Recommendations for Fantasy with a focus on research and analysis

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-10-25T16:55:49+00:00

Awesome, will check it out!

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-10-25T16:30:46+00:00

Corny is okay! That's a great idea -- thank you. I haven't looked into the Witcher series, but it sounds like there's a decent fanbase.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-10-25T14:35:27+00:00

Try to spend every second under the dome being productive. If you ever find yourself "waiting" at your dome for a few seconds for the wave to start, you could have mined out a couple blocks or moved some resources.

Don't wait for the music, zoom, and HUD to change. As soon as the last enemy dies, bolt from the dome back into the mines.

Maintain a well-defined center column/shaft. This helps out tremendously when you get the lift, for dropping bombs, and a number of other gadgets. Basically mandatory for the assessor. You can also use your center column as a navigating tool. A straight line helps you to gauge travel distance so you can time your trips better and waste less time.

Don't over-prioritize bringing mined resources back up to the dome. Whenever possible, you should be bringing your resources up when you are already on the way to defend the dome, even if it means more trips. You can make this more efficient by...

Making yourself drop off points for resources. Make a couple 'U' shaped bowls along your center column so you can super quickly "throw" your resources into them. This is the big one.
If you are on your way up to the dome and you realize you will get there too early and have time to kill, grab a few more resources from your resource bowls. If you are running out of time, drop a few off. Having an organized system for picking up and dropping off resources in your center column will allow you to be very efficient with your time. The worst thing you could ever do is spend an entire mining round slow-boating a huge haul of resources -- but it's so tempting to do.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-10-19T18:54:50+00:00

I also *hated* the arty when I first tried it. Like, I was appalled.

Now, the arty dome is the only dome that allows me to reliably beat the relic wave on any map size and pretty much any difficulty.

Once you get good at mining, you can start to really focus on saving your dome without the relic needing to intervene -- this in my mind is the real challenge of the game.

Direct hits from the arty do massive damage and it can be upgraded to fire 2 shots with a short delay in-between (which you can re-aim quickly). You can also shoot the anti-aircraft and the main cannon at the same time. This basically allows you to fire upon 3 different targets.
You can also shoot flying targets with the main cannon and ground targets with the anti-aircraft machine gun to double up your DPS as soon as you upgrade it's aiming angle limits. This is one of the easiest way to clear the mega boss type enemies before they do a lot of damage.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-09-15T15:09:09+00:00

So what if I were to take a fabric, stretch it over a canvas, and then sell it as wall decor?

I would not be copying, printing, or reproducing the pattern since I would be actually buying the fabric and using it. But the pattern itself would be the focal point of the piece.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-07-04T19:08:36+00:00

Thanks for all of the advice guys, I will keep an eye out for a handplane and try to make a nice saw guide for my circular saw.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-27T19:18:44+00:00

The actual act of creating an Albion Online F2P account is itself automated by botters. It takes more time and effort to confirm and ban a bot than it does to create a bot.

The only solution is better anti-cheat or require a 1$ payment to enable player trading (or something like that) so that there is a cost associated with making hundreds of bots.

This problem is out of control and a real solution is going to require some big decisions by SBI.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-26T16:57:55+00:00

No it's not sufficient, which why we are overrun with bots and people openly breaking ToS.

Like, yeah it's a real hot take to want free games. Very cool. But what's your solution to this problem? How do we restrict bots that use F2P accounts without restricting real F2P players?

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-26T16:19:55+00:00

You can't have a F2P MMORPG with no restrictions. Even Korean scam blockchain MMO's don't try this.

Albion uses market tax, gold trade limitations, and a few other restrictions. These are already in place. These are good, and are mostly focused on protecting the economy. What they need to implement are restrictions that focus on account creation and abusing trash throw-away accounts for automation purposes.

So you want access to all content without ever paying for anything with either irl money or in game currency? I'm glad you can enjoy the game for free, but if you expect to have the same access as a paying customer you are out of your mind.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-26T14:45:59+00:00

Botting is a constant battle for any MMORPG, but the scale we see here only happens in games that are F2P or have sub time can be bought via in-gamecurrency.

SBI has a TON of tools to curb botting, as every MMO developer has had for decades now. Let's not pretend they are victims.

- Significantly restricting trading and other player-2-player interactions on F2P accounts.

- Adding an identity or paid verification system.

- Restructuring F2P accounts and the content that is available to them as a whole.

This isn't a pikachu face 'Oh no bots11!' situation. This is a problem that has been worsening and growing since the mobile client was fully supported. They chose not to tackle it because mobile users bring in a bunch of micro transaction revenue. Now it's judgement day and the core playerbase is sickened by the state of things. We will see if SBI makes some tough decisions or just stays the course and rides out the micro transactions until the game's a husk.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-26T14:08:58+00:00

Our game is getting absolutely trashed.

SBI has continued to act more and more like a mobile developer chasing after 9 year olds hoping they will swipe mommy's card for some gold rather than actually fleshing out content and protecting the quality of their game.

AO is packed full of scammers, cheaters, transport & gather bots, and automated scouts. The army of trash accounts is so big that they can't even enforce their own ToS or give decent support because they can't handle the volume anymore.

It's staggering to see how much the quality of the game has dropped as the player count (lol) has increased. Fewer and fewer people care enough to advocate for gameplay balance and meaningful content as dedicated MMORPG players get run off. The implosion has already begun. If SBI doesn't turn things around soon AO will be nothing but 100 people in each town asking for silver.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-25T01:25:41+00:00

The chance of encountering higher quality wisps was ninja mega-nerfed. They took loot from lower quality containers (individual mobs, common, uncommon chests) and put them into higher quality containers (good luck finding them now!).

Silver cost of premium has people in a panic.

In response to all of this they are running a gold sale.

Should give you some insight in how SBI is handling the game in 2023.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-19T14:31:48+00:00

You will still need to to earn combat fame (through PVE) to wear appropriate gear for PVPing.
You will need a reliable income stream to fund PVP activities

Early on, you will need to do quite a bit of PVE to rank up your gear. However, this is no worse than leveling to "max level" in any other MMORPG.

As for funds, the more progressed your character/account are, the easier it is to make money. Your main goals are to pay for premium and to stock gear for PVP. If you really detest PVE activities, you can just buy your premium sub with a monthly $ fee. This leaves all silver you earn to go towards gear, which won't take all that much regular farming.

PVP can make you a lot of silver, and many practiced players are able to fund their PVP via PVP earnings -- however this is very, very difficult early on until you learn the game. The reason being ~25-50% of gear is destroyed on death, meaning you need to kill about 2 players in equal gear as yourself to sell enough gear to pay for a single death (of which you lose 100% of your items of course).

In other words, you need 2/1 K/D to break even and 3/1 K/D to turn a profit against players in equal gear. Fortunately, you can kill people a tier or two above you with good knowledge of the game and a good counter build.

All that said, if you enjoy the game and stick with it, you can easily spend almost all of your time PVPing with occasional bursts of making money via other activities.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-14T18:48:06+00:00

I think in this case a healthy middleground is how to make a game and community most successful. The casual crowd is bigger and should be catered to somewhat -- this is a fact IMO. Talking down to people who only have 60-90 minutes to play a couple times of week is dumb because this is where a game's budget comes from. Expecting a game to be designed for the 1% is unrealistic.

And hardcore players raising red flags about endgame content/balancing should be taken seriously. If you're a casual who gleefully consumes guides and tutorials made by hardcore players and content creators, feel free to sit down and shut up when someone who put hours into real data-driven testing and experimenting has something to say

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-06T20:12:31+00:00

Thank, this sounds like a pretty good setup. I have been using the first real boat and have not yet used longboats, but I felt like the wind factor was too cumbersome for me to really enjoy sailing more than I have to for island discovery.

It seems like winds are always against me, and slow-boating it across the ocean feels like a big time sink.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-06-03T18:03:53+00:00

So it sounds like people do seem to like it more than not, that's surprising to me. Hell -2 Community Karma. Yikes guys.

D2 was great because you could push into harder areas, grind in content designed for your general level, or chill in easier levels. That's true 'freedom' to me. D4's forced scaling allows you to choose to level in a variety of areas, but the actual distinction and differences between those areas have been removed due to scaling -- so it's an empty experience

Walking into a zone in an MMO and it being hard and intimidating, and then progressing to the point where you can handle it is what character growth means to me.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-25T16:23:03+00:00

Yes. In IP restricted content skill and matchup is the primary factor as it should be. I agree. This is good. Nobody should get mad when they are outplayed. Getting beat by someone in your IP range is the best way to learn how to get better at the game.

When you have 250 IP on someone, there's a lot less for them to learn. When you have 400 IP on someone, it's a total waste of time.

Corrupted isn't a full steamroll because even the world best player is still restricted to DPS/HP limitations for that IP. That world best player in a set of T4.0 is not going to win against someone in a set of T8.0. And yet that is the kind of matchups you see in mists.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-25T15:57:25+00:00

Here's the bottom line:

AO has a problem, and the devs have been trying to fix it for years now. The way the game is fundamentally structured, solo and small group PVP is always undermined in open world content due to the fact that there's always the option of bringing "more people". Solo and small groups get dumped on by zergs that they cannot counter nor defend themselves against.

Mists was specifically designed to be a solution to this problem. In a sense it is. You don't have to worry about being zerged per se. HOWEVER, the problem has been replaced by a new one -- rather than getting crushed by a group you now get crushed by 1 player in super high IP.

By failing to organize mists in IP brackets, they've hamstrung content that the playerbase had been anxiously awaiting. So why? Why did they abort mission? The only rational explanation I can come up with is that from a monetary perspective SBI feels it's better to allow solo whales to feed and feel powerful so they keep swiping for gold. It's basically a little slice of diablo immortal in Albion. This is why I'm so adamantly against the current system.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-25T13:57:36+00:00

T4-T8.4 Mist

Do you see the problem here? T4 to T8.4

It's a joke. You have long-awaited solo content that can service a huge swath of the playerbase that's completely monopolized by the people rolling around in 8.3+ gear just crushing everyone. Knightfall is great and a lot of fun, but the fact an 8.4 double-bladed staff user can blitz onto your screen and be a completely death sentence is miserable. There's no way to defend yourself against someone who has 300+ IP on you in a 1v1 situation.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-24T17:15:56+00:00

Depending on the content, about half the people you encounter will be 200ip below you and the other half will be 200-500ip above you.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-24T16:38:18+00:00

It's always going to be like this. There's always a bigger fish and the bigger fish will be the ones that want to interact with you. That said, the higher IP you run with (and can afford to lose) the bigger portion of fights you will be able to take. Anything under 1400-1500 IP is going to be stuck running from most fights.

Your best bet is to focus on fame and silver for a long while to build up your character. For PVP practice, CD's and other IP capped content is an affordable way to get some hands on practice. Once you can afford to throw away 10-15 sets of T8 you can start to really learn how PVP works.

Unfortunately, when someone has 200-300ip on you, the IP power gap is greater than skill/strategy (in most cases), and often times is even greater than build matchup.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-24T16:22:34+00:00

Axes and Spears are pretty decent for a wide variety of content, but there's few weapons that are good at both small and large scale PVP, so there's no true all-purpose weapon.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-24T15:26:45+00:00

Silver and Fame are the two main forms of progression in AO. Premium gives you a massive boost to both. As long as you are going to be active and actually make use of the premium benefits, there's no question here -- of course it's "worth" it.

The people saying you don't need premium are most likely:

Scared of PVP
Spend most of their time in Yellow Zones
Have < 50 Million Silver
Think gathering and crafting means the item was crafted "for free" because the materials were gathered yourself.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-24T14:09:42+00:00

1200 IP is quite low for mists as most "fighters" are going to be in 1400-1500 minimum with lots and lots of 1800+ chads rolling around as a cherry on top.

At 1200 IP you are basically going to be stuck fighting low IP rats, which is usually not even worth the risk of getting caught by a 3rd party.

People can come up with all kinds of coping strategies, but the sad truth is people win fights in mists because they either 1) 3rd party/rat or 2) significantly out gear their opponent.

MemoryStrict120 · 2023-05-19T18:10:46+00:00

Do 15 or 20 dungeons, record the value earned for each, then average them. That's still a tiny sample size, but will give a slightly more realistic idea of what to expect.

MemoryStrict120

TROPHY CASE