhat less thrilling, it gives players, who otherwise never had the chance, an opportunity to see and engage uniques)

Edited by Ekcin

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7 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

When the majority of active players on a cluster hops on their carts and boats, that is more than "just attending", it demonstrates the significance of such events for the community. Organizing such events of course is ways more effort, and I know what I am speaking about. The infrastructure Stanlee and his team have created on Release is priceless, so is their creativity. Public slayings on other servers occur less often, but they occur, and are always highlights of gathering, performances, sermons, and other activities, not much less than those on Release.

 

What I suggest is not to destroy them by a stupid time gated "event" distributing some points to the casual participants happening to be in the same timezone. That said, I love rifts despite these undeniable disadvantages, because they are a real PvE fighting event, not just some execution by a mass.

 

(That said, while the fighting part of a public slaying is somewhat less thrilling, it gives players, who otherwise never had the chance, an opportunity to see and engage uniques)

I don't disagree about that.

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I am seeing something here 

1. a group of players who go "herp derp its old mechanic no change we want to keep what we have for ourselves no share"
2. people who don't want change because "but mah socials"
3. it would become overwhelming

The idea of a unique being found then a public time being set by the game before its killable would give people time to show up for that designated time and do it this counters point 2
We don't all show up for rifts yet new players do and those who enjoy them do as well it is currently the same with unique's except the difference is a lot of slayings are private thus there is a smaller chance of people who want to be part of slaying them to show up for them at all as they wont ever know.
Just because a unique slaying happens doesn't mean you have to show up for it?

The point system would not mean that it would take MONTHS to get rewards that you can get now it could be scaled to be similar as it is now where contribution value is based on participants vs damage done per person so sure it would be less but not everyone will leave their deed to go chase after every unique on every server only a few would do this and they already try to do so as it is anyway so there is no real change there for them.

Also no this wasn't as much as a suggestion for NFI as it was a suggestion to stop drama queens threatening new players with "im going to call the gms on you" instantly when a group of people find a unique and then lie about how they will kill it aka typical unique slaying drama that we get so often in global and forums the reason why most people dont go to slayings anymore.

Why leave a mechanic that breeds drama in the game and resist change to try and make it better?

Also for those who go "oh go out more and do more slayings" I got all my bloods i got a corpse of every unique(some doubles even) and enough mats for multiple scale and drake hide sets yet I am still for a change where unique's become more accessible towards everyone.

As it stands right now people with more knowledge of when and where a unique can spawn can guesstimate it to pretty good accuracy and thus have an advantage over others who try to hunt but dont have a big group to do this with or the know how of how to make this.
There are also those who past and current use live maps and other tools to track uniques and other creatures and also have a unfair advantage.
Then there is the drama that comes from how the mechanic is right now the one thing that has even driven apart friendships and caused people to get muted or punished worse for the trouble that came from them.
Then there is the issue of alts leeching mats away during public slayings thus those with better hardware specs and wallets can and will get more mats without putting in any effort to the fight.
And lastly we got goblin camps coming up that mechanic should be expanded to troll mounds and dragon lairs and as part of them a revamp to the unique spawning would be good in some form of what is listed here or some other mechanic

But leaving it as it is will do nothing more then just create more drama and cause issues and ruin friendships over greed and for what? a miserabele pile of pixels, a bunch of 1's and 0's?? Heck a great example of getting rid of toxic mechanics is the new cod game, instead of leaving in mechanics that are causing issues they disable them until they can fix them.(Yes before you ask the issue with pings giving players wall hacking is the same issue of players in wurm having live maps to find unique's)

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It shouldn't be very difficult to design a system that would allow players to control when a dragon is fought, if the goal is to guarantee a public slaying at the best time.

 

  1. Player finds dragon. Dragon is asleep, and invulnerable. Player is awarded a chunk of dragon points as a reward. Countdown timer starts at e.g. 48 hours.
  2. If/when a sufficiently large number of players are in Local of the dragon, it wakes up then and there, and the fight begins.
  3. If the countdown timer expires before the dragon is wakened, it wakes up naturally and the fight begins.
  4. A "boredom" timer starts when the fight begins, e.g. 30 minutes.
  5. During the fight, players earn dragon points by damaging the dragon or by healing its target.
  6. The fight ends when the dragon dies, or everyone in that original Local area is dead, or the dragon gets bored.
  7. If the dragon is killed, additional dragon points are awarded to everyone who damaged it.

 

Notes

  • Anyone can hunt for a dragon, and earn rewards for finding it. There should be a "Dragon Hunter" title for this.
  • No more need for complex etiquette rules, and no more demand for GMs to adjudicate who found or owns or claims the dragon, or to kick people out of Local.
  • Because of the 48 hour countdown to the awakening, if you find a dragon when you are playing, it will waken by default at the same time of day for you and those who play at the same time of day. If that time isn't good for you, you can arrange an earlier time.
  • If the finder doesn't publicize the location, the dragon is unlikely to be slain. (Dragons need to be toughened up so that the usual private slaying group can't just execute one without help.)
  • Alts who don't contribute get nothing.

 

Edited by Sheffie
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3 hours ago, wipeout said:

There are also those who past and current use live maps and other tools to track uniques and other creatures and also have a unfair advantage.

 

Then you should be reporting them if you have knowledge of them. If you're just guessing that people use them, I think you're in for a shock.

 

14 hours ago, Arkonick said:

I could jump on a point system like the rift but hide and bloods have to be separate.

 

Terrible idea. Hide would benefit from tweaks moreso because drakes drop less hide to be split between players. If you went 1 for 1 on dragons and drakes in a private group you'd likely end up with a scale set before a drake set iirc. Bloods really should just drop like normal no matter what, alts being brought to get bloods is a pointless complaint as it overall harms and hurts nobody.

 

3 hours ago, Sheffie said:

It shouldn't be very difficult to design a system that would allow players to control when a dragon is fought, if the goal is to guarantee a public slaying at the best time.

 

  1. Player finds dragon. Dragon is asleep, and invulnerable. Player is awarded a chunk of dragon points as a reward. Countdown timer starts at e.g. 48 hours.
  2. If/when a sufficiently large number of players are in Local of the dragon, it wakes up then and there, and the fight begins.
  3. If the countdown timer expires before the dragon is wakened, it wakes up naturally and the fight begins.
  4. A "boredom" timer starts when the fight begins, e.g. 30 minutes.
  5. During the fight, players earn dragon points by damaging the dragon or by healing its target.
  6. The fight ends when the dragon dies, or everyone in that original Local area is dead, or the dragon gets bored.
  7. If the dragon is killed, additional dragon points are awarded to everyone who damaged it.

 

1. "Oh crap I found this dragon at 3AM on a Sunday morning, I work during the week, this simple best time mechanic hasn't worked for me and I lack the ability to make a public thread due to a busy day."

2. Easy to game with alts, even if they need to be prem.

3. Having a loose dragon tends to be what leads to pens and random callouts to private slays.

4. Not a good mechanic, more on point 6.

5. Again, directly benefits private slays more. More HP to be taken by lower amounts means more points.

6.  Having it randomly end in 30 minutes of fighting seems really god damn silly. Dragon fights, even if they are buffed it rarely take close to that long unless your team sucks and/or still uses really awful weapons. Simply buffing a creature does nothing but making tanking significantly harder and more awful.

7. Doesn't this contradict your final bullet point, where people who don't contribute get nothing?

 

It's very easy to game this approach if it was added as is. Earn your dragon points, deliberately kite it around until it gets "bored" (lol) and use it to farm dragon points. Also anyone can already hunt for a dragon, Stanlee has already posted before pointing out as such. Again, for everyone who somehow missed it, rift sites will get you a shocking amount of uniques but that's not a hard promise as they can spawn randomly just about bloody anywhere far enough from a deed.

Not a great suggestion, it's very lost in the sauce and assumes that simply buffing a dragon is a good move when if anything it's another detriment. Also uses weird and wonky mechanics. Very easy to Darnok yourself trying to improve the idea.

 

I beg anyone who wants to contribute takes in mind the Archaed post as it so well points out the issue with making a dragon something as awful as a rift event.

 

15 hours ago, Archaed said:

A points system would likely be designed around accruing enough points to buying a scale set as the current amount of scales gained from slayings would take. getting 0.03 from a public slaying would mean you'd get enough points to purchase .1 scale every ~3 slayings 

 

Add in the inability to purchase small scraps as everyone is working to accrue enough points to redeem that piece (as it would most likely be x points for x weight, meaning having to attend a certain amount of slayings to accrue enough points to be able to get even one piece) would likely slow the process drastically. 

 

I think that's something people would need to consider with this system, it would be a horrible system if it were designed to make getting scale faster, and is more likely to simply be slower. 

 

Add in the "timed" events meaning that it's not a time that works best for everyone, but instead is a time the server generates at random to be fair would mean that public slayings that are at a beneficial time would be a thing of the past, and we'd be stuck with 3am slayings for the US or EU and windows where no slaying is in a prime time for several months. 

 

 

As for my own take, there's so much this and that, that so often nobody remembers the distribution. Points are not a good way to get scale/hide for a few reasons, other than making it nonsensical it means an entire rebalance and figuring out a new system to quantify damage value and ultimately just hurts people who don't fight as much, aren't as strong, are newer to the game or just simply don't want to use meta weapons/loadouts. Tanks would have to be considered too as you're not going to get nearly as much points if you have to focus on just tanking the hits as best you can. You'd also need to attach value to heal casts and stamina casts too if the route was taken of buffing dragons. I stand by the idea the ideal solution comes from a rework of distribution of the resources gained since that's the cause of private slayings, but I'm sure cases can be made that involve other ideas too.

At best most of these ideas just simply make uniques a boring system, and at worst offer a new way to game the system and making it overall much worse.

 

tl;dr uniques need a change but there's too many ideas that forget too many boxes and aren't deeply considered enough.

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Arguments I chose not to address.

  • Don't change anything, because if you do, people might be able to get hide quicker — or slower.
  • People can't control when the fights are going to be; also people are going to be able to game when the fights are going to be.
  • Having the dragon fly away because it's bored would be gamed by people who could easily choose to kill it and get more rewards.
  • Balancing is difficult, therefore a solution that gives the devs the ability to tweak and balance more numbers is a bad solution.
  • You can damage a dragon without contributing to the fight.
  • Everyone being given blood and fragments of hide which can be made into valuable potions and armour (whether involved or just standing around) is no problem, but people who were involved in the fight being given (say) droplets of dragon dust/blood/sinew/bone/fragments that can be saved up / sold / traded in for valuable potions and armour is ridiculous.

 

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1 hour ago, Madnath said:

 

Then you should be reporting them if you have knowledge of them. If you're just guessing that people use them, I think you're in for a shock.

 

Terrible idea.

At best most of these ideas just simply make uniques a boring system, and at worst offer a new way to game the system and making it overall much worse.

 

tl;dr uniques need a change but there's too many ideas that forget too many boxes and aren't deeply considered enough.


Madnath, To address your point, First, It would be damn hard to prove anyone was using a live map without a GM involved and you know that. Second, Somebody with as much knowledge about this system as yourself were to suggest a system to replace it, what would it be? I in no way think my idea is the best or most useful to replace the current system, but the current system doesn't work and needs to change.
 

6 hours ago, Ekcin said:

When the majority of active players on a cluster hops on their carts and boats, that is more than "just attending", it demonstrates the significance of such events for the community. Organizing such events of course is ways more effort, and I know what I am speaking about. The infrastructure Stanlee and his team have created on Release is priceless, so is their creativity. Public slayings on other servers occur less often, but they occur, and are always highlights of gathering, performances, sermons, and other activities, not much less than those on Release.

 

What I suggest is not to destroy them by a stupid time gated "event" distributing some points to the casual participants happening to be in the same timezone. That said, I love rifts despite these undeniable disadvantages, because they are a real PvE fighting event, not just some execution by a mass.

 

(That said, while the fighting part of a public slaying is somewhat less thrilling, it gives players, who otherwise never had the chance, an opportunity to see and engage uniques)

 

Ekcin, I wholelly agree these need to be community events but considering the amount of money involved currently with hunting a dragon for a private slaying, things need to change. I know making them exactly like rifts wont fix the issues around them, but it's at least a step towards a better system. If it's awful please please make suggestions that you feel would fix it or help bring it into a space where it could still be a community fight without needing the GM intervention or heavy handed rules or organizers who are having to dedicate their time to making it work.

 

On 10/29/2022 at 4:24 AM, Archaed said:

Becuase they're the ones out there hunting for them. 

 

This suggestion again is "I don't want to hunt for uniques, I want to be told when and where to go"

 

Legendary creatures need a rework, but I don't think they need to be changed to just another rift, I'm surprised no ones thought of something that's ACTUALLY useful. 

Archaed, Legendary Creatures do need a rework, and this may not be the correct change for them to be another rift, but if you have a suggestion please make it and help make a system that benefits everyone. 

To everyone, I get where ya'll are coming from with saying this is useless or a bad idea, instead please suggest how it would be improved or if you don't like it, what would you yourself replace it with.

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It might be productive to draw up a list of the issues / problems with unique slayings as they currently are. For each one, we should consider:-

  • What are we going to call this issue, and, exactly what are we talking about?
  • What is the root cause of the issue? 
  • What are the effects? 
  • How essential is it to address this issue?
  • What problems or complications exist?

Naturally different players are going to have different opinions, and naturally those differences are going to manifest as different judgments of proposed solutions. So I think it could be helpful to try to bring some of those differences into the open.

 

Issues I can think of:

  1. dragons are hard to find
  2. the current hunting etiquette rules are arcane and effectively lock out players who don't have specialist knowledge
  3. GMs are required to resolve disputes about dragons or loot
  4. ownership or "claim" on a dragon is an all-or-nothing proposition
  5. the difficulty of hunting, the high value of loot, and the zero-sum distribution of hide, combine to produce a motive for players to lie, cheat and steal
  6. dragon slaying and dragon hide are a high stakes, high drama area which can lead to toxicity in the community
  7. people who support public sayings feel that private slayings concentrate the rewards in the hands of a tiny minority of already well-off players
  8. people who support private slayings feel that public slayings dilute the rewards too broadly, even among those who haven't contributed
  9. the presence of non-combatants / spectators / leechers can make public slayings unplayable
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25 minutes ago, Blacklotus said:

Madnath, To address your point, First, It would be damn hard to prove anyone was using a live map without a GM involved and you know that. Second, Somebody with as much knowledge about this system as yourself were to suggest a system to replace it, what would it be? I in no way think my idea is the best or most useful to replace the current system, but the current system doesn't work and needs to change.

 

First, players shouldn't be accusing anyone of something illegal they couldn't back up. That's toxic and prejudiced, and is completely unwelcome in any conversation if it's to be taken seriously. If anyone is to make a serious allegation, then they should be ready to back it up. Has it happened before? Yes. But there's an implication that's what's going on now, and so far we've got absolutely nothing to back that up, from player standpoint. When it was done before, it was very clear that a group was doing something kinda odd. However, it's pretty easy to connect dots for each slay now. Some groups get kills they find, some of them kill based on local or GL messages.

 

As for what I'd change it to, I have no idea. I have things I want to keep, and I think I understand the most effective change type, but I have no idea how it could be worked into a system I like and comfortably go "I think this is good"

I say keep the hunting, keep the slaying and stuff basic so that people aren't lost in the sauce of nonsense when they suggest changes. But I've yet to see a single post that can comfortably cover every checkbox we currently have with uniques, positive or negative.

Uniques and their future are something that the devs aren't slow to work on, they're clearly taking a good amount of time to really work out and present a system that works well in the game world and makes sense in the context of the game. As far as ideas I like more than others, I quite like the Stanlee idea of "earning" your dragon rather than just find them spawning in the wild.

 

To play devil's advocate, I can see the intent of the system being made to give players a "carrot on a stick" approach. You want your own dragon? Group up, search it down and kill it. The system works in the fact it encourages people off deed and to explore. I think not handing these rare creatures on a silver platter is a good move, the act of killing a dragon is rather easy if you're in a group who are willing to search and make an effort, and learn with information already posted on the forums for trapping it. Ultimately it adds a sense of wonder to the act of leaving deed and exploring the other parts of the server map you maybe don't get to visit too often.

 

So, where does that all fall apart? I'd say two places:

Really, a wider part of the playerbase aren't trying to go for that carrot on a stick. They aren't willing to understand that other groups got the dragon before they did and take the loss that time. They aren't willing to learn the mechanics, which exist explained on the forums. And sometimes, that's fine! But it really takes the wind out of the sails when it comes to arguing for changing uniques to serve everyone at once rather than those who can put some effort in.

And secondly, exactly as I mentioned above, it's too well known. Really, twitter and event messages were taken away in hopes it'd level the playing field for finding a unique. People hooked up to give them alerts when the Twitter bot pinged them to say a unique spawned suddenly don't know exactly when to search. That's a good change, but it ultimately made the gap larger between the average player and those who understand unique spawning. It continues to be the players who understand the systems most who get the uniques, rather than the average player who doesn't know and perhaps doesn't want to know.

 

Short term? Made unique spawns much more random. Remove the fact that they're more likely to spawn after a server restart, and change the spawn value that makes them more likely to spawn past a certain point. Add more randomness into the mix, obscured well enough that people can't get an exact bead on them. This of course, would affect public and private slays, but ultimately might mean more "average" players will find them. But, it's pointless to do this as it ultimately does nothing to change the situation beyond potentially slow down public and private slays.

Long term? Adjust the distribution of scale/hide to be more beneficial to having a larger amount in local. Again, most of the issues people have with slays being private is the fact that it's much more beneficial to players to do it privately. What can we do to change that, in a way that doesn't add nonsense like points? A formula based on combat rating isn't a good or bad way to do it. Offer an amount of scale/hide per person based on collective group combat rating, increasing upwards the more CR there is, until there's a cap and then it starts to slightly lower again due to amount of players. Market has more scale/hide in it, players get more, and more people walk away with the resource in an amount that wont take them more than 5 years to make a set unless they group up and send along alts to public events.

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You have to remember that any talk of uniques, dragons in particular and at least on NFI, will be a direct affront to those who control the majority of the kills; you are affecting their wallets and their ability to control.  You will face strong opposition no matter how reasonable the suggestion.

By removing the ability to control who has access to dragon slayings, you remove the separation of the "haves" and "have nots" castes of players.  Suddenly, anyone can become a proud owner of a suit of dragon armour, not just the special few and the others who can afford it.  Wearing dragon armour suddenly isn't as special when the common rabble can wear it.

 

(A cluster merge would help spread resources around, and is good for other reasons, but the system wold still be broken)


So be prepared for a significant amount of irrational thinking and discussion :)


Once the goblin villages are tested and in place for some amount of time, it would be easy enough to expand that ground-work to include the rest of the uniques as described by the OP with Sheffy's modifications, which taken together is a fantastic way to adjust the current and broken unique system.
 

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19 hours ago, Archaed said:

A points system would likely be designed around accruing enough points to buying a scale set as the current amount of scales gained from slayings would take. getting 0.03 from a public slaying would mean you'd get enough points to purchase .1 scale every ~3 slayings 

 

Add in the inability to purchase small scraps as everyone is working to accrue enough points to redeem that piece (as it would most likely be x points for x weight, meaning having to attend a certain amount of slayings to accrue enough points to be able to get even one piece) would likely slow the process drastically. 

 

I think that's something people would need to consider with this system, it would be a horrible system if it were designed to make getting scale faster, and is more likely to simply be slower. 

 

Add in the "timed" events meaning that it's not a time that works best for everyone, but instead is a time the server generates at random to be fair would mean that public slayings that are at a beneficial time would be a thing of the past, and we'd be stuck with 3am slayings for the US or EU and windows where no slaying is in a prime time for several months. 

I don't really like the point system too much but you just made up your own issues to disagree with about it.

 

There's tend to be more 0.01 drops on pulbic slaying then 0.03, imo and not every server have public slayings every time. There's actually abitly to purchase scale or drake hide from if people that spend their X poitns for 0.01 amount of scale/drake wanna sell it to you.

Also, there's uniques that doesn't drop scale or hide and you can still get points from them. Faster or slowers, that's what tweaking is for, nothing is carved in stone

 

Even the current public slayings are not everyones best time. It's really not that horrible as this current one

 

Hope devs would look at the posts and take the best idead/suggestion and not just look for a single post that cheks all the boxes

 

 

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2 hours ago, Zakiah said:

You have to remember that any talk of uniques, dragons in particular and at least on NFI, will be a direct affront to those who control the majority of the kills; you are affecting their wallets and their ability to control.  You will face strong opposition no matter how reasonable the suggestion.

By removing the ability to control who has access to dragon slayings, you remove the separation of the "haves" and "have nots" castes of players.  Suddenly, anyone can become a proud owner of a suit of dragon armour, not just the special few and the others who can afford it.  Wearing dragon armour suddenly isn't as special when the common rabble can wear it.

 

(A cluster merge would help spread resources around, and is good for other reasons, but the system wold still be broken)


So be prepared for a significant amount of irrational thinking and discussion :)


Once the goblin villages are tested and in place for some amount of time, it would be easy enough to expand that ground-work to include the rest of the uniques as described by the OP with Sheffy's modifications, which taken together is a fantastic way to adjust the current and broken unique system.
 

 

I am very much in agreement that it should remove the haves and have nots castes. It shouldn't require a GM to make the system work especially since most if not all the GM's are unpaid we don't need to add to their burden.

 

2 hours ago, Madnath said:

 

First, players shouldn't be accusing anyone of something illegal they couldn't back up. That's toxic and prejudiced, and is completely unwelcome in any conversation if it's to be taken seriously. If anyone is to make a serious allegation, then they should be ready to back it up. Has it happened before? Yes. But there's an implication that's what's going on now, and so far we've got absolutely nothing to back that up, from player standpoint. When it was done before, it was very clear that a group was doing something kinda odd. However, it's pretty easy to connect dots for each slay now. Some groups get kills they find, some of them kill based on local or GL messages.

 I agree with you. Nobody here is accusing anyone specifically of cheating only that it has happened in the past, and as I said even if it were suspected there is no way to prove such without involving a GM. Ultimately I would like to see a system that doesn't require a GM to be involved at all because the rules of the game and mechanics don't lend to anyone needing to cheat, lie or otherwise over some dragon scale and/or a unique drop.

 

2 hours ago, Madnath said:
Spoiler

 

As for what I'd change it to, I have no idea. I have things I want to keep, and I think I understand the most effective change type, but I have no idea how it could be worked into a system I like and comfortably go "I think this is good"

I say keep the hunting, keep the slaying and stuff basic so that people aren't lost in the sauce of nonsense when they suggest changes. But I've yet to see a single post that can comfortably cover every checkbox we currently have with uniques, positive or negative.

Uniques and their future are something that the devs aren't slow to work on, they're clearly taking a good amount of time to really work out and present a system that works well in the game world and makes sense in the context of the game. As far as ideas I like more than others, I quite like the Stanlee idea of "earning" your dragon rather than just find them spawning in the wild.

 

To play devil's advocate, I can see the intent of the system being made to give players a "carrot on a stick" approach. You want your own dragon? Group up, search it down and kill it. The system works in the fact it encourages people off deed and to explore. I think not handing these rare creatures on a silver platter is a good move, the act of killing a dragon is rather easy if you're in a group who are willing to search and make an effort, and learn with information already posted on the forums for trapping it. Ultimately it adds a sense of wonder to the act of leaving deed and exploring the other parts of the server map you maybe don't get to visit too often.

 

So, where does that all fall apart? I'd say two places:

Really, a wider part of the playerbase aren't trying to go for that carrot on a stick. They aren't willing to understand that other groups got the dragon before they did and take the loss that time. They aren't willing to learn the mechanics, which exist explained on the forums. And sometimes, that's fine! But it really takes the wind out of the sails when it comes to arguing for changing uniques to serve everyone at once rather than those who can put some effort in.

And secondly, exactly as I mentioned above, it's too well known. Really, twitter and event messages were taken away in hopes it'd level the playing field for finding a unique. People hooked up to give them alerts when the Twitter bot pinged them to say a unique spawned suddenly don't know exactly when to search. That's a good change, but it ultimately made the gap larger between the average player and those who understand unique spawning. It continues to be the players who understand the systems most who get the uniques, rather than the average player who doesn't know and perhaps doesn't want to know.

 

Short term? Made unique spawns much more random. Remove the fact that they're more likely to spawn after a server restart, and change the spawn value that makes them more likely to spawn past a certain point. Add more randomness into the mix, obscured well enough that people can't get an exact bead on them. This of course, would affect public and private slays, but ultimately might mean more "average" players will find them. But, it's pointless to do this as it ultimately does nothing to change the situation beyond potentially slow down public and private slays.

Long term? Adjust the distribution of scale/hide to be more beneficial to having a larger amount in local. Again, most of the issues people have with slays being private is the fact that it's much more beneficial to players to do it privately. What can we do to change that, in a way that doesn't add nonsense like points? A formula based on combat rating isn't a good or bad way to do it. Offer an amount of scale/hide per person based on collective group combat rating, increasing upwards the more CR there is, until there's a cap and then it starts to slightly lower again due to amount of players. Market has more scale/hide in it, players get more, and more people walk away with the resource in an amount that wont take them more than 5 years to make a set unless they group up and send along alts to public events.

 

 

I appreciate your feedback on this. I agree with keeping some of the more fun aspects of dragon hunting. I'd love a system that still rewards players for finding the dragon first, but also makes it harder to really predict where it will spawn. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing smaller dragons roaming more frequently with much much less hide/drops then have a dragon camp/den/nest event similar to the new goblin camps or rifts (much much harder preferribly) as long as it produced a more fair and equalizing experience for new and old players. My belief is that if we get enough of a thread going, and share all the best ideas the Devs can look at it and get a much better sense of how to fix legendary creatures.

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Please remember the point of this thread is to discuss the Legendary spawning and what changes we'd like to see, what challenges and difficulties exist that need to be fixed (including but not limited to cheating) and not turn this thread into a mud slinging contest. If you can only point fingers it's not beneficial to this discussion and I'll ask you to take that somewhere else. This is not the place for it.

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