Penalty to staying in the same zone?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Ysold, Oct 12, 2020.

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  1. Ysold

    Ysold Avatar

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    I'm wondering - if I go adventuring in the same zone again and again, will this result in some kind of penalty? For instance, is the chance to get a rare drop lower? As far as I can see, it has no effect on getting a Meticulous while gathering, or on the amount of mats gathered in one go. Neither on getting crits.

    Of course, I'll have to move eventually when I outgrow that zone, but for now I'm getting a load of crafting and adventuring XP.

    What's your idea on this?
    Ysold.
     
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  2. Cora Cuz'avich

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    There are game-wide daily limits on a few items. Cotos, and orange bundles, maybe some others I can't think of.

    As for the rest, I don't know that a dev has ever stepped in and said if there is a zone limit to drops on some items, or if so, what any of those items are. (I don't watch all the streams, and the game had been around a couple years before I started playing, so I may be wrong there.) A lot of people say there are, and will theorize about it, but more often than not it's just a feeling. Some people will swear they get more yellow bundles at certain times of the day, or that blue bundles drop more when the moon is up, but with no real proof behind that feeling. Not that those things aren't necessarily true, but this question falls into the area of "lots of people think they know what is happening but nobody has any solid evidence or a dev statement to back it up."
     
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  3. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    never know , look at fishing you have to move around so perhaps there is or could be logic in game that promotes people to go else where.
     
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  4. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Yeah, I'm not saying there isn't. I'm certain there are a lot of hidden mechanics; LB seemed to be kinda into that sort of thing. I'm just urging caution when it comes to somebody on the forums or Discord saying "X is a thing" because a Dev once said they'd like to do it someday, or because a player had a streak of good/bad RNG and made assumptions, etc. I got told all kinds of things when I first started that turned out to be completely untrue because somebody once heard somebody say something might be a thing.
     
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  5. Violet Ronso

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    I mean still today I have guildmates that could argue with me for hours about how Adventuring level increase hit chance, damage, and a bunch of other thing like that, saying "Yeah, If I grab the 3 day blessing + the Devotional, I hit mobs more often."

    Devs decided to add hidden mechanics, problem with that is players added some themselves through the years...
     
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  6. Time Lord

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    The gaming concept of "Domain" :cool: (unchallenged power encourages creep, while disempowering immersive challenge)...

    One of the weird things about SOTA, is the built in desires from our creators...

    [​IMG]
    They too play our game and suffer from the same want for, ever more creep o_O!
    The pathway of development became intentionally paved with dissatisfaction.

    SOTA's focus has never been to be content within low to mid level hunting areas. As the game grew, the newness wore off in places where it was once satisfying, where the focus was on "those areas". As newer areas were opened, then those older area's focus of improvement came from the idea of them being stepping stones for the next content, and away from making them stand alone satisfying.

    There's an old D&D philosophy of "domains", which is at play here, yet without an oppositional NPC. When we hunt an area (any area no matter what the level of content), we as players feel that we, "or royal self I" are taking the content's worth, dominating it's ground, taking over through our power, "taking over an area and making it our domain".

    D&D Design Case in point:

    • "Dispater", ruler of the 2nd level of the nine levels of Hell.
    That character has "domain" over any second levels (depending on how good and by the book your dungeon master may be, this Dispater character has a better chance at showing up within 2nd level content than any other ruler of the other levels of Hell do).

    Within our Skull Level areas, there is no single traveling boss who may or may not be encountered within the skull level that single creature would rule over, and could only spawn in only one place at a time within our game. We only have a few "area Bosses", not level of domain bosses.

    A story from my personal immersion...
    Sometimes I decide that my character will "clear the roads of the Hidden Vale", taking the role of what a sheriff might given the circumstances (the circumstances of "domain"). There is none of that quality built into our scull level areas. What you see is what you get in those areas, and that's pretty much the same way all content in our SOTA has "been developed into", due to a power creep desire within both our top player content seekers as well as our "developer top player content lovers". Just as the meme posted above implies, their only focused desire, is more power creep, leaving all other content to beg for immersion development after that top tier content's glory.

    Only after our top content orgasm is over, having spent our passion for it's content, do we ever hear from our top tier players about how our game has no immersive soul o_O...
    But that notice from them becomes very short lived as... OH! Oh! oh! wait! the developers are working on a new top tier content area with bigger booties and larger packages!
    :( Which then leaves want for more immersion going back to sleep still in need of a development shower and maybe with $50 in development $ left on the night stand for cab fare to get into the long list of SOTA wished for content design... "That's where our game's Karma went, that Karma check from Ultima 7 The Black Gate and all other Karma checks from Ultima's Past".

    Our development design in lower level areas is not designed to be self satisfying. It's beauty is grand, it's design in lay out is wonderful, but not intended to last within a player's enduring enjoyment.

    My point is, that development stopped being "improvement to remain" and became "improvement to gain and move on".

    Domain, Randomness and Karma...
    When our bosses begin coming to us at random, have names and an alignment of how they rule their domain, our content's design aims will be forever changed from the choices we make in dealing with those "Dispater/s", which would make our game personal.

    Our low to mid level content, will always be meant to be just a bunch of stepping stones until our producers turn their eyes away from their power creeping design desires.
    It's not a burn, it just is as it always thus far has been.
    We are not wanted to remain in lower level content!

    *steps down from his immersion soap box*
    ~Time Lord~

    Accretion - Design by Landfill: A Longterm Strategy?


    ~This has been a reminder of the gaming power of Domain~
     
    Last edited: Oct 15, 2020
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  7. Sorgin Txakal

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    Would be nice if there was something to discourage more ERG.

    Ideally it would be nice if there was an incentive to go to other areas, but I'd be okay with a cool down timer for rare drops based on time spent in an area recently.

    Would explain days of fishing and getting nothing of note.
     
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  8. Violet Ronso

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    Does anyone make money from ERG? With the already low loot, divided between a big group? I for one have avoided control points like the plague because they are so boring for me and I never felt like I came out of there with any money. I've gone from AL 102 to AL 118 while only fighting bosses, or mobs in Tartarus, Ruined Keep, The Rise, or the Compendium. The fun zones are out there, people are just addicted to that debuff that pops up saying "Attenuated" and forget anything else exists.
     
  9. Sorgin Txakal

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    Ya, you don't really make money, because the loot gets spread around so much, it's more just a guarantee of attenuation. So, unless you are a fire mage, it's the most cost effective way to spend forty five minutes to an hour when you can't decide what to do.

    I feel ya on the boring as hell thing, but if I am half asleep and the group is good I literally just need to hit the tab button.
     
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  10. Violet Ronso

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    Ahh so you see, that is reason enough for me. The fact that at a certain level you can clear most of the content, and that at around lvl 90 or so you can start getting decent loot/hour. At 115, you probably have more exp than you need with most builds if correctly invested. So while many can aim for loot/hour, like me, and be satisfied with a 3-4m exp per hour, which is far more than back in the days anyways, some prefer the exp/hour route. Go grind in Tartarus, The Rise or Ruined keep for an hour, and you will see that the loot (gold, artifacts, ressources) will clearly be worth not going for attenuation.
     
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  11. Time Lord

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    If things could talk, areas would last and contain more of their own mysteries and social structure...

    If the things we were killing could talk, maybe tales from our hunting wouldn't sound so much like a math class instead of a fantasy adventure?
    https://kipkis.com/Make_Your_Own_Secret_Language

    There's a story and a plot in our game and also subplots among species, because it's evident that almost all creatures save items from the dead they collect for hidden reasons, or maybe they just collect things with the same motive as racoons. Doctor Doolittle may have allot to say about this subject, but "somehow" humanoid creatures are all having secret meetings somewhere to talk about their shared plots, because they all seem to be on the same page and spoken about as if they do have some guild house somewhere where they discuss such things, "because they never talk in front of us" o_O which makes me wonder where such lore information originated from, since nothing seems to be talking about anything, for the exception of a few NPCs who must have Doctor Doolittle's talents, yet also more friendly spokes persons from the undead :confused:!

    Maybe all those humanoid creatures think we're nothing but robots, as we clearly have little that interests us other than the mathematics that makes up most of our hunting stories experience.
    How are the NPCs gathering all this information they tell us through their roomers?

    My own story from my last hunting trip involved 800,000+ heading to zero and back again :( it's all true! I'm nothing more than an exp robot too.
    Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go vomit and gobble back up some more mathematics :D~Time Lord~
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2020
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