Developer K has put up a new post.
Hello players~
Phew… is this weather for real? I’m crazy. When I first wrote this post, I wrote about the upcoming patch but also about the company going back and forth, and I wanted to write about going out drinking with the coders, but when I finished it sounded like a defensive and almost sleep-inducing note. I always said that it is difficult, but I am always sorry because I think there’s a lot of shortcomings compared to the expectations of the players.
To be honest, the most talked-about user stories involve listening to your voices. I still read every comment or post one by one. However, no matter how good of a point a comment makes, we cannot respond to voices mixed with profanity and ridicule. I know that we are disappointed with the game, but I think that communication requires respect from both sides. Let’s make a more gentle and healthy communication culture because it is a public forum that many users see.
Now, onto my August notes~
Obviously, when new content is added, it temporarily relieves the boredom from repetitive runs. But the new content isn’t universal. Look at Kairon Nest, do you feel overwhelmingly less bored than Mist, Guardian, and Volcano Nest?
While the absence of new content may seem like a frustrating issue to you, it isn’t a serious flaw that fixing it will make this a good game. In order for the game to get better, I think we should target the game achievement and progression systems, which makes it possible to play the game for a long time and feel satisfying, even with old and repetitive content.
I believe that simply modifying the details that create an enjoyable experience you can improve gameplay satisfaction. It does not mean that we shouldn’t add new content at all, but rather it is more important to improve the quality of the game than it is to introduce new content.
Of coruse, this belief in game direction cannot be forced on you, but I would like you to think about other games you play too and how they address this.
I’ve been working hard to improve the content experience every month, and have prepared big patches so that we can feel better about this patch. Let’s take a look.
After a user has leveled up, you’ll usually end up with Medea and want to do endgame content. However, it is difficult to farm up at this point. Getting crests and other secondary equipment is difficult without asking for someone else’s help. You’re frustrated even at F1 labyrinth. The process of acquiring rare talismans/good crests without using the marketplace is difficult and I will add a system to address it.
Once you get the basics mentioned above and adjust the difficulty gradually, the tier-up system becomes your primary motivation, and you’ll be able to enjoy the feeling of increasing Labyrinth levels and improving your DPS. However, tier growth has not been that fun for a while, and soon will cause discontent. Tier growth provides steady growth, but as you learn about Labyrinth’s rewards and conservative reward growth, you get less and less excited about the reward box. Only finishing the nest gives rewards, so all the gates before the final boss are just in the way.
Doing nests is the core content for daily play, so its tiresome playing it hundreds of thousands of times. It is important that as you clear harder and harder content, the stress and reward feelings are maintained at an appropriate level.
The reason why our tiering system is difficult to find in other PC games is because the limitations of growth are clear.
In regular online games, the rewards and gold should lead directly to the growth of the player. In the tier system, if the growth of advanced users is tied to the structured system that attempts to minimize depreciation, there is a developing gap between what you should have based on rewards and what the system can provide. Additionally, advanced users accumulating rewards without being able to grow further leads to economic inflation. The steady growth of the tier system is well-suited for games with lots of casual users. However, I think it is necessary to constantly supplement it to become a universal system that all grades of users can feel satisfied with.
The users who read the patch notes early and frequently will see upcoming changes and make adjustment to their plans accordingly. However, if your plans get changed again because of another fix, was it redundant? Desireable?
If you agree with the issue, you can follow along without worrying too much. I’ll summarize our key 4 themes.
I believe that upgrading crests, talismans, and gems should be done primarily via gameplay, not via the marketplace, with a somewhat reliable expectation of the process. A new item will be added in the August patch that will randomly provide these. The pouches and their contents cannot be traded or server storaged, and can be purchased in the Nest, Nightmare, and Daredevil stores for gems, talismans, and crests, respectively.
It is a random option system upon purchase, similar to chaos crests, so you’ll be able to choose which options are right for you.
The method for earning points have changed. All nests and dungeons drop all 3 points, scaling with difficulty. Right now, the drop rate in dungeons is significantly less than in nests, but this is because they are much easier than nests. Don’t misunderstand dungeons as inferior content, but because they are not nearly as complex or difficult, the rewards should be proportional.
Because I don’t want to undermine the value of existing crest/tali/gems, I’ve set the rates of stronger options conservatively. You are able to obtain rare talismans, legendary gems, and high roll crests, however the chance of obtaining them through this method is low and you will mostly obtain average level items.
The users who already have these things can’t expect the item to be helpful, but given price and the chance to obtain top tier items, it may be worth the gold and point cost.
Enhanced tier items will be dropped from Abyss and Labyrinth nests, ranging from Medea T2 to Calypso T2. As the difficulty increases, the tier/enhancement of the dropped item increases.
Items you don’t need can be extracted for Lebrium points. The higher the tier and enhancement, the more Lebrium points you’ll get.
For the most part I have set the dropped item tier/level to be slightly lower than the content that you’ll need to use it for. The explaination is a little difficult. Calypso T2 is not dropped in abyss, but only after F20 at a low rate. So the expectation of something dropping and deciding to not use it over the currently worn item can be a foolish decision (why is it hard for me to explain this?)
How were the nucleus and trials last month? Was it unsatisfying? This time it’ll definitely be better.
WIP