Don't understand the changes to the Random Encounters

I tried the bandit Random Road Encounter (the only one I have tried so far) yesterday.

I don't understand the reasoning behind the changes. Many people on the forum griped about the boring encounters that were a waste of loading screen time. Something had to be done, but is this really the solution?
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  • The difficulty was raised (a tamed wolf with 1281 HP!) but the rewards weren't
  • A fee of 1000g was imposed to avoid the loading screens
  • The treasure chest that had lots of gem fragments and gold in it was removed, to be replaced by boxes with wood scraps
  • Archers were added, making the scene more difficult for folks who don't have ranged weapons/spells
  • Groups of bandits swarm in at once, making the encounter more expensive for me - I wasted reagents using AOE spells, whereas in the old encounter I could pick the bandits off one by one using reagent-free spells.

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I am really puzzled by the changes and would love to hear the reasoning behind them.​

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  • Did the Devs think that the changes to the encounter would make them even less attractive? Why else charge money (too much) to avoid the scenes?
  • Why such a high charge? I would never ever consider paying 1000 g to avoid the loading screens. I am not rich in-game and have to take a detour to visit the Oracle two days straight to earn that money, which takes more time than the encounter loading screens. You might as well charge 1 million gold - it is all the same to me. If I were in a hurry I would consider avoiding the loading screen for 50g, but that is as high as I would go.
  • At level 83 I had no problem defeating the bandits, but it took longer than before, making the experience more annoying when I am just trying to travel from point A to point B on the overland map.

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As a casual player I find that now I am fleeing many of the encounters before I can gather any resources. I've no idea what my levels are - rarely look at numbers - but I have been playing sandbox about 6-8 hours a week since persistence and the difficulty of these new encounters is beyond my ability.

 

Even from someone who can smoke all the monsters in them, they are still pointless as they stand now. Just a roadhump to slow you down in getting to your actual destination. At a minimum they should have T5 gathering nodes in them.

To be honest I am not sure there is much they can do to avoid that though.

 

I actively look for encounters now.

 

charging money to be able to skip encounters feels kinda "mobile-game-y"

 

No more treasure chest?

 

Seems random to me, sometimes there, sometimes not.

It would be nice to be there all the time since the mobs are harder now.

 

Literally the only place in the game where the chests reliably have stuff in them.

 

The bandit encounters on Live occasionally don't have a chest either.

 

+1 @Kara Brae - I agree 100%

 

I agree.. to me it seems like the passes charging for bypass. Really its low level players that cant afford the gold that want to get out of them or through them without dying.
I cant think of the situation where I would pay to avoid a Dog adventure besides being EXTREMELY lazy to not zone in and zone right out again. Maybe its just the 1000gp thats too much.

 

1. Random tier. Tend toward lower near the road, tend toward higher out in the wilderness. But always a chance of any. Lower tier either have no additional spawns, or only low level repawns.

2. Choice to pay a fee to skip the encounter is also random. (Are there really that many wandering mages about?) Choice is made before knowing what tier the encounter is.

3. Fee to skip is a teleport scroll.

 

in R54

It seems to be a random chance whether the chest will appear. There is now also a "Reagent Bag" item that may appear (and it finally works!) which will open to give you about half a dozen random reagents. But yes, the overall treasure is the same or less on average.

I did something about that back in R26 or so, by switching to ranged spells. Fire Arrow and Searing Ray are my primary spells. Also, chase them down. They can't fire while running away.

The first wave of bandits are no worse than the old bandits. The main difference is the skeleton encounters, with cultists where the skeletons used to be, and undead scattered around the scene. Now you can't ignore the skeletons and harvest the rest of the scene. (But you still can on Stag encounters, at least.)

And I still don't like the "pay 1000g" window. Those low enough to need it can't afford it, and only some of those who can afford it might even care other than for scene load times, which should be better again this month. I'd like to see what the general populace thinks about it when the patch hits.

The one big thing is that they've added a delay before starting the next wave. Previously there would be zero time between killing (rather than skinning or looting!) the last mob, and the appearance of the liches, dragon, super bandits, etc. Now you at least have a chance of running away before the dragon instantly turns you into a greasy spot on the ground.

It seems to be a random chance now, but in the same location. You can always try to look for it before staying to fight! I think I'd rather see it be in a random location than a random chance to appear.

So far this has been mostly handled by road vs plains encounters, with plains encounters being more difficult.

 

@Elwyn
Thank you for letting me know that the encounter difficulty was raised in R54. I missed that because I started an offline game in R54 and didn't venture beyond Solace Bridge Outskirts.

 

Greetings all. The encounters are now more frequent and the 1000 coins to avoid the encounter feels like just a money sink. The rewards should be increased to the tier level of the final mobs not to the encounter tier buy the frequency should be lowered so avatars that do not want to get pulled in are not paying so often. Or you could make them so you can out run then. It has been much harder to outrun the encounters which again screams money sink to me.

 

I don't know if it is simply that I have been very lucky, But if the chest is not by the rock like it used to pre-R54, then it is by the little camp they set up since then. I've still managed to get my chests reliably from them!

 

I’m not observing all exp income of my avatar but while testing the encounters I could see that I got several times 1000 crafting exp per node…so I guess at least a part of them is already T5.

I saw the treasure chest there too together with the destroyable boxes and the mentioned "Reagent Bag".
And additionally there appears sometimes NPCs after defeating all enemies offering a small quest (bounty,...) where you simply have to walk to a town and talk to another NPC to get I think 4000 exp and 125 Gold.
But as far I recognize you can accept just one bounty quest simultaneous...I did not tested it that much but at least it looks like the NPC is not appearing if you have already accepted a bounty quest and if it really is that way maybe the devs should change that.