Hotfix Notes 08/09-MAR-2023 discussion

[Madnath 3,113]

51 minutes ago, Jaz said:

Also would you consider to make the special items as a mailbox too?

 

It'd have to be something else from the mirror as it acts as an altar where you can sacc things, but would be nice to have this

 

[Rauros 232]

Among the few ideas that came into my mind up now there's a fix like this: make corruption spawns items that must be "cleared" with relevant skills, in order to the site not get damaged. Fo could have thorns that must be pruned for a lot of times, magranon could have rusty metal structures and so on. These "items" spawns on the ground like the rift mats, and once in a while they "damage" the holy site for corruption. Such items raises in ql (so they're harder to remove) and number, the damage they do to holy site depends on total ql of them, damage to holy site may be reduced also with exorcism like now, and power raised by prayers.

With this combination, players will have something to do at the site (wich will let them gain relevant skills) while they wait for the pulses. This will also reduce the amount of prayer ticks needed to clean the site, so the power of the site will grow a bit more, especially at his discovery, and then will stabilize into growing few points per day (a full prayer cycle seems to increase power by 2.5 points per praying toon per day, so with 10 alts only praying at the site, the power will grow of about 25 pts per day, getting to 100 in 4 days total in the best case...wich is never XD).

[UthgardDavies 36]

[11:11:01] Your head aches. You have gained Faith with your deity too recently, and need more time before you can try purifying this place again. 

 

I just logged in and did nothing but try and purify. It did that last night as well. I did  one purify and after that I have not been able to cast purify. Only rummage.

[Jaz 2,666]

30 minutes ago, UthgardDavies said:

[11:11:01] Your head aches. You have gained Faith with your deity too recently, and need more time before you can try purifying this place again. 

 

I just logged in and did nothing but try and purify. It did that last night as well. I did  one purify and after that I have not been able to cast purify. Only rummage.

Same here I cannot purify more than once - made sure I do not pray either.

[Lycanthropic 523]

Yeah, as of now, there is little worth in being at the holy site.

At least not for this monolith of magranon on Inde.

 

• Prayers and sermons should not cause damage or ql loss, you are litteraly sending your prayers to your god, it should strengthen it
• Only thing in my opinion that should do damage is the Pulse and time, for it makes sense that for the holy site to put out a pulse, it uses up the faith it has been granted through prayer/sermons
• After each pulse that damages the holy site, it should be the priests/followers job to repair/imp ql as fast as possible before the next pulse arrives
• To not make the holy site last forever, maybe make each pulse more punishing, so that after 48hours of pulses, the holy site simply cant keep its form together anymore and crumbles

 

• And yeah, also make exorsicm skill have more influence on the amount repaired, and maybe soulstrength (for mag holy sites) add more ql

 

But yeah, mag monolith here on Inde is basically useless, its at 38ql and 52damage, so rummage-rewards are not worth it to stay and only thing left is the imping of metal items (wich only followers can do anyways)

 

Hope the Holy sites gets some much needed balancing-love

 

[Wulfmaer 413]

The monolith on Xanadu is much the same, the ql has dropped so low that the pulses are not giving a meteorite. While there was a report of a empyrean lump from rummaging, I have got more from the random meteorites left over from previous rites.

 

Limiting the number of times you can pray/purify a day the way it is, is just wrong - there are simply not enough players taking part for priests to consistently be able to get a reset from sermon. And followers don't even get that option, so little reason to hang around once they have reached the pray counter limit.

[Oblivionnreaver 5,175]

in hindsight spawning every site on every server was probably a mistake, people are spread far too thin and even a single gods followers are halved between the sites on the server. will probably be better when theres only 1 or 2 holy sites of a god on a server cluster at a time.

 

quite frankly the time to reward for improving a holy site is dreadful, spending hours fixing up a holy site just for a minute extra sb or whatever is laughable. praying and sermoning should not increase corruption and exorcism should actually increase the amt cleansed (seems to be bugged atm skill does nothing)

 

also a completely dead feature on pvp, you cant afk there for rewards/pray/cleanses but thats whatever nobody was gonna do them on pvp anyway idk why you bothered doing pvp specific penalties just to make it worse than freedom version lol

[Rauros 232]

Well, all the system was probably theorycrafted and in some fashion works, but the problem was to test it live with true players.
I bet it will be refined and will come out a nice feature.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Rauros

[Madnath 3,113]

So yeah, now I've spent time with the Vyn mirror on live, I'm just gonna dump all my thoughts into a post. It's gonna be harsh, but I don't mean it to belittle or demean the efforts of creation of the content or the folks who worked on it.

 

We've had multiple threads where balance issues were screamed about, and little progress was made. As far as the checklist goes, one of the bigger things was partially addressed, which was a nerf to Vynora’s benefits. However, the buffs that were still needed to bring other gods up to a good level wasn’t done. Mag for example, still lacks a passive effect beyond the imp bonus, like the other gods have.

Prayers and sermons add very little to the QL, so unless you've got MEGA numbers, keeping the QL good seems impossible.

Corruption is buggered and really backwards. I know the exorcism stuff is gonna be fixed next uptime but it's frankly too limiting. Keeping corruption down leans super heavily towards priests, since for some reason purification needs to use your 1/5 or 6 faith gain spots per day. It's incredibly frustrating to see the level increase while you can't do anything.

Visually they're nothing special. The models look nice and they're cool, don't get me wrong, but it's just... a thing. Can we make a holy site look holy? Can we make it look worthy of a god? Can we get some of the visual flare we've seen in promo images? Even just a layer of fake rift crystal like stuff in the area would do wonders for presentation.

Also they're just kinda boring. The mirror holy site is just "lug some stuff over to imp I guess, because you're not doing any actions near it in relation to the site"

The rewards aren't really getting too warm a reception from what I see either. I understand we're not getting a full idea here, because of the corruption issue, lack of player number scaling, and players being a bit spread out in order to rush to their first gods holy site even if it's on another server. But the Vyn mirror ticks are... just kinda meh? Mag fragments being... cooking utensils, lamp heads and lanterns? Fo being weird condition animals is neat but if cows aren't part of that, I'll cry. Lib I have no real idea on yet.

 

I can't really see the idea catching on. There seems to be no scaling present for lower numbers, it's incredibly limiting in increasing QL and reducing corruption. This really needed more time in the oven and more hands tinkering with balance, presentation and actual use of them. It's all well and good muttering "test server" but the whole thing with test is, it's an in progress build and we have no real idea what's coming and what's gonna look or feel different come release. I hope that goblin camps blow our socks off, because knowing this is another system that's on the pile of "Yeah we'll have to tinker with that again someday" is disheartening.

Holy sites are a fantastic idea. The hype for them was there, they're in the minds of players as a new experience, something new to add to the game. But as they are? Exploration gives you the chance for a holy site where you might get some okay loot but you're doing there what you'd likely be doing on your deed anyway.

Let's address the corruption issue, add some scaling for numbers, making increasing QL a bit better and removing corruption not kinda suck if you're not a priest, add some visual flair and maybe something interactive to do here and there so we're not just twiddling our thumbs outside of the game waiting for a pulse.

 

I think there's already a lot that can be thought of to add to this. What about using source salt to purify, similar to the rift stuff? What about saccing high favour items or valrei items in the holy site altar in order to increase some of the QL?

Edited March 12, 2023 by Madnath

[Ostentatio 1,971]

1 hour ago, Madnath said:

Visually they're nothing special. The models look nice and they're cool, don't get me wrong, but it's just... a thing. Can we make a holy site look holy? Can we make it look worthy of a god? Can we get some of the visual flare we've seen in promo images?

 

The promotional images were screenshots; those effects exist in-game. If you're not seeing them, you're likely not the correct deity for the site or don't have enough Faith. There's always the chance of some kind of bug here, but the visual effects at the Fo site I went to appeared to be working, so if you think it's buggy, we would need more details.

 

 

Regarding the other feedback, some tweaks are currently in the works and more information should be available soon.

[ChampagneDragon 974]

I posted this on the wrong thread, so posting it here where feedback is relevant:

 

Ok so I have spent all day at two holy sites on Indy: 

 

Mag with my 100 faith Mag priest. At first everyone was scrambling for meteors when they spawned. Corruption of the monolith quickly cut those off, everyone left. Well, some left prior to that saying getting .01 when cominbing a few lumps after all day was not worth it. After 10 hours there exactly 5 people remained. This is not enough to reset purifies, so corruption was climbing fast.

 

Fo: I got the orb. I was not going to stare at the map for hours trying to find the spot. Luckily one of my alliance mates instantly recognized the probable area, I went there and activated it. I summoned everyone who wanted. At one point there were actually four unique players there, along with their priests. I had to take my main there to guard the priests after everyone left. Yea, everyone except two of us, along with our priests. Corruption started climbing fast, and not enough listeners to reset prayers for purify. After 10 hours I'm over it. Yea, new food items may be cool, but I'm not switching to Fo just so I can harvest them with my high forestry main. My Fo has gotten a few forestry points. Not interested in grinding it twice, so they'll remain 10ish quality. 

 

What they are is big sermon circles. That's it. If you have already done a sermon circle once you have no desire to do it again. If you don't have valid sermons the corruption goes up so fast they're worthless. These will probably be gone in the next day or so due to corruption. If you're not clear: you can only "purify" when your normal prayer timer says. Sermons reset that timer. The amount of corruption requires many priests to purify throughout the day. .05 purification on a rapidly climbing 40+ corruption ... do the math. It's awful. That's 80+ purifications NOT ACCOUNTING FOR NEW CORRUPTION.

 

Yea, been there, done the sermon circles three times (three priests). I'm not doing them again.

[Madnath 3,113]

23 minutes ago, Ostentatio said:

 

The promotional images were screenshots; those effects exist in-game. If you're not seeing them, you're likely not the correct deity for the site or don't have enough Faith. There's always the chance of some kind of bug here, but the visual effects at the Fo site I went to appeared to be working, so if you think it's buggy, we would need more details.

 

 

Regarding the other feedback, some tweaks are currently in the works and more information should be available soon.

 

Oh they defo exist ingame, I notice the area does have the rite sky and such when in locale. But look, here's an image of what the Mirror looks like:

 

It has visual flair. It looks interesting, there's stuff going on in this image. You can't really tell what does and doesn't belong, other than the avatar and probably the walls honestly.

But here's the current Cele one after a day.

 

That is indeed the mirror! And it does have that lovely glow from the night time rite effect. It looks nice! But I'm asking for something else entirely. I want some visual stuff around it, like I said, maybe just junk like fake rift crystals. Maybe some sort of diety themed mailbox with the imps visible just for fun. Just something that isn't "Okay mirror, rite effect, boom" because outside of some timeframes it just looks dull. I'm sure there's plenty of extra creative flairs that can be added just for fun.

Press shot looks holy, it has something neat in its visuals. Ingame, eh, it's just kinda a mirror on some pavement.

[Spacy 659]

As these seam to be really geared to be sermon circles, and most priests are highly specialized characters without fighting skills or even armor, usually, how about adding some "spirit templar" type beings appropriate to each deity.  The higher the addition of the strength and corruption the more of them or the larger the area they cover.  When I was riding next to one on xan I am sure me pausing and taking care of the green troll probably saved an AFK priest or two.  I just happened to be riding by on the way home from doing a treasure map.   This would give some flare to the sites, add protection for priests and AFK toons, and might increase participation.

 

Having something for non-followers to do would help as well.  Both to do and to get rewarded for doing it.  

 

For 100 faith priests, they need some incentive as well as protection.  I did the sermon circle for 4 priests, one of each flavor.  Only one has done the channeling grind - and moving the stuff to the sites is a pain to work on it.  But, if you do things like give each priest the same things as the Chaos titles give - double faith gain, 1/2 price of spells - it might be worth wild to actually haul out that BSB of guts for my lib, or all that cordage for the others, or what not.  Anyhoo, just a couple cents of random surface thoughts on this.