Why did you remove Energons from solo play?

[drunkenboastor]

Why did you remove Energons from solo play in Elemental Planes? You have removed the best loot to be dropped in the elemental planes from solo play, with solo players most likely would benefit from the use of that loot.

[chirality]

prolly cuz it was 2hard for some ppl to solo so they asked to be changed. i mean i think someone found it detracting their own solo experience so it's a tough call to make.

i think this and many other similar situations could be addressed by adding some sort of multi-toggle various options a la hellgate or opt-in/out/on/off at least via SIMTool command or object interaction. long-asked-for suggestions to artificially boost partycount in ele planes, fey, and hades for purpose of both increased challenge (->"fun" for some ppl) and reward (whether specifically desired or just to match the increased risk that's seeked initially).

[drunkenboastor]

Energons are not at all hard to kill.

Air: Xap-Yaup - Only take sonic.
Earth: Xac-Yij - Only takes electric.
Water: Xor-Yost - Only takes fire.
Fire: Xac-Yel - Only takes acid.
If you are a melee, bring a set or level 50 weapon that only does that damage type and they are easy to kill. If you do other elements and give them thousands of temp hit points then you should just run away.

[FunkySwerve]

Jan 22, 2020 22:24:57 GMT chirality said:

prolly cuz it was 2hard for some ppl to solo so they asked to be changed. i mean i think someone found it detracting their own solo experience so it's a tough call to make.

This, though it was also simply a bugfix. The spawning strings were designated in a way that made it look like they would only spawn in groups greater than 1, but the designation, which was using the '>' symbol as a symbol and not a literal math operator, was always meant to spawn for groups of 2 or more (or 3, or more in some instances). See function description below.

/*
* EncTargetWaypoint[_C] (string) [trigger or area]
* Normally, encounters are dropped on top of PCs. If this is set, it is the
* tag of a waypoint to drop the encounter creatures on. '#2' may be appended
* to the tag to specify the second nearest waypoint with the tag, and so
* on. '#2-3' means either the second or third nearest. Using '%' instead of '#'
* will spread by number, e.g. 'foo_%1-3' will spread between foo_1 and foo_3.
* The character '&' will be replaced with the number of encounters already
* encountered for the given category (e.g. foo_5 for the 5th encounter).
*
* The resref of the creature may be specified as RESREF+P$R^K>S'N (each of PRKSN
* are optional, but they must be specified in the above order). If P is specified,
* the creature's Paragon int will be set to that value. If R is specified,
* RandLootSpawn will be set to that value. If K is specified, KeySpawn will be
* set to that value. If S is specified, there must be at least S members in
* the party to spawn that particular creature. If N is specified, the creature
* will be renamed to N.
*/

So, some of the spawns were designated >1, which was essentially meaningless/redundant, as it essentially requires a party of one or more (but no encounter fires without one anyway). So, critters with > designations had 1 added to their >s, to make implementation match intent. If it was >1, it's now properly >2, and if 2, 3, and so on. Sorry you asked yet?

Funky

[drunkenboastor]

According to Update archives, it was back in 2009 when the last edit to Energon spawning was done. While solo players back in 2009 may have had some difficulty with Energons, I believe the tiny bit of power creep we have had in the last 10+ years is more than enough to compensate.

You have fixed something that was technically broken. I believe though that your fix breaks what was not broken.

[madzapper]

Jan 23, 2020 1:52:34 GMT drunkenboastor said:

Energons are not at all hard to kill.

Water: Xor-Yost - Only takes fire.

My kid encountered two of these on water plane with a solo sorc. It was just not fun. I'm not sure, but I'd bet there will be some more adjustments as time goes on. It's still early with new updates to those areas.

[woqued]

Hard mode Elemental Planes in 3..2..1..?

... But honestly, artificially increasing party size via a command (that could be limited to certain zones only if so desired?) would simply help those who aren't filthy megaboxers, and take away advantage that filthy megaboxers have over those who play comparatively legit. Could also try to make it so that if so desired, specific partysize limited drops like SH/PW would not be affected by such a command, only monster count, boss spawns and difficulty.

^this is totally not a ploy to further my secret agenda of approaching hard-mode abyss with cano drops becoming reality.

[Deleted]

Oh my gosh!! Hard mode abyss! .. .with cano drop! Yums! That's way more exciting than chocolate!

[Deleted]

Canopics dropping in Abyss is a terrible idea and would negate the need for anyone to do Limbo beyond tagging basically. Please never implement this terrible idea.

Hardmodes are a cool concept. New content > hardmodes though.

Let soloers bump up party size in places like Fey, Elemental Planes, and Oinos though. Good idea.

[Deleted]

Posted by uhhhnope3 hours ago

Canopics dropping in Abyss is a terrible idea and would negate the need for anyone to do Limbo beyond tagging basically. Please never implement this terrible idea.



Hardmodes are a cool concept. New content > hardmodes though.



Let soloers bump up party size in places like Fey, Elemental Planes, and Oinos though. Good idea.

LOLOL

Nice job creating a ghost account so you could comment. Afraid to say what you think with people knowing who you are? Hmm. Just a couple guesses on who that might be.

Why should limbo be the only place for canos?? If they were set to drop infrequently, it would still be a nice carrot.

RayCoolJ

[chirality]

i'm pretty sure no one actually feels threatened by something that negates their "need" to do limbo. oh no, not less limbo runs, for the love of god not less limbo runs...

[sabregirl]

These elemental planes bosses are really supposed to be for newish immortals and having energons spawning on soloers was never part of the design anyway. I also saw not a few players give up rather than fighting them.

-S

[woqued]

Jan 24, 2020 12:16:00 GMT sabregirl said:

These elemental planes bosses are really supposed to be for newish immortals and having energons spawning on soloers was never part of the design anyway. I also saw not a few players give up rather than fighting them.

-S

This seems fair. However, what do you think about the idea to implement an artificial way for smaller parties to control this - for those who are strong enough? Do you like the idea? Is it too annoying to implement? Actually impossible to implement? Not worth the zots? 

There seems to be a myriad of things people could personally influence with this that is common in other games as well (read: classic example of diablo 2 party size, widely popular in practice). Could be worth a discussion - not sure if you find it interesting though. 

[dopplegang]

upon first reading the idea I would say canos in abyss is a mistake, but that was the knee jerk reaction of thinking about limbo frequency of canos in hard mode abyss, which I would be against. However I think Rays vision of this idea is a very good vision. A few canos per run on a hard mode abyss, or occasional random cano per run on typical abyss or any combination thereof would not at all detract from the necessity to visit limbo, and it would be a nice carrot to see occasionally.

2c

[madzapper]

So when people say hard mode for elemental planes, do they mean shackling to 50 or 54 and then have the mobs be much more difficult and available (re: energons) and all loot drops limited to that level? Or would it be a hard mode for higher level toons?