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Some high level items impossible for some of us to get


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The Issue

As the ADV, "Nadyra" / "Hestha" would tell you, myself and some others recently expressed some concern over certain items being pretty much impossible to obtain unless we have zero life outside this game. For example, I have been playing for about 5 months now and have never once seen Modi's Child or the Celestial Warder. I tried camping for the former for several hours on multiple days for a couple of weeks and then just gave up. Another guy told me he did the same thing for months and sometimes would sit for 6 hours and get nothing... think about that... 6 hours on some days and doing this for months without once seeing the boss. And even if he did get lucky and spot it, I've heard it's normally a camp-fest and you'd have to fight for it. Now don't get me wrong; I don't want things just handed to me.. that would be boring and suck the fun out of the game... but at the same time, I think the difficulty of obtaining some of these things is overkill... I have some suggestions on this, but 1 more example to make my point as well:

Obtaining the controller's core for the "Insane in the mainframe" mission is ridiculously difficult... one guy told me he's been playing for 5 years and only got it twice (and he's in the USA). I haven't even had the opportunity to go on a single troller raid yet and that's nobody's fault really... it's because I'm in Australia and thus, 13+ hours ahead of most of you guys... whenever my guild is doing the troller raid (usually 7pm EST), I'm just getting my kid to school in the morning... and then off to work. Again, that's just a shitty situation and nobody's fault. Fortunately I am told there is something called a public raid and that can be opened for those of us who don't normally get the opportunity to go on raids. This is the perfect solution for those of us in different timezones. However, I'm told only 1 guy can open that up for us and if we don't see him online, we have to wait. I've been waiting a long time indeed... and even if I did see him, I would have to hope there's others on and ready for it the same time as me anyway.

Proposed solutions

Regarding some bosses like Modi's child or the celestial warder, I think they could either be changed to be triggers (those work great and are very fair for everyone - it prevents camp fests and allows everyone a fair chance) or else if you don't want triggers, then change the spawn rate, but make it so the boss doesn't always drop the nice items. For example, Desash the Plague spawns every hour or so and doesn't always drop the Plague's Bite. That seems to work out nicely. I believe Modi's child spawns once a day and always drops the Breath of Life. How about making it more like Desash? It doesn't have to spawn every hour, but maybe 2, 3 or 4 times per day and doesn't always drop the BoL... I think that would be a little more fair.

As for the raids thing, this is a difficult one.. especially for those of us outside the US.. one possible solution might be to make the controller's core tradeable? Otherwise, expand the public raid server idea and give more than 1 member of staff the ability to open it up so that we have more chance of being able to do one of those (I wouldn't have to wait weeks or months to catch the 1 guy who can open it up).

Or else maybe someone else has some better ideas, I'm not sure. All I know is the way it is right now is not working out so well for everyone..

Basically, timed spawns generally suck... triggers are best and the most fair.. but otherwise used timed spawns in a sensible way (similar to Desash the Plague)

 

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In my opinion, most items in the game are too easy to get.  Compare this to live (or other commercial MMO's), you're talking about ultra-rare items that only a small number of players would ever see.  Yet, the expectation here is that everyone should be able to get the best reactor for a Terran in a matter of a few days.  The skull shield and the celestial turbo's are supposed to be the rarest loot drops in the game, in other MMO's "casual" players would never see an item like that, why would you expect to here?

Mantis, you mentioned that you've been playing for 5 months, well what about those players that have been playing for 5 years?  What's their incentive be to keep playing if the rarest items in the game could be obtained within the first 5 months?  I've seen a lot of players get all the gear and then quit because they've run out of things to do.

As for the solutions, what's wrong with a camp fest?...the warder is about the only place where you actually compete for something in this game.  You gotta come well prepared, either with friends or multiple toons, but then it's really up to whoever starts shooting first since he will go down fairly quick.  And by the way, the warder already doesn't always drop the good loot, it's entirely possible to camp it for 3 days, kill it, and walk away with a Boon of the Celestial.

Mark, you did make a good point that the player base is going down, but that is making the rare items easier to get with fewer people competing for them.  If anything, spawn rate on the rare loot and raid triggers should be increased to reflect the smaller player base.

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There are plans already made for Modi's Child.

I won't go into details as that would spoil the surprise but it has been identified as an opportunity for improvement.

The V'rix content is currently taking up most development time from a content viewpoint.

Server migration is taking up more than a lot of time for the server team.

Apart from that there is other stuff going on in the background that will be a great benefit once completed.

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20 hours ago, Xiaolinmantis said:

As the ADV, "Nadyra" / "Hestha" would tell you, myself and some others recently expressed some concern over certain items being pretty much impossible to obtain unless we have zero life outside this game.

As is true with almost every MMORPG that has been made to date.

WIth respect to PRS, you can see my response in your other thread where you mention it. It has to be run by a GM, we have a few GMs, not 1. It is however dependent on their availability because they are not paid for acting as our game masters.

 

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1 hour ago, Kyp said:

As is true with almost every MMORPG that has been made to date.

You mean like Eve? Yes, they like to milk their players big-time in that game. I tried it right after sunset, and I gave up very quickly with that - just a couple of months and I was bored to death. And I've spoken with quite a few players here that feel the same; they don't come here for another Eve.. but for something a lot more fun... which you can sit down to and have fun within minutes. I can understand why Eve make things so hard... because they're milking people for money - they want to keep people hanging around forever.

But this emu is free, so why not play by different rules? Why not make all raids triggered? That works wonderfully for GR and FB... We can do that whenever we feel like it then - without having to worry about which guild's turn it is or whatever. Obviously you should make the trigger very hard to build in that case.. I don't have any problem with difficulty.. I have a problem with impossible. I want to know that if I keep working at it, I will eventually be able to get that particular item... even if it takes weeks or months.. that's fine... but not being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel is very much depressing. Take the following variables into account for troller raid:

- it doesn't spawn often
- gotta make sure it's our turn (and not the turn of another guild)
- the core rarely ever drops
- if it does drop, you have to do a lotto and hope you get lucky.

Just the above variables alone is why 1 guy (from the USA) told me he only ever got it twice in 5 years of playing. Now add the following variable:

- timezone which is outside USA (circa 13 hours in my case)

So... I'm looking at that and thinking there's no way in hell I'm ever getting a core. Waiting months, no problem... waiting years or more likely forever... not cool. And bear in mind... this is even taking into account that I have been playing like a maniac for these 5 months... if I were to try have a more balanced life and only play an hour or so per day, it would be even more impossible. Just telling you that so you don't think I'm just an occasional player and demanding to have it all... which is how everyone seems to want to treat those of us who bring these concerns up. I have been playing like a mad man.

Until recently, I had in fact been playing 6+ hours per day on most days and screwing over my health and family life because of this game... I've had to stop that for obvious reasons and trying to slow down now. But the point is this: even when playing like a maniac, it's still pretty much impossible to get certain things. So it's no wonder people are losing interest.. if they feel they will never be able to accomplish much, of course they're going to call it quits. I've had the same thoughts myself recently... Mostly I'm sticking around for the story-line now... I've pretty much given up on raids that are not triggered and with spawned bosses like the warder and modi's child.

Why not try to keep people's interest (which as Mark pointed out and Flip agreed, the player base is plummeting right now)?

Yes there are some die-hards that don't mind sticking around for years and years before they get something.. good for them. I truly do admire that.. but that's not for everyone. Do you really only want to appeal to those few die-hards and ignore the rest of us? You might not get so many people leaving the game if you did something about this.

My apologies for a long winded response and if it sounded a bit like a rant.. it's not; I just want you to see where some of us are coming from.. basically all I'm saying is it would be good to make sure everything is actually possible to get. Waiting weeks or months is perfectly reasonable so long as it is in fact possible. Waiting years for something is madness. I don't care what other MMOs do.. they're doing it to milk people... how's that relevant to this emu?

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27 minutes ago, Xiaolinmantis said:

You mean like Eve? Yes, they like to milk their players big-time in that game. I tried it right after sunset, and I gave up very quickly with that - just a couple of months and I was bored to death. And I've spoken with quite a few players here that feel the same; they don't come here for another Eve.. but for something a lot more fun... which you can sit down to and have fun within minutes. I can understand why Eve make things so hard... because they're milking people for money - they want to keep people hanging around forever.

But this emu is free, so why not play by different rules? Why not make all raids triggered? That works wonderfully for GR and FB... We can do that whenever we feel like it then - without having to worry about which guild's turn it is or whatever. Obviously you should make the trigger very hard to build in that case.. I don't have any problem with difficulty.. I have a problem with impossible. I want to know that if I keep working at it, I will eventually be able to get that particular item... even if it takes weeks or months.. that's fine... but not being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel is very much depressing. Take the following variables into account for troller raid:

- it doesn't spawn often
- gotta make sure it's our turn (and not the turn of another guild)
- the core rarely ever drops
- if it does drop, you have to do a lotto and hope you get lucky.

Just the above variables alone is why 1 guy (from the USA) told me he only ever got it twice in 5 years of playing. Now add the following variable:

- timezone which is outside USA (circa 13 hours in my case)

So... I'm looking at that and thinking there's no way in hell I'm ever getting a core. Waiting months, no problem... waiting years or more likely forever... not cool. And bear in mind... this is even taking into account that I have been playing like a maniac for these 5 months... if I were to try have a more balanced life and only play an hour or so per day, it would be even more impossible. Just telling you that so you don't think I'm just an occasional player and demanding to have it all... which is how everyone seems to want to treat those of us who bring these concerns up. I have been playing like a mad man.

Until recently, I had in fact been playing 6+ hours per day on most days and screwing over my health and family life because of this game... I've had to stop that for obvious reasons and trying to slow down now. But the point is this: even when playing like a maniac, it's still pretty much impossible to get certain things. So it's no wonder people are losing interest.. if they feel they will never be able to accomplish much, of course they're going to call it quits. I've had the same thoughts myself recently... Mostly I'm sticking around for the story-line now... I've pretty much given up on raids that are not triggered and with spawned bosses like the warder and modi's child.

Why not try to keep people's interest (which as Mark pointed out and Flip agreed, the player base is plummeting right now)?

Yes there are some die-hards that don't mind sticking around for years and years before they get something.. good for them. I truly do admire that.. but that's not for everyone. Do you really only want to appeal to those few die-hards and ignore the rest of us? You might not get so many people leaving the game if you did something about this.

My apologies for a long winded response and if it sounded a bit like a rant.. it's not; I just want you to see where some of us are coming from.. basically all I'm saying is it would be good to make sure everything is actually possible to get. Waiting weeks or months is perfectly reasonable so long as it is in fact possible. Waiting years for something is madness. I don't care what other MMOs do.. they're doing it to milk people... how's that relevant to this emu?

I mean like: EVE, WoW, Final Fantasy XI and XIV, Star Wars Galaxies (when it was a thing), Star Wars the Old Republic, Ultima Online, Everquest, and at least 20 others that I don't feel like listing right now. :)

You're right, some of the Raids could be done in better ways, but again this goes back to development efforts and number of people trying to keep all this running. It takes a lot of work to do a raid, because it requires a lot of testing. We have to balance loot so that there's a reason for people to come back and raid again thus to help other players achieve the loot they want. There are a great many concerns when you're planning a game state that most players don't consider. What about the economy if you can sell item X? What about the devaluation to players who have been able to earn it (or, get lucky as you put it).

I get it, camping sucks, but at the same time on the alternate end of the scale when everything is a button push or easy it ruins the game. We can't please everyone all the time, some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time and all that.

Of course I want people to play as long as possible, but not because I'm trying to milk them for money, I want them to enjoy the game. What many don't think about is the typical AAA game team is 10-20 people, we have about 4 active content developers other than myself, and 1 programmer other than me. This kind of limits the speed at which we can design and implement changes.

All I can say is stay tuned, because after the server move we are redoing some of the tools which should aid in speeding things up for content but until then we can only do what we can do.

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Thank you, Kyp. Very nice response. I've never played any of those games except EVE for a short time. And in fact, I don't generally play any games - especially MMOs.. I'm more of a single-player FPS player.. except for E&B which is just plain awesome.  :-)

Please don't misunderstand me: I fully get that this is all volunteer work and you don't have many staff. I have no intention of bitching and hurrying you guys up.. that would be a terrible attitude for anyone to have. I was only bringing this to your attention. After all, how can you accommodate the requests of the players if you don't know what those requests are? This forum (Suggestions) is exactly for this kind of thing, right? So that's all I'm doing: letting you know our concerns and suggesting some solutions... and trying to get a discussion going so we can all come to some agreement / some middle ground.

Looking forward to see what's coming in future.

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23 hours ago, Xiaolinmantis said:

After all, how can you accommodate the requests of the players if you don't know what those requests are?

The advocate, of course. :)

The point of that position is to bring things that the majority of players are bothered by to the forefront where possible. Suggestions are good, but depending on what they are we may or may not implement etc. Of course, this is why it is a suggestion, lol.

 

I understand, stay tuned.

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  • 1 year later...

So it's been nearly 2 years, I just recently started playing again and I'm surprised that things like the Celestial Warder are still so difficult to catch a spawn on given the small playerbase... can we get a revival on this and maybe a simple trigger for those of us that work full time, have families, but still want to make the most out of this game?

 

I don't see why you couldn't just make the droprate on items lower and add a trigger that anyone could initiate, but only once ever 55 hours or so. It gives everyone a fair chance at dropping the boss, but at the same time the lowered droprate on items would still make it a roll of the lucky dice.

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  • 7 months later...
On 9/20/2016 at 9:59 AM, RedKite said:

There are plans already made for Modi's Child.

I won't go into details as that would spoil the surprise but it has been identified as an opportunity for improvement.

 

Where does this stand? Still effectively impossible to get the Breath of Life.

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Occurs to me that in my 2.5 years since returning to EnB, I don't know who the Advocate is.  Offhand, I don't see any link on the net-7.org [emulator] website that even tells us there is an Advocate ...

 

For that matter, I also don't see any reporting of who the lead managers of various aspects of the emulator are.  I know there are various groups of administrators and developers ... but, afaik, there is no organized way to find out who is who -- aside from the occasional special status tag such as Woody's or Kyp's.

 

In the interests of sending to the correct person when something arises -- maybe this would be desirable ...

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On 3/9/2019 at 10:01 AM, Lquan said:

Occurs to me that in my 2.5 years since returning to EnB, I don't know who the Advocate is.  Offhand, I don't see any link on the net-7.org [emulator] website that even tells us there is an Advocate ...

 

For that matter, I also don't see any reporting of who the lead managers of various aspects of the emulator are.  I know there are various groups of administrators and developers ... but, afaik, there is no organized way to find out who is who -- aside from the occasional special status tag such as Woody's or Kyp's.

 

In the interests of sending to the correct person when something arises -- maybe this would be desirable ...

 

This is correct, the community numbers and logged in users dwindled so small for a period that it was easier for us to just talk with them directly. Of course, some of that is summer and whatnot because people wanna be outside.

We're not against the player base choosing to do something like that again if it is desired but we'll need the nominees to be interested and engaged. Bringing us useful information about what you find to be pain or what you want to see improved. It may not always work in your way or be the fix you had in mind but it'll help draw our attention to what needs urgent care.

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On 3/9/2019 at 3:30 AM, Yuritau said:

 

Where does this stand? Still effectively impossible to get the Breath of Life.

Obtained 2 last week after trying for a week, just happened to be flying past after a couple server restarts, food for thought...

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11 hours ago, Nomaster said:

Obtained 2 last week after trying for a week, just happened to be flying past after a couple server restarts, food for thought...

 

Sorry , the beast has died of hungryness due to lack of food, 

 

The Dev are fully aware of the demand for a multi year repeated often demand for occasionnal players to have triggers

for unique item drops.

 

The Dev also offered an outside Auction page based on the Mail system. Which they have swept under the Rug, never to be heard of or spoken again because they where all in favor of getting rid of he pesky Player Advocate position ( not me, this demands, predate my volunterring as the only one wanting to do the job of player advocate properly at the time ) 

 

Plus, to get one there is the Market channel in the game

and this forum to ask if any other nice player as any they want to trade for what ( feather , credits , can try $$ ).

 

Beside, In the high level, gear raid, the system, there are much better at dropping higher cap and buffs reactor and weapon and device except for Traders.

 

 --------

 

In many ( begging really ) discussion with the dev ( more proposal they just said just no to, without an explantion as to why really ) about breath of life :

 

- It Was proposed a mission guy like the one with the  Hellfire Access Card

- It was proposed a credit sink vendor in the 900 million per object with restrcited acces like the hidden vendor in Ishuan Station

- It was proposed a trigger mission like the red dragon 

- It was asked for more drops as per the 3 time zone America , Europe , Asia

- It was even proposed a X-mas event mission in 2017 

 

7. The Nutty Professor Christmas Alternative. Professor E Hubble feels that the Breath of life requirement for the shooting star can be replaced.

So he offers a new mission for a new level 7 -8 - 9 reactor line Shooting Star Ho HO ho, that replaces the Breath of Life with a Breath of Reaction.

But first you must learn to build 10 most unused vendor sold reactor, deliver them to the professor, then you have to gather 100 item all around the universe.

then he takes all the item and gives you the blueprint for the Breath of Reaction who use the 100 item you just delivered to him

 

- It was asked that they ( Main devs ) put it Breath of Life and other Uniques on Ebay and orher real auction site for 100$ as to help with server donation /maintenance

 

- it was asked for 2 3 more drop location at different time

 

- it was asked that they Both drops, be made an event within the Raid system in Saturn at different time zone

 

I had previously 3 breath of life,  i gave mine away, as I already have the reactor built

 

So there needs to be more forrum communication with the hoarder/hunter/conglomerate/guild getting them first and communication between players ,

 

The Dev are truely  not interested in fixing that one. They really don't see it has an urgent problem

Edited by Moulinneuf
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I never saw Modi's child either

Then again I diddnt have much trouble trading for a BoL 

 

As I recall I have 2 in a vault, but havent logged in for some time

Warder never saw either

 

Given the low player base it puzzles me as to why these should be so hard to find, the few that remain cant be still hoarding the spawns, unless someone has a script running to collect the bosses ???  And for what reason would they do that?

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10 hours ago, Gunney said:

I never saw Modi's child either

Then again I diddnt have much trouble trading for a BoL 

 

As I recall I have 2 in a vault, but havent logged in for some time

Warder never saw either

 

Given the low player base it puzzles me as to why these should be so hard to find, the few that remain cant be still hoarding the spawns, unless someone has a script running to collect the bosses ???  And for what reason would they do that?

I'm told that the respawn time for Modi's Child is about 2.5 days.  the group that last killed it has a huge advantage in that they know about when it will next spawn and can position their toons to intercept it.  everyone else gets tired of waiting for many hours or days ...

 

The Warder is apparently similar, although the time period may be shorter [one day].  The spawn site has been camped by one or more 'trigger' toons virtually continuously.  [a trigger toon is a low level, low visibility toon always logged on and hanging in a location outside the reach of the mobs in the area.  when the boss spawns, it kills the trigger toon and thus alerts its owner to log on the group to kill the boss for the loot, which is then shared out among the guild or group of friends.

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The length of the respawn and the advantage of knowing when isnt what puzzles me.

How many times do you kill a mob to collect the item before you have a crapload of them sitting in the vault?  What would be the reason for it?

I never saw anyone selling them off,  In fact 2 of the 3 I have were given to me simply because I asked in the market chat

 

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There used to be a website which estimated the frequency of each drop from a particular mob based on statistics from live [I think].  Suspect that website is no longer active, and I recall seeing estimates as low as 5 percent (or even lower).  Last I checked my maths, at 5 percent drop frequency, the expected number of items received by killing twenty of the spawn is one [1].  And the probability of getting at least one drop doesn't reach 50 percent until you've killed that mob fifteen times.

 

If that sort of drop frequency applies to something like the Barrier of Ooze [level 7 shield], you have to kill the boss mob it drops from a LOT -- so much so that your 'toon won't need a level 7 shield any more because it'll have moved on to an 8 before you get one.

 

Thus, only a collector will have one at all -- no one else will invest the time required to get one.

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