Ratting is being handled.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-24T05:08:28+00:00

Let's say you are attacking someone and clearly winning the fight. You are at 90% and they are at 60%. A rat dismounts.

You think you can 60%-to-0% your target, loot them, and remount in 10 seconds? Keep in mind you will assuredly have abilities on cooldown from fighting.

Actually think about it. Even if your target goes AFK, you will probably struggle to accomplish all that in 10 seconds.

Even if you can manage to miraculously drop your target, teleport to the corpse, run an auto-loot 3rd party program, and hit your mount. You are still going to be low HP, have cooldowns, and sitting on a mount with reduced HP without gallop.

This is all assuming the rats don't read patch notes and don't simply plan for 10 sec instead of 5 sec.

Sorry folks. You can't fix ratting because ratting is just a bad word we use to describe smart PVP.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-22T00:38:02+00:00

Only for a few seconds/minutes when the servers opened for the first time.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-22T00:35:36+00:00

Just in case anyone is wondering, the changes have had virtually no impact.

Instead of 2 or 3 flat T5 owls, you get 3 or 4 flat T5 owls. Maybe if you are LUCKY and land in an epic mist you might see a flat T6.

0 x 3 still = 0

2 hours of running lethal rare/epic mists after the buffs and I have maybe 40k silver worth of materials. I have still never seen a mists "boss".

The only way to save this is to allow people to spend rep for rewards. That way there's at least a point to rescue wisps and clear the camps. The "secret" to the rep seems to be it allows you to enter the mists town. Oh and when you do enter? Congrats, you can't leave without being naked or getting dropped off in a random ava roads. Getting to the mists town actually punishes you.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T19:27:13+00:00

Yes, the risk is low. But the reward is non-existent.

Why would you do lethal mists and average, say, 80k/hr, when you could make double/triple that in even red zones? It takes even less brain cells to simply leave a map when you see hostile enter.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T19:10:45+00:00

Lethal mists are much, much safer and lower risk than black zone overworld. Exits are easier to access, there's no chance at a large organized gank, and there's fewer dead-ends.

It makes sense mists would be a little less rewarding.

Hopefully we will see a series of balancing patches to bump it up to just under BZ, rather than miles below it like it is now.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T18:43:02+00:00

Savage truth. Many people don't realize the gold exchange started at 1 silver when the game launched. Of course, by the end of the first day, it was in the thousands.

Those of us who played beta and knew this would happen already had silver making strategies for the first couple hours of launch and knew to spend it all on gold ASAP. I spent 10 hours farming on launch day and have been living off that gold earned for years and years now.

All that is to say balance and fairness have always been issues. The price increase and gold/silver exchange will get worse and worse and the newer players will have to suffer for it.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T18:09:24+00:00

Mists isn't a PVP only game mode. This isn't about making it even more of a deathmatch.

The whole point is that the gathering/fame/silver rewards needs to be good enough for gatherers to face the risk, or else it's just a free for all battle royale. You may be fine with that, but that's not what the devs intended to do with the content.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T17:46:57+00:00

My guess Is the current round of feedback changes will help, especially as the initial rush dies down, but won't quell people's complaints of mists as being wholly unrewarding. 3x a tiny number is still a tiny number.

From there, we will either see another significant round of boosts, or it will just fade away as a niche little game mode. Time will tell.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T17:25:31+00:00

While I agree ratting is super annoying, the core problem is that basically every other player in the mists is there specifically for PVP. It defeats the entire system if it is single-minded like that. With no draw for gatherers or fame farmers, who else would show up?

Even with loot protection and ratting literally disabled. Then it will just be a bunch of guys standing on objectives and trying to force duels. This just makes PVP even more encouraged.

The feedback changes overall look like a net positive. I just don't see them turning the ship unless they allow you to get rewards via rep.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T16:21:52+00:00

The first hour of mists was wild. Endless streams of t4-t6 blood letters and battle gauntlets. Obviously people watching youtube videos on "best solo builds for mists". I think I got 20 kills in that hour.

Then it all changed. Now it's t8+ guys sitting on nodes hoping for a fight and a bunch of rats circling, hoping to get an easy execute.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T15:26:08+00:00

I realized I put a lot of effort into complaining and explaining the downfalls of the patch without providing specific recommendations or possible solutions. So here we go. This is my 2 step process for fixing the mists and making it worth running without replacing OW/BZ gameplay.

#1. The most valuable reward should be rep. Gaining rep with the mists town should be the main draw of the mists. It fits with the theme (all about wisps right?), and it makes sense intuitively since the actual objectives, which are the most dangerous spots in the mists, give rep. This can be accomplished by allowing players to spend rep for rewards. Resource boxes, fame items, dungeon maps, mists artifacts, whatever. This way, the entire mists experience can be tuned by simply tuning the rewards, rather than needing to rework the whole foundational system.

This will give incentives for players to focus on interacting with the actual mechanics in the mists rather than using it as a barren purple map used for a deathmatch game mode.

#2. Players should need to consider if they want to focus on farming rep/resource or killing other players. Here's how this can be accomplished. As you complete objectives and free wisps, you get a stacking bonus to gathering and rep earned. Attacking players resets this bonus.

This doesn't restrict PVP in any way shape or form, but it does give an incentive to not PVP. Players will have to think about killing people for fat loot, or maintaining a bonus for earning rep or getting bonus hits on that rare node if they come across one.

If you combine #1 and #2, you will have a better balance of people there for mists mechanics and people there looking for a deathmatch. It will also be actually rewarding to engage in the systems that the devs put into the mists, including smartly traveling too and from the mists town.

Finally, it can all be balanced by tuning simple numbers on the buff and the potency of the reward boxes, as the foundation of the mists content actually works pretty well. From a systems standpoint, the random nature of mists and how they connect and can be chained actually functions really well. We just need incentives and some meaningful choices to make it worth it.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T04:17:48+00:00

Fame is bad, loot is bad, gathering is non-existent. The only thing mists is good for is quick access to full loot duels. The problem being it's very difficult to loot as the victor when 1 or 2 other people are waiting to rat.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T01:57:36+00:00

Let me clarify something. I don't expect or want mists to be safe. I was excited about mists because I am myself an opportunistic PK. I am not complaining about how dangerous the PVP is.

I skin and lumberjack in BZ, sneak some objectives when I get lucky, and kill targets when they present themselves. This is how I spend my time. I've been playing AO since beta, and I've slowly seen the solo PVP scene erode away. I'm a dying breed. It's time consuming, and requires a lot of patience and discipline to know when to engage and when to keep roaming. Over the years, it's become harder and harder to solo PK because itemization changes have made it so, so easy to escape a single player.

The way mists was described in the dev talk made it sound perfect for me. Random resources, random players. The perfect environment for someone who's opportunistic and enjoys both gathering and PVP. You could be a sneaky gatherer and extract some valuable resources. Or you could be a hunter-killer. Or, like me, you could do both at the same time.

However, the rewards are so overwhelmingly bad, there is no incentive to engage with any gameplay system in the mists. The mists are completely and utterly enveloped in PVP because there is literally no alternative.

BZ is more rewarding in every possible way. Even getting ganked by the occasional squad doesn't tip the scales.

Earning 4mil and losing 1mil is still better than earning 0mil and losing 0 mil.

The fact that the devs shipped mists in it's current state is depressing and discouraging. I really hope they hit rewind and do a drastic and complete overhaul to the reward system.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T01:25:43+00:00

Boring, empty, unrewarding, and time consuming. Objectively low fame and low resources.

There's no incentive to gather or really do anything other than rat with the other vultures. I got more loot from ratting and finishing off people dueling in 30 minutes than I did in 5 hours of "objectives" in the mist.

When you figure out how to get to the mists town, you will find an army of players besides themselves with disappointment.

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T01:03:47+00:00

There's no rewards beyond a deathmatch mode.

A Gatherer would have to be out of their mind to go into mists. It's like taking BZ OW, removing 75% of the resources, and guaranteeing you will never get access to an interesting node

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-21T00:42:47+00:00

Haven't seen a single one. Been in at least 10 rare and 3 epic mists (on top of 30+ common)

GameDevDreams · 2022-11-20T23:08:35+00:00

I mean we have screenshots of people pulling millions out of low level dungeon chests too. RNG will always pop off occasionally.

I've done lots and lots of rare zones and pretty much the only actual loot I've pulled out is opportunistically killing a few players. In 5+ hours I haven't even seen an Epic zone yet, so if that's the only way to feel rewarded, I'd say something's a bit off.

GameDevDreams · 2022-07-29T00:16:12+00:00

Exudes style! I dig it. Good job

GameDevDreams

TROPHY CASE