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Post Drop Lockout timers by x25
I did a response in Masterful's thread, and realized it needed a suggestion thread in its own right. Yes, i fully expect the deluge of "Do Not Like becouse Disagreed with Me" to overflow here.

Moonlightneo wrote:
This is made worse by lockouts that are ridiculously long, making just getting those items a pain in the ass as it forces you to either spend a LONG time waiting for lockouts


TY sir, you have understood the core of my objections perfectly. This game needs to move away from daily and (i spit this word as i say it) Weekly lockouts. It is a reason we are loosing players. I have no clue where this idea came from, but moving forward lock outs should at most be 6 hours, and closer to 2 hours high end and 30 minutes low end. I would argue very strongly that one of the reasons late game players are so bored is that they are spending to much time waiting for lockouts to cool down. And that this is having a downward effect on the whole tenor of the game.

PAUSE AND THINK. If you could hit the twisted mini's every 60 minutes, would the loot rolls be a problem? Would you even care about a couple of bad loot rolls? "Did not get the item you wanted? Hit it again. Someone else took it? Hit it again! Still no luck? Hit it AGAIN!"

The game i am used to is/was called Ragnarok Online. Most of the MVP's had lockouts of 1 to 2 hours and only a handful of high level late game MVP's might approach 6 - 8 hour lockouts. I think the longest was Ifrit at 11 hours.

One of my fondest memories of gaming was the rolling boom squad. We started a MVP squad that left from Morroc every hour on the hour. 40 minutes to ace the dungeon, 15 minutes to kill the boss, 5 minutes to grab soda and pee, then do it again. All where welcome, any team, any history, save multi team KOS. You had to really mess up to not get into the rolling boom squad. People went to work, came home, woke up, went to bed, joined and left, but that squad ran 24/7 for three weeks before a server crash forced us to reorg.

PUASE AND THINK AGAIN PLEASE. What effect would a rolling boom squad have on the SS player retention? And why do we not have one? Because no ones lockout line up like that. Because the lockouts are to long. Insert random plug about LFG channel.

When i first heard about week long lockouts, I assumed the person must be telling some kind of joke.

I offer the idea that lockouts should be reduced by a factor of X24. 20+ instance Daily's should become instance Hourly's, Weekly's should be 6 hours tops, 20- Instance should be 30 minutes. Non instance fixed (Jungle/Mira/Brigands, exc.) should be 4-6 hours to ensure access to everyone. Roamers/DG at 1 hour. Respawns on non instanced (fixed, roamer and DG) should be 20-30 minutes. If you want to race cartwheels around Infernal all day, go bananas.

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Wed Jan 11, 2017 5:54 pm
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
I actually can agree with this.

Lower the drop rates on stuff and decrease the lockout time. Would definitely give people things to do constantly, and it would also hurt WAY worse when you fail a run.

It's got my stamp of approval tbh...

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Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:22 pm
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
lrellok wrote:
I did a response in Masterful's thread, and realized it needed a suggestion thread in its own right. Yes, i fully expect the deluge of "Do Not Like becouse Disagreed with Me" to overflow here.

Moonlightneo wrote:
This is made worse by lockouts that are ridiculously long, making just getting those items a pain in the ass as it forces you to either spend a LONG time waiting for lockouts


TY sir, you have understood the core of my objections perfectly. This game needs to move away from daily and (i spit this word as i say it) Weekly lockouts. It is a reason we are loosing players. I have no clue where this idea came from, but moving forward lock outs should at most be 6 hours, and closer to 2 hours high end and 30 minutes low end. I would argue very strongly that one of the reasons late game players are so bored is that they are spending to much time waiting for lockouts to cool down. And that this is having a downward effect on the whole tenor of the game.

PAUSE AND THINK. If you could hit the twisted mini's every 60 minutes, would the loot rolls be a problem? Would you even care about a couple of bad loot rolls? "Did not get the item you wanted? Hit it again. Someone else took it? Hit it again! Still no luck? Hit it AGAIN!"

The game i am used to is/was called Ragnarok Online. Most of the MVP's had lockouts of 1 to 2 hours and only a handful of high level late game MVP's might approach 6 - 8 hour lockouts. I think the longest was Ifrit at 11 hours.

One of my fondest memories of gaming was the rolling boom squad. We started a MVP squad that left from Morroc every hour on the hour. 40 minutes to ace the dungeon, 15 minutes to kill the boss, 5 minutes to grab soda and pee, then do it again. All where welcome, any team, any history, save multi team KOS. You had to really mess up to not get into the rolling boom squad. People went to work, came home, woke up, went to bed, joined and left, but that squad ran 24/7 for three weeks before a server crash forced us to reorg.

PUASE AND THINK AGAIN PLEASE. What effect would a rolling boom squad have on the SS player retention? And why do we not have one? Because no ones lockout line up like that. Because the lockouts are to long. Insert random plug about LFG channel.

When i first heard about week long lockouts, I assumed the person must be telling some kind of joke.

I offer the idea that lockouts should be reduced by a factor of X24. 20+ instance Daily's should become instance Hourly's, Weekly's should be 6 hours tops, 20- Instance should be 30 minutes. Non instance fixed (Jungle/Mira/Brigands, exc.) should be 4-6 hours to ensure access to everyone. Roamers/DG at 1 hour. Respawns on non instanced (fixed, roamer and DG) should be 20-30 minutes. If you want to race cartwheels around Infernal all day, go bananas.


Yep, week long lockouts don't work... just ask all 7 million people who pay to have 4 of them a month over at WoW... :roll:

Also, no one wants incredibly short, low drop chance lockouts, because that means incessant farming for hours, when you could organize 1 run a week instead. Unless you just have no life, obligations or responsibility this suggestion directly nerfs the time that you do have to give to leisure.

Final point, no one's lockouts line up? I guess it's not like we've had universal lockout timers added, right?


Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:35 pm
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
While I don't agree with removing weekly lockouts all together (ShawnMcCall's post covers the why decently well), I do agree that it would be nice to have more content with short lockouts like DGs.

I'd say that in an ideal world, players should have a variety of PVE content to do at all times even if they've already done all the content with lockouts that they can. Right now, I guess its only DGs that cover that.

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Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:40 pm
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
why not just replace lockouts with a system which makes bosses stronger if you kill them more than once in a few hours?

I.E. in any situation where you would normally receive a lockout, the boss just doubles or triples in difficulty each time it is killed(double all stats?), with the stat boosts gradually decreasing over time (so that after the "lockout" time has elapsed, the boss is back to its original strength).

that way, if you have a strong squad you can do the same boss 2 or 3 times, or 10, or until its difficulty matches the strength of your squad.

for bragging rights, bosses could drop tokens which display the "strength multiplier" the boss had when it was killed.

such a system could see squads from different teams competing to see who can get the most consecutive kills of each boss.


Last edited by landswimmer on Wed Jan 11, 2017 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wed Jan 11, 2017 8:18 pm
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
ShawnMcCall wrote:

Yep, week long lockouts don't work... just ask all 7 million people who pay to have 4 of them a month over at WoW... :roll:

Also, no one wants incredibly short, low drop chance lockouts, because that means incessant farming for hours, when you could organize 1 run a week instead. Unless you just have no life, obligations or responsibility this suggestion directly nerfs the time that you do have to give to leisure.

Final point, no one's lockouts line up? I guess it's not like we've had universal lockout timers added, right?


This. It would be a huge pain to have to farm all the bosses consistently, it already takes enough time to do them as they are now for casual players. I wouldn't mind decreasing the drop chance of stuff and reducing the lockouts for things like JWatt/Gohm, but for everything else? No way. The universal lockouts thing is a great system imo, let's keep it at that without over-complicating everything.

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Wed Jan 11, 2017 8:19 pm
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
He didn't say with reduced loot chance. In a market starved of items and bloated with cash what's the worse can happen if you reduce lockout times?


Thu Jan 12, 2017 1:48 am
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
sabre198 wrote:
He didn't say with reduced loot chance. In a market starved of items and bloated with cash what's the worse can happen if you reduce lockout times?


Now that I think about it, we wouldn't need to reduce the loot chance. And, to be quite honest, more loot would mean we'd be able to make sure more people get gear. It would also pair up VERY nicely with the mod system enkelin proposed. There would be more loot for people to either sell or turn into feedstock for the gear they want to mod. I really could get behind this tbh...

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Thu Jan 12, 2017 3:40 am
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
MasterTrader wrote:
sabre198 wrote:
He didn't say with reduced loot chance. In a market starved of items and bloated with cash what's the worse can happen if you reduce lockout times?


Now that I think about it, we wouldn't need to reduce the loot chance. And, to be quite honest, more loot would mean we'd be able to make sure more people get gear. It would also pair up VERY nicely with the mod system enkelin proposed. There would be more loot for people to either sell or turn into feedstock for the gear they want to mod. I really could get behind this tbh...


What new mod system?

Increasing the drop chance of the rare gear people actually want would work as well, but what's the point in the super rare tier of gear if everyone can get it? Having weaker but viable alternatives seems a better solution if you're going that route.

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Thu Jan 12, 2017 3:49 am
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
Sounds like horror show when you first hear it, what just give people more!?!

Reaganomics - Reagan described it as "Too many dollars chasing too few goods", but rather than the usual dose of tight money, recession and layoffs, with their consequent loss of production and wealth, he promised a gradual and painless way to fight inflation by "producing our way out of it"

Production in SS compared to RL is like we are all miners, mining items out of the Dg's. getting more suddenly is like "producing our way out of it", instant productivity gain in our mining enterprises.


Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:09 am
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
Personally, I really like the way the new system works. If people are having trouble with failed boss attempts then that's not a problem with the lockout being too long, it's a problem with the boss fight not resetting properly and thus not giving players another chance at killing the boss.

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Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:14 am
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
You shouldn't be pushing this aside based on current boss mechanics being broken. Fix them and then ./sign this great suggestion.


Thu Jan 12, 2017 7:25 am
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
I'm agreeing with this because i can say as a player that hasn't quite hit T21 let alone T22, one of the main things driving me away from grinding up is the feeling that i can't just play whenever i damn well feel like it (i can, but it feels like im just doing nothing, making zero progress), i have to be on at a time where people aren't locked out, and want to run, or find a (super rare) group that happens to not have a weekly lockout, which by the way, is insane AND NOT because it's a terrible mechanic, its not a bad one.

Let me just stop right here and explain WHY i think this system is good and bad, and why in a game like SS, it currently does not work in terms of attracting and maintaining players.

It's good because it gives a high sense of achievement if you succeed, but the blow hits hard if you fail, the drops feel more worth it and can be a higher chance roll because of the time you have to wait inbetween runs, rather than grinding a 0.05% roll for hours, or days- you can run a single 30% roll, and get lucky, or negotiate with someone for it right away.

It's bad because, in a LOW POPULATION GAME, there's nobody really to group with to do said content, AND assuming you're running content because you need it, chances are when you do find a group, you're freeloading and get no drops....NO DROPS, lemme just emphasize this, you finally get up to T20 and want to run Oly, you get a group, and run it, but are entitled to pretty much nothing besides the run itself.
So more often than not, you waste an entire 7 days of time for pretty much nothing.
I'd personally much rather solo grind up on low chances than have to sit through a run that takes a fairly long time considering, and usually get nothing from it and then be locked out for an entire week. At least then i'd feel like i'm doing something that contributes to my progression. It also doesn't help that even endgamers need the content you're trying to run for sometimes because of bindomite.

Long lockouts to me feel like a system that serves only to stop people that want to hit endgame faster than someone who only plays a few hours here and there from ever actually getting ahead even if they put in the effort, and to me, it also seems like one of the reasons the lead teams STAY in the lead. It also makes me feel like, if i sub, i'm just gonna waste 90% of it dicking off doing nothing because, as previously mentioned, theres no real content besides the lockout-enforced ones that you can really do.

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Mon Jan 16, 2017 10:40 am
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
Short Lockouts makes loot shitty. Used to be you'd do Olympus, with a full endgame T21 squad, take 2-3 hours, and get NOTHING. Some powercore-esque commods, a Lightning Source aug, and maybe a Mallet blueprint. If you wanted to have a reasonable chance at a good item, you needed to do that 7 times in a week.

So, you get to spend 20 hours a week grinding AI with tons of shield bank (I believe Zeus had a literal billion shields) and you get .... well, you get something. But it's like getting Primal Powercores. Some people have hundreds of these items, and you only use like 3 per build...assuming you had blueprints to use. You don't. And 1-use blueprints. So the only people who could progress were the ones with all that free time and or RL money.

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Mon Jan 16, 2017 1:25 pm
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Post Re: Drop Lockout timers by x25
i'd still rather be grinding what i need to grind, than do it once and then be forced to wait (and truth be told, at that point i mightaswell only log in once a week) just to be able to progress a little.
It's sad, but even if the drop rates are absolutely abysmal, at least you have that sense of achieving something by grinding it, and eventually obtaining what you need.
When i do Oly and get locked out for a week, i feel that accomplishment of like "yay im progressing my character" but once that run is complete i'm met with a wall of "Why am i even playing right now? i cant do anything all that meaningful besides mindlessly grind DG's for potentially worthwhile loot and bore myself to literal death".
I have mild ADD, but i can play something for hours, or days even straight and not get bored if it maintains my interest, SS fails to keep that interest because of lack of things that feel accomplishing to do, i may suddenly feel like playing and play SS for a few days, usually doing Oly like once, then DG'ing for several hours on end, maybe theorycraft some setups i could shoot for, etc. But that motivation evaporates quickly when i've got no real direction to go but mindlessly loot grind because my progression is locked behind a week long time gate- and there's not much else to tackle on the side that'd take up even a small portion of that time.
And i know for a fact, a lot of people out there have much less of an attention span than myself, i'm sure there's people that cringe at the thought of a day long lockout let alone 7.

I've played grindy games before, heck i was a Mapler back when it took weeks to hit 30+ and get second job, and the decent weapon drops from mobs that'd help you progress had a drop chance below 0.1%, i've played silkroad back before it was bot plagued and i remember all the missions for killing X mob several thousand- and no that's not an exaggeration- times.
SS isn't that grindy, and time gates are a horrible way to circumvent grind if implemented without alternatives. I'm not saying remove all of them, but there NEEDS to be content that is desirable to play, particularly content that can and probably should be tackled in groups, THAT ISN'T LOCKED, or has a short lock, and actually has an impact on how one progresses. I don't like being held back by a silly limiter that seems intended to stop speedy progress, build times are enough of a limiter as is- but those at least have purpose as to why they have workforce caps. Lockouts just seem arbitrary.

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