It will still be a PVP event with fighting, but the reason for the fighting will be clear to everyone involved. If a person (“offensive”) sees a prominent PVP guild player (“defensive”) running back to Highsteppe after the event, they currently have no choice but to engage in a fight. If the offensive player’s goal is to get the token and that defensive player doesn’t have the token, they are now probably screwed. They’ve wasted time. They’ve announced their presence and participation. They’ve got nothing. And then they see another red defensive name and they get to make that choice all over again.
There is no strategy. There’s often no reward. It’s the worst kind of RNG available. Their only viable play is to take all the fights possible. Plenty of battles, but banal and pointless battles that the offensive team probably would like to avoid.
Contrast that with a token-indicator of some sort. Offensive player sees a defensive player. If the defensive player has the token, cool, they can choose to chase the token. If not, they still have the choice to fight, but they don’t have their hands tied by the lack of information. Offensive and defensive roles are put on much more even footing by correcting the information disparity.
so my theory on monopolization is still holding up a few days in. I think other than the first spawn the only people I have seen getting the goblin is the same team… Once again. So yeah… Monopolized due to their being only 1 team who can have the prepared numbers. GG.
Well even if there was a beam following the token guy 24/7 and all LC got nerved to half health you will still not be able to get the token alone J. And there will still be monopolization.
Or alternatively it will be a full RNG thing. Both you don’t want. So there is no winning here for you
Atleast when your swing in the arguments of anti monopilization and everything is RNG. Yes it can and it will get improved that there is more chance for you to fight for the token, but unless you show numbers too or smart tactics it won’t work.
we cant just ‘show up with numbers’. People are not commodities who can be told what to do. Clearly there are not enough full teams in the game to compete against a set of mechanics so monopolizable… But as I said… Let’s see if my theory holds up until the end of the week… it’ll only get worse.
But there is no solution? No matter how change the mechanics. Always RNG vs mono. So choose one you want to rather see. Don’t say every day that it is both and useless.
Strictly speaking that is not true… There are definitely solutions… But it isn’t ‘put an indicator above their head’ or some other small change… But they will realize that soon enough… After a while the only people going for it will be one team and a couple of stragglers.
If I stop giving feedback, then it gets logged as a ‘1 off bad experience’… if I keep giving the same feedback and others also, then it gets resolved and people start enjoying the experience of the game rather than not pvping ever again or even worse… just uninstalling the game (i have seen cases of both of these because of these sort of setups and thats why it concerns me).
Just sitting here and saying ‘well that’s how it is’ is never ever how a good game or product is built.
There could be a stronger treasure hunt component with a simple change:
The first Trickster notification would be something along the lines of “The Trickster Goblin has been spotted in the world”. The Goblin spawns, but the zone is not indicated.
After 5 minutes, the zone is announced if the goblin isn’t dead.
Limit zone and death announcements to everyone with world PVP on. Possibly the initial spotting as well. Importantly, the death announcement should be shown even if out of zone. This is useful for pursuers, who may choose to wait closer to Highsteppe, for example.
This would increase the random aspects that give less organized players a chance to participate, while not making it a total wild goose chase.
But, of course, the most enjoyable thing would be to have an activity you could engage in semi-casually 24/7, like a regular public event.
And this is why i keep repeating myself to get well thought out responses like this. Thank you Seurimas.
It makes sense… I really like the idea of maybe having semi-casual 24/7 public event type trickster goblins as you said… That allows for some smaller teams to compete or individuals also… As we can see not everyone has the ability to have a team of 4 or 5 all day long… It’s just unrealistic.
I still think, with some smart changes to the Goblin event like the one now would be a competitive game and not a monopoly and I see nothing wrong with having both of these Goblins in the game to appeal to both audiences… Assuming that they are both balanced and not just loot pinyatas
Not to repeat myself, but I think the goblin is 90% of the way to a perfect casual event, but I don’t think it fits as well for a hardcore, endgame event. On the other hand, if the devs were strapped for development time and saw things your way to save the additional effort of whole new mechanics, I’d see the value to that.
I totally get it… I got called out for posting too many graphs on the forums so I wont post a graph this time… But generally i see that there are two ends of players… The hardcore and the softcore players… If we imagine the audience being appealed to here… it is hard to place on that line what sort of audience would want it. For the hardcore audience it is neither hyper enjoyable because there is no competition and for the softcore audience it is not enjoyable, because there is either no competition or no chance.
Yes, say that it was an event for soft/medium core players… it might look something like your 5 pointer…
for hardcore players… I have no idea right now… There just are not enough organized teams to make it even a slightly competitive environment although I am sure it is fun to get the loot every time with near minimal effort.
This is the other half of it, yeah. You gotta walk before you can run. A more accessible event could be a good measure of interest and a good training ground for PVP-curious groups. Trying to push out something for endgame PVP folks right now is like releasing a raid before any dungeons.
It hurts me to see unknown folks, usually without fellowships, head off to the Trickster when I know the rest of LC are already there. I mean, I laugh, but it’s a sad laugh. There’s obviously interest out there, but the first exposure these folks seem to get is getting mercilessly stomped by organized PVP-addicts with precious loot and pride on the line.
THAT is my main concern, user stickiness… If users are quitting PvP/the game completely because they are getting wrecked… That is not the fault of the well trained PvPer… But the fault of the games mechanics… There needs to be feature sets which cater to all audiences so the audiences can then understand what each level really is and grow to the next level…
Second to this point… There are also the solo PvPers who have no way to ‘put themselves forward’ so to say. They have a grindfest mechanic (the battlegrounds)… But they don’t have a skill based outlet… something like a progression system or reward system for 1v1 or 2v2 arenas would probably work for that… (alongside of course more frequently spawning trickster goblins).
I understand that a penalty is necessary, and I completely agree with this, but the problem is that your gear can get destroyed within a few deaths, and this leaves you powerless. Your chances of killing the person that killed you is very low if you have no armor on, and for a lot of the grave yards there is no repair station.
I think it would be cool if these tokens just became THE PvP currency and the winning team in battlegrounds got a number of them as a prize to allow another way of gathering them. The drop amount between the two events could be balanced in such a way as to heavily incentivize the world goblin over the battleground method.
