Encounter avoidance "fees" are WAY to high

I understand this new system is another gold sink & I have no problem with that.
Most of the "new" players running around right now are player bought additional slots from the store.
They know what the encounters are, how to avoid them - run around them or teleport past them or how to leave them (the plains encounter that has no obvious exit)

I feel that we need to encourage genuine new players to STAY in New Britannia for the benefit of everyone concerned.

Constant Sieges & Over-scaled overland encounters can be a nightmare for players who are not up to the required level to have a hope of surviving, let alone enjoy them.

The new pop-ups costs are outrageous for encouraging new blood to the game.
For goodness sake, please give ANY players who are under-skilled & under-levelled a free pass so they can actually discover the gems of this world, rather than feel that this game is a "Pain In the Apples" & quit.
For genuine new players, this game is a steep learning curve & they should not be forced into a scene that will kill them.

 

Just one question because real life is preventing me from every online activities at the moment.
Can you still evade the encounters?
And can you still just leave them if you couldn't find a way around them?

 

That has been around for a long time for Sieges and Encounters can easily be bypassed.

 

Yes and Yes
Also using the by-pass-way is still possible in sieges and passes.

I do not like this pay for bypass. I wish they would remove it, also from passes.

What i do not like are the two load screens for the sieges and encounters.

Why not fighting the encounters on the overland map directly? When cleared they leave a treasure chest behind. When clicked you will enter the zone for gathering and/or doing the waves.
If not interested one may run through and take some damage, like it is in other zones. People that want to reach a certain point within the zone also running through, to save time.

For sieges and passes it is different. Passes are also adventuring zones. Sieges are meant to "block" players (mostly done by using loading screens).

Young players may have a problem to reach the capital city for the area (Adoris, Aerie, ...) for the first time because of the sieges. Instead of paying a fee players may send directly into town when this is the first time they want to go there. Or, as new player, you find bypass tickets for some cities in your inventory. When consumed one get a "bypass buff" and is send directly into town.

 

It's been a long time since I was a young player & yes, for a time I was able to pass due to my level.
But my recollection was having to go into Sieges when I was still under-powered, under-equipped with decent gear & certainly cash poor & the mobs were yellow & murderous.
I hated them back then.

 

Personally I'd like to see different options depending on the encounter. Some ideas:

Bandits could shake you down or fight you. Basically the way it is now, maybe base the cost against the players AV-level or something to make it affordable.
Hostile animal encounters could give you the option to run or fight. Running could give the risk of an injury debuff or successfully escaping.
Passive encounters like merchants, deer, or farm animals could just allow you to leave without entering or enter without downsides either way. For evil players you could even have an option to shakedown the friendly npcs for some small amount of gold at the risk of them fighting back.

Adding these sort of options would also work well with the virtues, courage to fight, dastardly stealing from the innocent, all that good role play stuff

 

Thank you for the info.
In this case: why does the fee exist at all? There is nothing more easy than avoiding encounters.
And even if you get pulled in, there is nothing more easy than running out.

 

Holy crap, why is there a fee AT ALL ? This is absurd.
Seriously, seriously you're going to make us pay to avoid pointless load screens? Is that what we've come to?

Why in the world would I *pay* to skip what I have been skipping anyway?

Is it really that important that I sit through these two load screens? Is this somehow making the game better for everyone, or adding some sort of quality that I'm missing?

The bypass is absolutely 100% needed. The price tag is insulting.

 

I'm not incensed by fees, at all, as others have said, they can be bypassed as now. Once you're in the instance, unless they have changed radically, you can just walk out, down the road a few metres and out of the gate..

So the purpose of a fee, which as I say is entirely optional, I'm guessing is entirely to avoid the zoning in and zoning out, if it is a major source of irritation to some folks.

For me, getting drawn into an overworld encounter which I'm trying to avoid is a tiny inconvenience if an inconvenience at all. Occasionally I may stay and harvest or take on the instance. On occasion now I may pay, if I'm in a hurry or not in the mood to undertake the instance.

Its simply an additional Quality of life option. I don't understand all the fuss, unless I'm seriously missing something or R55 has made it much more challenging to leave.

 

That is the sad part of this whole thing; it's not really a mechanism to avoid the 'encounter'...it's a mechanism to avoid the 'load screen'.

 

I guess for me its just...why even add this option at all? 2 load screens is pointless and annoying as it is now, but charging me 1000 gold simply to avoid load screens just seems cheeky.

Instead of fixing the problem - and making these things truly bypassable - they've now added a "pay to not be inconvenienced" option that is not fit for purpose - if I started having to pay 1000 gold, sometimes two or three times, when trying to get someplace, I might as well just add more friends and teleport and avoid stepping foot on Novia altogether.

The main reason a bypass is needed is if you're trying to get someplace, meet up with folks, etc. and everyone's waiting around because someone got sucked into an encounter so we all wait while they load in, and wait while they load back out. If it was 50 gold, I could see it maybe being an option. 1000 is a laugh.

 

If I may say so, this view whilst well made, is on the same basis as all other comments disliking Overworld encounter loading screens and payments to avoid. This school of thought all relates back to whether you like Overworld encounters or not and therefore whether you wish to avoid them or not.

The payment option, *which could even be a temporary measure, is likely an attempt to appease those players wishing to bypass this particular game feature altogether. The alternative; so no loading screens and no payments, is to take the OW encounters out altogether.

In brief: - If you don't like Overworld encounters and you are therefore against the resultant (and under the circumstances, no doubt frustrating ) loading screens into them, then payment to avoid will drive you nuts.
- If you like the Overworld encounters, then you likely don't mind or will put up with the occasional unplanned 'Pull' into one (an unavoidable side effect of the feature), so the new option to pay and avoid the marginal inconvenience of a load in and out may be quite handy from time to time.

So... do we want the Overworld encounters or not?

I would say absolutely yes. The Overworld is conceived as the 'game map' in RPG terms and I understand that it is planned to be not only the basis for navigation, but the platform for a great many interesting and hopefully exciting encounters of an ever widening variety as and when the Devs get round to putting them in.

* as I suggested, this is pure speculation, but this simple toll to be introduced in R55 could well be a low resource interim measure in the hope that as more OW features are introduced more and more players will look to engage in OW activity and enjoy it, such that the clamour to avoid it dissipates.

 

@Steevodeevo
I don't object to overworld encounters existing - I think they serve a good purpose particularly for access to resources for lower levelled avatars.

My objection is more being shoehorned into one, despite best efforts to avoid it, when I'm trying to get some place else. Even with the "improvements" to the encounters, they are far inferior, both killing-wise and harvesting-wise, compared to wherever my final destination is, and therefore for me, are an annoying waste of time. There's no danger to me in these - I can simply step right out. Thus, they are a rather pointless time sink during which I must sit through two load screens, usually while someone is waiting on me to get some place. Alterantively, I'm consuming a few minutes of limited after-work game time just trying to travel.

A bypass was (and continues to be) sorely needed. This "pay 1000 gold" thing is not a viable bypass. The main reason I want to avoid the encounter is because it is not lucrative - if I have to shell out coin to avoid it, that's equally not lucrative. While I might save 10 minutes on my journey someplace, if I have to pay for 2 or 3 of these, well, I've just negated a full inventory worth of selling junk loot. This is not a sensible solution. With this implementation, time and effort has been spent to provide an option that most people wont use - you're still better off zoning in, and zoning out, exactly as you are now. Which is why this addition is so baffling to me.

What exactly is wrong with having encounters exist, and if you're interested, you simply walk into them?

I even understand the troll encounter to the south, blocking the pass, and can deal with that. Its like a control point, and at least (some) of the nodes in there grant full 500 xp, so its actually somewhat lucrative to clear it. Even in the 'off-road' plains/forest encounters however, most of the nodes do not match the mob level, making them a sub-optimum place to stop to harvest.

 

Forgive me for coming back again, but as before, you make an interesting point and a thought occurs to me which 'may' be at the root of this issue? This being - there are a significant group of people who do not want 'aggressive' OW encounters that 'pull'. They would prefer optional or 'passive' Overworld encounters. The Troll one is aggressive, but you have to go out of your way to trigger it, as is the case for the higher level ones off the main roads.

So in short again, rather than payments, loading screens and unwanted 'pulls' some folks want all Overworld encounters to be passive, or else move the aggressive ones off the highways?

So.. given aggressive open road encounters by bandits, skelly's, etc, were clearly a planned game decision by Portalarium to make the open road 'dangerous', exciting etc and draw travellers into conflict, now introducing a 'reactive' payment 'opt-out' on top of the existing system kind of defeats the object. I would say either stick with it, make it better so players enjoy it, or change it fundamentally.

The $60m dollar question, I suggest is therefore - how many people enjoy or are 'ok' with the aggressive (pull) Overworld encounters on the high roads and how many don't like them?

It would appear from the Forums that everyone dislikes them. I don't, I actually enjoy them, but I feel like i'm in a tiny minority. However - forums are notoriously misleading. Most players don't use forums regularly if at all, and only the most passionate, vocal and opinionated (like me, and others ...) bother to post.

 

Make an 'Encounter Repellent Potion' craftable with semi-rare ingredients. I like some encounters, but not all the time.

 

Not just trying to be pedantic here. You like them - that's great. You're on your way to meet up with people to join a party or trade an item or help someone out, and you get pulled into an encounter, and maybe it doesn't bother you having to wait....loading.....zone in .....wait....loading.....zone out....... If the load screens took 3 seconds, I don't think anyone would be making a big deal out of it. The fact that it took me 45 minutes to travel from a town near Brittany, to Resolute, due to sieges on both ends, having to pass through nightshade pass, and getting sucked into 3 encounters along the way, I find extremely off-putting. Its different if I'm just minding my business, doing my thing, and maybe I'll stay and chop a few trees down, whatever.

I have no problem with the encounters being there, as an option, for people who choose to partake. I don't even mind that they're aggressive. I do mind that they block all the roads and even giving them a SIGNIFICANT berth and being NOWHERE NEAR them, you still get sucked in. I ran so far past a bandit he was no longer ON MY SCREEN and ....wait....LOADING......AGAIN.....this is annoying and adds nothing to the game. Its not like there's risk here? You can literally walk straight out of all of these.

To counter your point, yes, they've made aggressive road encounters. They also made them so you can walk straight out of them without engaging anything. So all that's left are the 2 load screens. What benefit is it doing to me, my character, the game, the server, or the people waiting on me, for me to have to pass through 2 load screens -every- time there's a bandit or skeleton within 10 miles of where my character is walking?

If they upped the XP on the nodes in the encounter to the same I'd get where I'm going, I'd stop and clear them. But even the "off-road" variant are predominatly low xp nodes, and a waste of my time.
If they had something unique in them that you couldn't get elsewhere - same thing - I'd stop and clear them. But its the same trees, bushes, and rocks, as everywhere else so I'm better off continuing on my way.
And when I'm just trying to travel, and something "on the road catches my attention" I don't understand why I can't...ignore it?

But apparently now I can -pay- to ignore it? Why would I pay the magic bandit hunters or w/e to protect me from an encounter full of things I can 1-shot? Are these bandits stupid, ambushing someone who can quite easily clobber them to death? It just makes no kind of sense. If you were a bandit with 90 hp and saw a 1200 hp adventurer coming your way, hell, they should be -running from me-.

 

You don't like using teleporting scrolls to meet up with palls?

 

Absolutely - I avoid Novia whenever possible - mostly because of the encounters. Seems silly to use a teleport scroll to walk from Desolis to Brittany tho....unless of course you're going to get caught by a corpion, a bandit, and a skeleton on the way. So ...150 gold vs. 1000 gold 3 times.

There are many scenarios when you need to be on the overworld though - such as you're going to a scene that can't be teleported to, or you're looking to go do sieges, or you're wanting to drop in and out of towns shopping, etc.

I just don't like sitting through more load screens than necessary and simply can't fathom why making players do so is a good idea. It would be different if the encounter wasn't something you could just run straight out of, but as long as that's the case, the pay option makes zero sense.

 

Btw, did they fix it so that overworld encounters follow the same rules as players yet... ?

- Do they slow down on slow terrain?
- Do they lose aggro in the dark when they cant see you?

I see that as a priority, myself. It would cut down maybe 90% of the complaints with overland encounters.

 

I know a couple people who hate using teleport scrolls in general and refuse to use them unless the it will impede the party and slow others down.

Me on the other hand, I might use a recall scroll if I'm on the world map right next to our POT if I don't feel like zoning in/out of a siege. I guess it's all a matter of how lazy you are or how convenient you want your gaming experience to be.

I don't usually run into the encounters because I've gotten good at avoiding them. But every once in a while there's one hiding in a tree I didn't see and it happened to me on QA this release.... I paid the toll because it's QA and the gold doesn't matter much. But on live server, I would probably not pay the amount asked (just like I don't pay the mages to get through a control point.) It's just not worth that much to me at that high of a rate.

If it were under 500 gold a pop, I might think about it though. And, I doubt newbie/low-level players will be able to afford it so they won't do it at these high prices.