Poor Juma is Finally Free But Won't Have Many Friends Left

fritz

So I'm trying to understand that Juma change and the more I think about the topic the more I feel like it doesn't make sense at all. Not for Valhennas, not for Menzo, not for the players that could benefit from the bags. Lose, lose, lose.

The Juma Bags are a catch-up mechanic for solo players to have a shot at a wide variety of Mount and Companions, even at some that are really useful to bis (when ranked up ofc). Valhennas as home for Juma was perfect because the campaign brought some distinct design advantages that made farming bags rewarding. You had five fairly quick, but in any case solo-able, weeklies to give you a decent amount of currency. Valhennas is a legacy campaign, meaning there will be the occasional double week. Plus in case a weekly load wasn't enough you could basically do Insurgencies indefinitely and by that assist newer players in their task of upgrading their Forger's Box. This made Valhennas one of my favorite areas in the game, because it managed to stay relevant for a wide variety of players. The only other campaign that's comparable is Dread Ring thanks to Enchanting Stones.

Now in comes the change and imho messes with a perfectly set up system (minus having to discard a billion vanity chickens). What's left of Valhennas? A campaign that you will complete and never see again, just like all the others. Even worse, newer players always had company when doing Insurgencies because veterans came back for Juma Bags. Obtaining and upgrading the Forger's Box has gotten a lot easier, but doing Insurgencies with very few low level players (which I assume will be the new normal now) is still a pain and might even put the Forger's Box out of reach for some. And that's a shame, because for the only viable alternative you have to run MTOS. Tough luck for all those beginner DPS.

Also Juma makes zero sense in a 55k+ area as catch-up mechanic. You already have to go deep into Companion and Mount (or Enchantment) upgrades to even be able to start the area. By the time you get there, the rewards from Juma won't make much of an impact any longer. That's why the mechanic was so perfect within a legacy campaign. Add the fact that the new currency is exponentially harder to get because the big money maker are no longer weeklies but HE's that you can't solo and nobody will be doing in a few months. And I certainly hope nobody is insane enough to grind repeatable quests for the bags.

So unless I'm missing something it renders the mechanic that filled a certain niche in the game completely useless. It's really a shame. I would prefer keeping Juma in Valhennas and maybe offer different bags in Menzo that fit the needs of higher item level players better. Like Companions and Mount tokens or Shards of Greater Empowerment. With low-ish drop rates of course, but since the campaign currency is better spend on Enchantments I doubt Juma will see much customers either way.

ksell

would add few things i hope support juma "the first" place in vallenhas :
- this mechanic is still avaiable in difrent legacy zones, maybe with some diffrencies
- some gear are/were moved to camapgin related stores
- some other rewards were adjusted to more or less player benefit
- there are places with relevant grind, that woks same day from day one

there is no need for lore background for this specific NPC, and there are plenty made up cnadidates that can replace him in certain places; juma is nowhere close to sybella, dont try to put em in same category and repeat same mistakes

melotai

No he is not but it was a good way to get a lot of random companions, mounts and some basic transmutes.

Used him for all my toons to get a bunch of companions and mounts I never would have gotten otherwise and some were even useful enough for me to eventually upgrade to mythic. Also, for the mounts it is kind of nice to have a variety of horses to choose from and all my toons were a bit lite on this type of stuff until after Juma.

rockster

I think what happened (just my gut feeling) was that they knew Juma was attracting people to Vallenhas and insurgencies etc (location was always popping wasn't it where other older ones just weren't) and they knew how busy it was (they have all the population stats on hand) and they wanted to make the new mod busy to look good on the books for Gearbox player activity spreadsheets to show they're doing well and the investment is paying-off, so they thought taking him to the new area and removing him from the old one would shift all those players over and populate the new area. -Stealing players from one zone to make another one look busy. Stupid. As you say, it worked really well before for many reasons, but in the new zone it just doesn't translate. Lesson: you just don't touch what's working well and not broken. Something this company has no clue about.

Like Knox who is in quite a few places at once and no-one ever seems to have an issue with it, there is no reason Juma couldn't be in two areas at the same time, or they could have just reskinned him to make him a different colour and given him a new name with different goods. I suspect that some people in the company are too personally invested in the idea of 'freeing' him from his cage and would be resistant to putting him back again and they would see putting him back where he was as some kind of personal defeat because that would mean what they thought was their great shiny idea making them look good was actually a terrible one. But for the game and the players benefit, they should reconsider. Again, just my gut/intuitive feeling.

rockster

Oh also, fwiw, my fighter which I am currently working on had his last 20% to do for his last mythic upgrade on the forgers box on the day after the change. So the day they moved Juma and changed all the insurgency stuff around he still had one day left to do and I had to go back. Whereas before he could do his 20% in one go (one insurgency) because of the length of time they took, and get all his kills in, the last day he had to do I think it was three because big hitters were killing all the mobs too fast and it was over too fast. I had to keep going and doing fresh ones to finish it. So it turned out it was actually harder and more stressful for him to do his daily percentage completion now than it was before.

ksell

rockster#6227 said:

So it turned out it was actually harder and more stressful for him to do his daily percentage completion now than it was before.

cant say how its on avarage, but I mangaged to increase 20 to 50 % on two toons, with single insurgency (one or two boss per each), and group was not small; i was able to at least hit once each of my targets, so meter went up fast

rockster

ksell said:

rockster#6227 said:

So it turned out it was actually harder and more stressful for him to do his daily percentage completion now than it was before.

cant say how its on avarage, but I mangaged to increase 20 to 50 % on two toons, with single insurgency (one or two boss per each), and group was not small; i was able to at least hit once each of my targets, so meter went up fast

Are you ranged? I was on a fighter and by the time he ran over to things they were already dead.

ksell

@rockster#6227
Barbarian, but for bosses i have to sprint for that one slash

guess its all come to how considerate for others current group is

rockster

In that type of content there is no consideration.

tchefi

rockster#6227 said:

Like Knox who is in quite a few places at once and no-one ever seems to have an issue with it, there is no reason Juma couldn't be in two areas at the same time, or they could have just reskinned him to make him a different colour and given him a new name with different goods. I suspect that some people in the company are too personally invested in the idea of 'freeing' him from his cage and would be resistant to putting him back again and they would see putting him back where he was as some kind of personal defeat because that would mean what they thought was their great shiny idea making them look good was actually a terrible one.

If you are looking into "freeing Juma" through a story/roleplay angle, which honestly is the only reasonnable take about withdrawing him from Valenhas and get him somewhere else, I wouldn't be mad that we "lost" him for mount/comp farming and players activity in Valenhas if his departure was related to a line of quests with an actual real storytelling... But nope, the storytelling, which was never great on this game (best we had was the Underdark), is now skeletal obviously matching the skeleton dev crew.

And from a storytelling perspective, there is someone much much worse than Knox having the gift of ubiquity in PE.
As you can pretty much start any campaign independently from the others, I'm wondering how confused I would be about Makos if I was starting the post-tutorial today by doing Cloaked Ascendency/Chult first, then SKT, and continuing with Valenhas/Avernus. Makos wouldn't make any sense. Storytelling is sacrificed on the altar of allowing new players to catch up fast.

But hey, people don't care about storytelling in an action RPG, so no effort will be done...

rockster

Yea totally agree, the storytelling and continuity of it used to be great and very engrossing but now it's all over the place and often doesn't make sense because of the holes they've created. They were too obsessed with getting new players through content more quickly and speeding everything up and now it's a dogs breakfast. Lately I've been creating new alts (only ever really played one character at a time for years, but right now playing multis and working on number 9) and running through the current leveling content over and over I've noticed that it all seems very diminished and childlike with no challenge anymore. Content has been shortened and edited down to make it go faster and while the game tries to let you know it was a big deal you got through it and reached a new milestone, in reality it was fast and nothing much and a bit of a let down. Only good if ur rushing through and want to get it over with fast to get to other content, which is a slap in the face to the content you're doing and why play a game if all you want to do is rush through it to get it over with faster.

fritz

Storytelling is a weak excuse for the Juma change. I mean look at Knox, Makos, and other notable characters. They are all over the place in ways that don't make sense at all depending on how you walk through the campaigns, adventures, and story. A MMO will never have a straight plot line unless you force players into a linear progression that gates all campaigns and adventures behind completing the previous ones.

So this Juma change has little to do with story telling and much to do with nerfing / and or another lack of big picture by the devs. I wouldn't be shocked if somebody just thought well maybe Juma makes more sense in the Northdark now because all the players are busy there without any clue about all the implications it causes. Probably giving the devs too little credit here, but the past has taught us to be skeptical.