River District - upgrading guard posts

nameexpired

It happened not the fist time to me that I liberated a dig site from villains, ready to hire guards and archers. Alas, me still being tagged for battle from slaying the monsters a fellow player sweeps in and spams the "1" key to fully upgrade a guards post.

Everything legal, no exploits, just bad design on the development front. Maybe some designer can come up with a way to fix this.

kemi1984

There is no cure for being stupid, I feel you.

Had a similar one in WOD the other day.

Been digging for the bones on the "mirage dong thingy quest". One GWF been following me for a while, he always stood there when I was at the sparkly thing to dig out the bone.

Finally he did get it first and run away feeling awesome lol...

I PM'ed the guy asking "seriously dude...?" he replied with "mwhahah" so yeah :P

silence1x

This has been a problem since Mod 3 where TRs ran around stealing quest objectives while everyone else fought the mobs.

kemi1984

Haha it literally happened to me this one time, so I was not aware about this, Dear Lord!

pitshade

It's been going on full time since mod 1 (Dryads, Portal Hounds, Guardians, Poisoned Scouts) but had existed in the game since Beta (Plague Crystals in the Chasm). Not confined to TR by any means. My DC and GF ran mod 3 when it was new and had quest objectives ninja'd by any and every class. (Being in stealth won't stop entering combat)

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1223762/pc-ps4-xbox-feedback-stealable-or-griefable-quest-objectives

namelesshero347

I never clear out mobs from a guard post with my GF and DC. It takes too long and most likely the upgrade will get ninja-ed. On my CW and TR, I might do it if I don't see any one else around and I can take out the mobs in two or three rotations. Even then I try to pull the mobs near the upgrade thing so if someone does swoop in, they most likely will be aggro-ed before being able to upgrade.

beckylunatic

Wherever possible, I approach the upgrade box from an angle where mobs won't have line of sight to me.

But if I can't get to it without starting combat, I probably won't bother. Too much effort for the risk.

Would the problem be solved by allowing interaction at an unlocked site while in combat?

I think the fact that all the soldiers, etc. can be pulled away and won't leash back to the site and won't be killed to require replacement if they land somewhere safe is more significantly impacting the entire guard post/security mechanic though. I had the entire squadron from a guard post decide to join me in a nearby fight I had already nearly finished, and it was with one of the adventuring parties, so they'd likely be left there for a long time before anything respawned that would attack them.

I don't have time to try to get every misplaced guard I find killed off.

earlgreybeard

Another problem is the guards running off from the guard post area they are spawned at.. it looks like it is unguarded so you try the boxes but it's fully upgraded. Sometimes you can ride around and find them, kite some mobs to them and they might reset to guard post area after but usually they are no where to be found, some guard posts are worse than others
but Talvern would be the worst one.

A good modification to the window that pops up for the guard post upgrade would be if it behaved like inventory or invoke reward window where it will disappear when you move instead of having to hit the done button or esc.

Griefing is definitely a problem with them.. like the other quests mentioned , there's probably not a lot they can do about it.

beckylunatic

earlgreybeard said:

Griefing is definitely a problem with them.. like the other quests mentioned , there's probably not a lot they can do about it.

Making objectives interactible while in combat is a technique used to combat griefing.

What I am questioning is does it badly break the intended mechanic of needing to defend a guard post prior to being able to upgrade it? If so, worse than the griefing does? And is this worse than the fact that guard posts routinely get into a state where they are undefended because the assets wandered off but also cannot be upgraded because the assets still exist?

Alternative suggestion, if the assets can't be made to leash correctly, maybe they should just despawn, based on either distance from their home post, or duration. Making them despawn periodically also opens more opportunity for players to upgrade guard posts, and since upgrading is practically integral to obtaining weapon restoration components, it needs to flow smoothly.

nameexpired

pitshade said:

It's been going on full time since mod 1 (Dryads, Portal Hounds, Guardians, Poisoned Scouts)

They found a solution for the portal hounds and guardians.
Not sure about dryads.

They could implement the same proximity rule for the dig sites as well.

beckylunatic

nameexpired said:

They could implement the same proximity rule for the dig sites as well.

"LFM guardpost farm." "Invite guardpost." "Invite guardpost." etc.

This structurally breaks the mechanic of exchanging your resources towards the Security task. And I don't think the district's core design of obtaining resources from some actions and plugging them back in via other actions is unreasonable, just a few things about it are broken or unfriendly.

nameexpired

beckylunatic said:

nameexpired said:

They could implement the same proximity rule for the dig sites as well.

"LFM guardpost farm." "Invite guardpost." "Invite guardpost." etc.

This structurally breaks the mechanic of exchanging your resources towards the Security task. And I don't think the district's core design of obtaining resources from some actions and plugging them back in via other actions is unreasonable, just a few things about it are broken or unfriendly.

According to this logic you should only benefit from a ship HE after you donated at least something, if not all.

plasticbat

nameexpired said:

beckylunatic said:

nameexpired said:

They could implement the same proximity rule for the dig sites as well.

"LFM guardpost farm." "Invite guardpost." "Invite guardpost." etc.

This structurally breaks the mechanic of exchanging your resources towards the Security task. And I don't think the district's core design of obtaining resources from some actions and plugging them back in via other actions is unreasonable, just a few things about it are broken or unfriendly.

According to this logic you should only benefit from a ship HE after you donated at least something, if not all.

A little bit different because you need to at least contribute the fight (a bit).

beckylunatic

nameexpired said:

beckylunatic said:

nameexpired said:

They could implement the same proximity rule for the dig sites as well.

"LFM guardpost farm." "Invite guardpost." "Invite guardpost." etc.

This structurally breaks the mechanic of exchanging your resources towards the Security task. And I don't think the district's core design of obtaining resources from some actions and plugging them back in via other actions is unreasonable, just a few things about it are broken or unfriendly.

According to this logic you should only benefit from a ship HE after you donated at least something, if not all.

Not at all. HEs are designed so that everyone benefits if they melt quickly (as long as you get enough credit to get the reward). How the HE starts is irrelevant. The Ship one just happens to require donations, but that also means it can be farmed without worrying about timers. While everyone benefits the more people are willing to donate to farming it rather than freeloading, the freeloaders still (generally) help with speed.

Guardpost upgrading is designed so that putting in 5-10 resources awards a fixed amount towards the daily and more importantly the Security campaign task. It needs to be more reliable, but making it leechable would be counter to how it's meant to work. Like I said, the biggest issue it that a large part of the time, it doesn't work correctly. Deal with that before adjusting anything else.

pitshade

One additional consideration with the ship is that you gain far more progress towards the daily and Secure the District by turning in resources to the Shipmaster than by completing the HE. I don't have exact figures, but if you started with an empty ship and filled it up, you would complete the daily and quite possibly max your Security. It is 10% progress for each 50 resources to your daily goal. The return on the guard posts are comparatively negligible.

I have brought up the issue about vacant guards before and I still feel that is where the solution lies. The scarcity of upgradeable posts makes it more likely that ninja behavior will occur. Unlike the aforementioned mod 1 and 3 quests, no one is forced to mess with guard posts and the path of least resistance is 'invite ship' Becky's mention about interaction in combat would further reduce the odds of being griefed.

Ultimately, the issue is that Cryptic repeatedly designs the same types of quests, even after they fix the previous ones. Quest targets should be solo mobs,.or entire packs and credit needs to lenient so that support classes don't get left out. Quest objects should be open to anyone, not one use with respawn timer, or else give blanket credit in a decent area. An exception being if the objects are plentiful, as that reduces competition. (Contrast with Scuppered Skipper from Cold Run, which is a How Not To example)

beckylunatic

pitshade said:

(Contrast with Scuppered Skipper from Cold Run, which is a How Not To example)

Is that the one with the giant Captains? That one also can bug out if you're in a party so that you don't get the quest item drop and your partner gets two. %&$^#*

pitshade

Yes. 3 drops required for completion. 3 mobs on the entire map that drop them. I've seen that happen once but quest drops in parties are a crapshoot how the game will handle them.

lowjohn

beckylunatic said:

pitshade said:

(Contrast with Scuppered Skipper from Cold Run, which is a How Not To example)

Is that the one with the giant Captains? That one also can bug out if you're in a party so that you don't get the quest item drop and your partner gets two. %&$^#*

That's the one. For a counter-example, compare with Cyclops Eye farming in Sharandar. Kill a cyclops, get an eye. Two people both damage the cyclops, it drops .... two eyes?

Now party up with your friend and kill a cyclops. Now it drops two eyes EACH. Add a third person and each cyclops drops NINE EYES. A monster literally named for having only one eye, drops one per party member per party member.

I'm not actually complaining about this, I just find it hilarious.

lowjohn

silence1x said:

This has been a problem since Mod 3 where TRs ran around stealing quest objectives while everyone else fought the mobs.

My favourite are runechanged trolls in SOMI. They spawn in a group of 3 trolls, 1 Runechanged and 2 non. I've seen TRs stealth, run in, Lashing Blade, Shocking Execution, Impossible To Catch, sprint off, having killed the Runechanged troll in 1 second and left the two non-quest trolls alive.

(And I think the Runechanged take longer to respawn if the other trolls aren't killed).

At least there's lots of Runechanged on the map, in lots of places, and lots of other zones to move to.

pitshade

The Runecharged are like any other mob that spawns in a pack. Nothing reapawns until the entire pack is cleared. The same issue exists with Red Wizards in Dread Ring. The wizard gets killed for the weekly but the bodyguards remain... just makes iy hard for others to run their quests. Tragedy of the Commons, I guess. I try to clean those packs up, if the character is strong enough that it won't be a hassle.

wylonus

there ought to be a leash law somewhere.

fizgigtiznalkie

This is a problem. I even feel badly if someone shows up to help and then I grab all the guard post upgrades as it was my plan to clear and upgrade it.