UNTIL target respawn nerf

squirrelloid

The target respawn time nerf is not a positive change. Makes it hard to find any targets that are even *up* when several people are doing OVs, much less get 3 targets *and* aquire another 35 VT somehow to complete the mission in 15 minutes.

Can we at least have the daily reduced to killing one target so you actually have a chance of completing the mission in 15 minutes of a device?

nepht

OMG what have they broken now :O

jessyprankster

Killing 3 Targets is not a problem for me. FINDING them is another thing ; u;...

squirrelloid

jessyprankster said:

Killing 3 Targets is not a problem for me. FINDING them is another thing ; u;...

That was kind of my point. And the transit time between them.

Like, i'm pretty sure, assuming you can find them up, killing the two targets at UNTIL and then just *waiting* for them to respawn is still faster than anything else. (And leaves you close to RC)

pantagruel01

At a minimum, the requirement for the rest of the spawn to be defeated before the target can respawn should be removed, as that means you're likely to have problems because some other OV didn't clean up, rather than because of anything you yourself did.

aesica

First let me say that I get why they did it: Sniping a giant robot, then running away far enough for it to quickly respawn and rinse-repeat probably isn't how the system was originally envisioned. However, this change was a very short-sighted, one-sided "fix" that's going to do more harm than good. Let's examine the before and after:

Before
A player would get their device, take it their preferred farming area, and smash the giant robot targets. The targets thankfully respawned quickly, so players could get the daily requirements out of the way by killing 10. Since they'd probably have plenty of time left, they could then visit the ren center and offer the remains of their Onslaught Villain to everyone nearby, spreading love in the form of guardian tokens. Not very villain-y I know, but it worked.

Now
A player will get their device, take down 3 required targets by hitting multiple locations while hoping that nobody else is also doing their daily rounds. From there, they can either keep going with targets and run out of time (because 15 minutes isn't enough to travel to and kill 7 more) or they can head to the ren center and murder newbies who are foolish enough to attack them. Since all of this takes more time, we'll probably be seeing an overall decrease in altruism, as fewer people will be offering the remains of their OV at the ren center. Or if they do, it will first come with a lot of killing. What a shame.

- - -

Now, let's examine why the Onslaught Villain system is a failure:

1) 15 minutes of active villain mode isn't a lot of time to get things done.

2) The targets are spread too far apart. A player will spend more time hoofing it from A to B to C etc than actually attacking anything. You know, the "fun" part?

3) Running around killing giant robots while ignoring other mobs doesn't feel very "villainy."

4) Using a 3,000,000 HP boss transformation to gank clueless noobs and squishy dps who flag themselves in the ren center is more prickish than "villainy."

And now...

5) The respawn times are pretty bad. Combine #1 and #2 with the fact that this is a multiplayer game, and you create a very anti-multiplayer situation. Basically, it creates a mood of "I wish all these other annoying random people would stop killing my mobs and go away so I can get my damned daily done!" Not good at all.

- - -

Here's a few solutions on how this can all be made better: (Not all of them would need to happen, just a few)

1) Change the device's numbers a bit. Give it a 1 day existence duration, up from 30 minutes. Increase its active duration to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes.

2) (Ideal) Significantly increase the number of targets throughout the city. I want to feel more like a villain and less like a marathon runner in an oldschool WoW quest: Run across the map, kill this one thing, run all the way to this end, kill that one thing, etc.

3) Reduce the number of Villain Tokens required to complete the daily.

Reduce the damage they deal while we're at it. They hit ridiculously hard and there doesn't seem to be any reasonable or skillful way to mitigate that damage.

sigmaseven0

I don't support these changes but don't act like you didn't see these changes coming.
This is why I farmed my gear immediately... The only surprise is that it took the devs this long to notice.
@kaiserin Is in game on live servers regularly and probably saw someone exploiting this. That, or someone snitched...

draogn

It costs either GT or Q each time you want a token. (After the free one) While 1,000 q doesn't seem like a lot it would add up quickly. I'm guessing they are hoping this change will encourage more zen to q conversions.

There are already so few players interacting with the villains as is, this will just make the grind worse. Which will likely mean even more players will ignore this mishandled bit of content.

hasukurobi

Yeap... I already pretty much gave up on this part of the game. I would randomly attack the OV's in the Ren Center while waiting for something to pop but that was about it. Now I am super under motivated to participate.

spinnytop

sigmaseven0 said:

That, or someone snitched...

http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1204420/kagamis-tips-tricks/p1

nacito

spinnytop said:

sigmaseven0 said:

That, or someone snitched...

http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1204420/kagamis-tips-tricks/p1

chaelk

actually, quite a few people have posted , he best place to farm is UNTIL HQ. including on the thread on best ways to farm them​​

biffsmackwell

I'll thank you to not post in a way that antagonizes others.

sigmaseven0

theravenforce

I tried running Onslaught today...it was not fun but I think it really is a matter of consideration for others.

If you are Onslaughting...please kill everything there and move on. If you see a group of UNTIL Soldiers without an UNTIL DEFENDER nearby, just kill them and run off to find another target.

That's what I've been doing and I managed to complete my daily.

That way at least eventually you'll be able to get tokens.

I'm not saying this is by any stretch of the imagination ideal, but it is something to consider.

Ideally I'd like to see:

Lowered Gear Prices (Highly unlikely)

OR

Increased VT tokens for killing all the targets and for killing players. + More UNTIL Defenders around.

aesica

theravenforce said:

I tried running Onslaught today...it was not fun but I think it really is a matter of consideration for others.

If you are Onslaughting...please kill everything there and move on. If you see a group of UNTIL Soldiers without an UNTIL DEFENDER nearby, just kill them and run off to find another target.

That's what I've been doing and I managed to complete my daily.

That way at least eventually you'll be able to get tokens.

I'm not saying this is by any stretch of the imagination ideal, but it is something to consider.

Ideally I'd like to see:

Lowered Gear Prices (Highly unlikely)

OR

Increased VT tokens for killing all the targets and for killing players. + More UNTIL Defenders around.

The problem is the craptastic 15 minute duration on the OV device kinda discourages the courtesy aspect of killing the little trash mobs. This only emphasizes the need for their respawns to be decoupled from the rest of the pack like before.

Now I'd be perfectly fine with this gimped respawn rate if they gave us more time to get the daily done--30 minutes instead of a lousy 15. But tying the respawn rates of the big guys to the little guys is just...awful and entirely unpleasant.

markhawkman

I don't really understand the mechanic of forcing you to wipe the footsoldiers but not giving anything for it myself.

roughbearmattach

I gave it a shot last night, too.

I found mostly empty UNTIL posts. I did eventually get my third, far away from the RenCen. I didn't get 50 VT, just 20, and my timer ran out.

Just a boring slog traveling around the city, ending with disappointment.

squirrelloid

Just checked MC zone 2. Not a single target up. Not one. Yay?

spinnytop

markhawkman said:

I don't really understand the mechanic of forcing you to wipe the footsoldiers but not giving anything for it myself.

I don't understand the idea of making us do PvP content to get some of the best PvE gear in the game o3o I think those offensive secondaries should just be added to the GCR vendor for like 500 GCR each or something.

markhawkman

how many acclaim are they? like 75k or something? I didn't pay close attention since I've yet to earn any.

aesica

spinnytop said:

markhawkman said:

I don't really understand the mechanic of forcing you to wipe the footsoldiers but not giving anything for it myself.

I don't understand the idea of making us do PvP content to get some of the best PvE gear in the game o3o I think those offensive secondaries should just be added to the GCR vendor for like 500 GCR each or something.

No offense, but that idea is beyond terrible.

All they need to do is add more targets, award 5 villain tokens for clearing the defender and all adds at each point, and increase the device duration to match its expiration time--30 minutes.

Not everything needs to be gated behind the GCR hamster wheel grind that a fair portion of the playerbase just isn't interested in.

avianos

as I said

avianos wrote: »

kaizerin wrote: »

Misc

[*] Onslaught Targets will now only respawn after waiting their allotted respawn time and only after defeating their entire spawn.
[/list]

STOP
STOP RIGHT THERE
YOU BLEW IT
YOU FINALLY PUT THE NAIL TO OSV COFFIN

I Understand fixing the OSV Defenders to not respawn instantly out of range but now you are FORCING the players to kill them all

What you just did was to give GRIEFING tools to random troll/deckweeds who will kill all the defenders on the map and leave an entire map without them
Zone 1 can basically have a non-defender period for a non week


This is Terrible, takes your players feedback seriously! because you freaking BLEW IT

OS Defenders drop villain coins to help people who HATE PVP get their gear via PVE
NOw you are screwing OVER this PvE aspect with the stupid spawn penalty
I just inspected zone #2, the majority of OSV Target points are WITHOUT Guards with just the useless Until soldiers

There were 4 spots in Downtown WITHOUT defenders!
in 2 of them there were only 1 Until Soldier alive! and for that single soldier the game wouldn't repsawn the Defender

Congratulation Cryptic, this Spawning penalty make it easy for people to GRIEF the OSV remainings
I REFUSE to do the PVP aspect of the OSV because I Despise any kind of PVP
Besides nobody plays OSV during European hours, and even if you go with a OSV in the most Crowd MC instance with all those AFKers in RenCen, nobody is interested in you​​

chaelk

try it on Australia time. midnight to 5am server time. sheesh​​

chaelk

biffsmackwell wrote: »

I'll thank you to not post in a way that antagonizes others.

what?​​

opalflame

Please change the respawn back or give players a reason to kill the soldiers. It takes 2 days for me to complete the daily just because people only kill the defenders. Being unable to get the stuff I want just because some other player decided to be a jerk is really annoying and it makes it way too easy for these people to grief others.

biffsmackwell

The only upshot to this is that I now have something to spend Guardian tokens on: Play tokens.

spinnytop

opalflame said:

Please change the respawn back or give players a reason to kill the soldiers. It takes 2 days for me to complete the daily just because people only kill the defenders. Being unable to get the stuff I want just because some other player decided to be a jerk is really annoying and it makes it way too easy for these people to grief others.

It's entirely possible that people aren't being jerks and instead just don't know that they need to kill all the npcs. Is there anything in-game that mentions this? You guys are all assuming griefing, and as a result you may have missed the actual problem.

pantagruel01

spinnytop said:

It's entirely possible that people aren't being jerks and instead just don't know that they need to kill all the npcs. Is there anything in-game that mentions this?\

No, just patch notes. People may be only killing the primaries out of habit or because they don't know that it matters. Cleaning up a location that has no defender is trivially fast.

spinnytop

pantagruel01 said:

spinnytop said:

It's entirely possible that people aren't being jerks and instead just don't know that they need to kill all the npcs. Is there anything in-game that mentions this?\

No, just patch notes. People may be only killing the primaries out of habit or because they don't know that it matters. Cleaning up a location that has no defender is trivially fast.

Exactly, they don't know that they're supposed to kill everything so why would they? Hell, those people that people are suspecting as griefers are likely even more frustrated with the lack of respawns than their accusers, because they don't even know why it's happening.

biffsmackwell

That's why us heroes need to give them villains a friendly reminder to clean up after themselves!

spinnytop

They should add a requirement for killing the lesser NPCs to the actual mission, so it has a counter too just like the Until defenders. That's basically the most effective way to make sure that players get rid of the whole group.

aesica

pantagruel01 said:

No, just patch notes. People may be only killing the primaries out of habit or because they don't know that it matters. Cleaning up a location that has no defender is trivially fast.

Perhaps, however you then have to wait for the respawn, which is quite a long wait when you've only got 15 minutes of villain time.

spinnytop said:

They should add a requirement for killing the lesser NPCs to the actual mission, so it has a counter too just like the Until defenders. That's basically the most effective way to make sure that players get rid of the whole group.

Would that really solve things? What if someone gets to the point where they only need to kill only 2 mooks, but there's 5 or so at the spawn point? They kill their 2 and call it a day, leaving only 3 at the point which 1) delays the respawn and 2) will likely throw off the next player's mook counter as well.

While adding an objective to kill X number of weak mooks along with the defenders would give players more to do than just snipe 1 thing and run, it still won't fix the deeper problem of things not respawning until everything is dead. Respawns need to not depend on everything being cleared. Period.

Edit: If you want to make sure players clear all the mooks, have each one drop 1 villain token. It's the least that could be done after gimping the respawn times and turning this "daily" into a 2-day endeavor.

pantagruel01

aesica said:

Perhaps, however you then have to wait for the respawn, which is quite a long wait when you've only got 15 minutes of villain time.

I meant, cleaning it up after you've cleaned up the defenders.

aesica

pantagruel01 said:

I meant, cleaning it up after you've cleaned up the defenders.

Aah, that's fair then. Still, the changes discourage that (I clear them anyway) because 5-10 seconds spent killing the random mooks is 5-10 seconds that could be spent moving to the next location.

markhawkman

How do you get the transforms... I've never actually gotten one....

aesica

markhawkman said:

How do you get the transforms... I've never actually gotten one....

You get one through a daily for free, but only if you're either a subscriber or using one of the special freeform slots. Other than that, you have to do some weird song and dance with guardian tokens. I don't even know how that works but it looks like a ton of work.

pantagruel01

aesica said:

markhawkman said:

How do you get the transforms... I've never actually gotten one....

You get one through a daily for free, but only if you're either a subscriber or using one of the special freeform slots. Other than that, you have to do some weird song and dance with guardian tokens. I don't even know how that works but it looks like a ton of work.

10k guardian tokens for an unlock, the 1k per use. You can also get uses (but not unlocks) in TA.

biffsmackwell

You can also buy the unlocks from Auction. They dropped from the villain lockbox I think.

spinnytop

aesica said:

Would that really solve things? What if someone gets to the point where they only need to kill only 2 mooks, but there's 5 or so at the spawn point? They kill their 2 and call it a day, leaving only 3 at the point which 1) delays the respawn and 2) will likely throw off the next player's mook counter as well.

While adding an objective to kill X number of weak mooks along with the defenders would give players more to do than just snipe 1 thing and run, it still won't fix the deeper problem of things not respawning until everything is dead. Respawns need to not depend on everything being cleared. Period.

Edit: If you want to make sure players clear all the mooks, have each one drop 1 villain token. It's the least that could be done after gimping the respawn times and turning this "daily" into a 2-day endeavor.

Have the lesser mobs count as a unit. Area cleared of lesser mobs = quest credit regardless of how many there are.


Having them drop villain tokens is unrealistic, because it's unlikely that the intent here was to increase the amount of rewards you're able to garner through hunting npcs. It also doesn't have the visibility that quest objectives do, so objectives is still the method more likely to actually solve the problem.

aesica

spinnytop said:

Have the lesser mobs count as a unit. Area cleared of lesser mobs = quest credit regardless of how many there are.


Having them drop villain tokens is unrealistic, because it's unlikely that the intent here was to increase the amount of rewards you're able to garner through hunting npcs. It also doesn't have the visibility that quest objectives do, so objectives is still the method more likely to actually solve the problem.

I suggested villain tokens drop per mob because:

1) It helps compensate for the lousy 15 minute duration and longer respawn times.

2) Pretty sure it's a lot easier for the current dev team to implement.

I get that part of the idea is probably to get us to fight (more like gank) players with our massive OVs, however if you play during off hours like I do, it's not at all practical, so "hunting npcs" is pretty much the only real option. I've tried to head into the Ren center on the most active instance, but there's normally only about 5-10 people there, and they pretty much ignore me. So no, it's not reasonable to require players engage in the pvp aspect. It's nice as a choice, but it shouldn't be mandatory because making it mandatory...

Just

Doesn't

Work

pantagruel01 said:

aesica said:

markhawkman said:

How do you get the transforms... I've never actually gotten one....

You get one through a daily for free, but only if you're either a subscriber or using one of the special freeform slots. Other than that, you have to do some weird song and dance with guardian tokens. I don't even know how that works but it looks like a ton of work.

10k guardian tokens for an unlock, the 1k per use. You can also get uses (but not unlocks) in TA.

If you get free OV devices via the daily, do you still have to do the unlock portion if you want to purchase play tokens for a particular OV?

spinnytop

aesica said:

I suggested villain tokens drop per mob because:

1) It helps compensate for the lousy 15 minute duration and longer respawn times.

2) Pretty sure it's a lot easier for the current dev team to implement.

1) I doubt the devs see a reason for there to be compensation. When you fix something, you don't compensate people because they no longer benefit from what was functioning incorrectly.

2) I'm not concerned with what's easier to implement, I'm concerned with what will actually be an effective solution. Better solutions warrant more effort.

darqaura2

spinnytop said:

aesica said:

I suggested villain tokens drop per mob because:

1) It helps compensate for the lousy 15 minute duration and longer respawn times.

2) Pretty sure it's a lot easier for the current dev team to implement.

1) I doubt the devs see a reason for there to be compensation. When you fix something, you don't compensate people because they no longer benefit from what was functioning incorrectly.

2) I'm not concerned with what's easier to implement, I'm concerned with what will actually be an effective solution. Better solutions warrant more effort.

Agreed, but I just don't think it's worth the dev time. I say they simply increase the timer on OVs to 30 minutes and call it a day. Any more time spent on this now near worthless system to me is ludicrous waste of developer time.

pantagruel01

aesica said:

spinnytop said:

Have the lesser mobs count as a unit. Area cleared of lesser mobs = quest credit regardless of how many there are.


Having them drop villain tokens is unrealistic, because it's unlikely that the intent here was to increase the amount of rewards you're able to garner through hunting npcs. It also doesn't have the visibility that quest objectives do, so objectives is still the method more likely to actually solve the problem.

I suggested villain tokens drop per mob because:

1) It helps compensate for the lousy 15 minute duration and longer respawn times.

2) Pretty sure it's a lot easier for the current dev team to implement.

I get that part of the idea is probably to get us to fight (more like gank) players with our massive OVs, however if you play during off hours like I do, it's not at all practical, so "hunting npcs" is pretty much the only real option. I've tried to head into the Ren center on the most active instance, but there's normally only about 5-10 people there, and they pretty much ignore me. So no, it's not reasonable to require players engage in the pvp aspect. It's nice as a choice, but it shouldn't be mandatory because making it mandatory...

Just

Doesn't

Work

pantagruel01 said:

aesica said:

markhawkman said:

How do you get the transforms... I've never actually gotten one....

You get one through a daily for free, but only if you're either a subscriber or using one of the special freeform slots. Other than that, you have to do some weird song and dance with guardian tokens. I don't even know how that works but it looks like a ton of work.

10k guardian tokens for an unlock, the 1k per use. You can also get uses (but not unlocks) in TA.

If you get free OV devices via the daily, do you still have to do the unlock portion if you want to purchase play tokens for a particular OV?

Yes; if you want to go more than once per day you'll need to acquire an unlock.

nepht

I should make a valid point but you kids look like your having too much fun

squirrelloid

Longer device times is not a solution. Sigh. Does no one understand that many people have limited play time, and using 30 minutes of that just to complete the OV daily is ridiculous?

They need to either adjust the mission so it can be reasonably completed in 15 minutes at any time of day, or adjust the villain token rewards so it can be reasonably completed in 15 minutes at any time of day. Fifteen minutes is already long enough that many people will never make 5k VT because they will get bored and give up on it long before then.

Why do the devs insist on ridiculously long grinds for content that is provably not fun for most of the playerbase? (Just how many unique OV players did you see actively fighting pvp before the change?)

aesica

spinnytop said:

1) I doubt the devs see a reason for there to be compensation. When you fix something, you don't compensate people because they no longer benefit from what was functioning incorrectly.

2) I'm not concerned with what's easier to implement, I'm concerned with what will actually be an effective solution. Better solutions warrant more effort.

1) When you fix something that was functioning incorrectly (which I'll admit, instant respawns definitely count) and notice that doing so also suddenly breaks the system in other ways or exposes deeper underlying problems, then it's a developer's responsibility to act on fixing that, just as they acted on fixing the bug. In this particular case, the bugged instant respawns were like a wad of gum which, while it didn't belong there, just so happened to be holding the whole messy, broken OV system together. With it gone, all of the other problems are now laid bare:

- Encouraging PvP by making the mobs a drag to find isn't going to work. Hardly anyone during the time I play even bothers attacking OVs. During peak hours, it works. Sort of. Good option, but don't mandate it.

- Tying objective spawns to trash mobs has people skipping trash and just killing objectives. You can turn the whole cluster of mobs into the objective, but that won't do much to fix the following problems:

- Spawn points are too few and too far apart. Currently, it's more of a "villain marathon" than a "villain onslaught."

- 15 minutes isn't enough time to complete the objectives. I realize this may be intentional, to "encourage" people to buy questionite so they can in turn buy more villain time, but who is really going to do that? I'll spend my excess guardian tokens, but after that, nope.

The instant respawns rendered the spawn point sparsity irrelevant because you only really needed 1 spawn point, could easily be completed in 15 minutes or less, and made PvP an option that some took but others could avoid. Pulling out that one bug was like pulling out the wrong Jenga block, and it caused the whole tower to come crashing down in pieces.

The solution I suggested (weak mobs drop 1 villain token each) does a better job at compensating for the 15 minute problem than what you suggested. Yes, it gives "more rewards" than your suggestion, but with respawn times what they are now, it's still "less rewards than what could be obtained when respawns were bugged." Boosting the time to 30 minutes instead would also work.

2) Developer resources, familiarity with the code, and time constraints all make "easier to implement" very much a thing. The easier fix is often the better one. Better for the devs so they don't waste days or weeks trying to make it work, and better for the players becasue it means the fix is more likely to actually happen without causing even more problems in the process.

spinnytop

1) This didn't break the system, the system is just fine. The problem is that players don't know what they're supposed to do - my suggestion solves that problem.

2) Nope, the more effective solution should be the one they actually use, especially given that the alternative may not be effective at all.

biffsmackwell

Pretty sure a fix is coming on Thursday.

aesica

spinnytop said:

1) This didn't break the system, the system is just fine. The problem is that players don't know what they're supposed to do - my suggestion solves that problem.

2) Nope, the more effective solution should be the one they actually use, especially given that the alternative may not be effective at all.

1) How is the system fine? Most people are opting out of it or are stuck running a "daily" quest that is actually taking them more than 1 day to complete. Your "solution" may encourage players to clean out spawn points, but it doesn't stop a) griefers who don't actually care about finishing the daily from just picking off the big guys or b) It does nothing to address the fact that 15 minutes isn't enough time with the current respawn times. In contrast: +1 token per weak mob would mean about 10 tokens per respawn point, meaning the player would only need to hit about 5 or 6. Totally doable within 15 minutes. In contrast, boosting the device duration to 30 minutes gives players a lot more wiggle room to get everything done and is more of a timesink. MMO devs love timesinks.

2) Except with the current example, the alternatives would be very effective. The best solution is obviously to completely redesign the OV system (it's a failure in its current form, whether you want to agree or not) into something more interesting and involving, but given time constraints and available resources, they have to go with something simpler. You know, like patching up the existing system.

spinnytop

1) From what I can tell, this is what they intended, for us to hop from point to point killing NPCs then maybe defeating some players afterwards. Sure, you may not like it, I may not like it, but that doesn't mean it's not working.

2) I dunno, I kind of feel like having the secondary NPCs reward VTs might just make the griefers giggle with delight as they realize they can grief you and get rewarded in the process.