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Avatar’s Update #383: Play Release 78 Now! Dynamically Scaled Difficulty! Shadow Creatures Preview!

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Elgarion, May 28, 2020.

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  1. oplek

    oplek Avatar

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    Is the new zone restricted to people who purchased the episode 2 access? I hate to keep harping on this, but I'm trying to figure out what product I spend $20 on, that I wouldn't have had, if I didn't spend $20 on it. I'd gladly take a refund, if it'll be open to everyone.
     
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  2. Boris Mondragon

    Boris Mondragon Avatar

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    It will be a good stress test due to the numbers that will show up as soon as it goes live. Feed the Unity hamsters well to see if they can handle it. R/Boris/El Pirata
     
  3. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    "Dynamically Scaled Difficulty will not only scale the tier level of spawns, but also the experience awarded for each opponent defeated." That's what was in the update in regards to the scaled content. The nodes won't scale yet, but Chris just told me it's something he'd eventually like to also do. I hope they're now at least T5 nodes as well, so if they aren't please let me know. I'll try to play around in there soon to see. :)
     
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  4. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    I just spoke to Chris, currently Ruins of Utheim and Lachem's Bazaar are open, but once the flag starts working (they hope to have it ready by the time unique new EP2 content comes, such as places like Spindelskog). The plan is that players without EP2 access can only enter POT's on the Mistrendur continent.
     
  5. Steevodeevo

    Steevodeevo Avatar

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    That makes sense
     
  6. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

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    Bummer. Good for those looking for better adventurer XP, not so great for people who want producer XP. I feel like they still don't quite understand what people do in this game.
     
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  7. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    This tells me that it will actually never get done, just like so many other half-implemented things.
     
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  8. Joe Zhudarak

    Joe Zhudarak Avatar

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    Exactly do all the tech stuff.... respaws, nodes, IA.. release for testing in QA when everything is OK release on Live server..
     
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  9. Duffrey Blake

    Duffrey Blake Avatar

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    Is the correct spelling Lachem’s Bazaar or Lamech’s Bazaar (Ingame it is named Lamech’s Bazaar)?
     
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  10. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Well... look at that. I changed the update to match in-game. All our team chat uses Lachem's. I asked Keith our story master to see what his intent was. Probably just team chat typos.
     
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  11. Bedawyn

    Bedawyn Avatar

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    I hope it is Lachem's! Lamech's sounds a bit too Old Testament, I'd keep looking over my shoulder for Methusaleh to show up. :)
     
  12. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Confirmed, it was supposed to be Lamech's. Our typo was in our team chat from which I derived my update notes from.
     
  13. Feeyo

    Feeyo Avatar

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    I am wondering how this will work, what happens when you are in a party. How will that dynamically scale level? Will it take the average of the party group + levels, or will it scale to the highest player??
     
  14. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    it's not autoscaling per player, each player manually picks which version to enter.
     
  15. oplek

    oplek Avatar

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    That's both disappointing and unsurprising. It was pitched as auto scaling to your level. Even the newsletter contextualized it as "Dynamically Scaled Difficulty!" What we got instead is 4 static (non-dynamic) options, with large tier jumps between them?

    As a not-very-high-level player, my first option was an "easy" tier 7. Part of the ongoing struggle of playing is finding both fun and ability-appropriate areas. That applies to lower levels too. That's not dynamic to my level. It should be proportional to whether I'm AL 15 or 150 and every level in between.

    As usual, they go with the easiest technical solution which ultimately ends up sabotaging the effort in the long run.

     
  16. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    it IS new tech. it IS autoscaling. ...on the devs' end. they didn't have to manually adjust the spawns for each tier, they only did the spawning once. if they want to add another instance at a different tier level, that'll be autocalculated too. this saves them a lot of time.
     
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  17. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    As Alley stated, the contest scales to your selection on our end. Also, this gives the freedom for people to select a particular difficulty level related to your current desire. If you're power leveling a newb, maybe you want to tone it down a bit. If you're in a weaker party, maybe go mid range. If in a mega party, you go EXTREME (insert echo voice) and test your metal. If it were to scale as you wish? You'd get the same result every time. A scene that always seems the same difficulty since as you level, so does it. We'd prefer to give folks options with the aut0-scaled content so they can pick the option that's best suited to their current adventure need. Another scene coming up could have 10 different scaled options... 32 even... (Sannio told me that's the limit, 32 per though likely we'd never come close to going THAT granular). With the auto scaled content at our end, it's easier to set up and yes, as Alley says - a HUGE time saver in providing players multiple difficulty levels, experience rewards and soon... loot options.
     
  18. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

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    I believe this is due to Mistrendur being intended as high level content, and that once the bugs are worked out, when it is applied to Novia scenes it will scale lower, with easy being maybe t1 or t2, and going up from there. The current scene is just a test of the system without having to muck up/break an existing scene. (Why that wasn't done on QA is another question, but at least they cloned a scene to experiment on.)
     
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  19. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    I guess my expectation was that you'd get difficulty options, but those would be relative to your level instead of a set tier. For example, lets say you assume each player of a specific AL should be able to handle a specific tier. I'm not sure what those numbers would be, but lets you should be a tier 4 scene. You'd get the four difficulty options and it would scale as:
    • Easy (Tier 3) [around 70% of calculated level]
    • Medium (Tier 4) [calculated level]
    • Hard (Tier 6) [around 130% of calculated level]
    • Extreme (Tier 7) [around 180% of calculated level]
    If and when you get to tier 10, it would scale just like it does now. However, you just opened up a huge number of ranges to allow players a choice, without locking them out of the scene. If that was applied to every scene (except perhaps Outskirts), suddenly it doesn't matter where you go because you can play effectively anywhere.

    At the moment, I couldn't imagine even trying a tier 7 scene, so "Easy" is a misnomer. I have to pick and choose which Tier 5 scene I try. Maybe this will be different if they are applied to existing scenes, but when "Easy" is beyond a huge part of your player base it seems like your catering to the 1% here.
     
  20. Sean Silverfoot

    Sean Silverfoot Avatar

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    I'm not seeing the confusion. It's a Tier 10 (TEN) zone, withing that Tier 10 zone when you enter you have a choice of kicking down a bit and then scaling up as you go along or just making it harder than the normal Tier 10. Fairly simple to me. **shrugs**
     
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