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Respawning rates in R34

Discussion in 'Release 34 Feedback Forum' started by uhop, Oct 2, 2016.

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  1. uhop

    uhop Avatar

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    I spent some quality time with R34, and I think that respawn rates were over-tweaked. Specifically:
    • Focus regenerates slow, forcing "cool down" periods standing somewhere quiet, spamming Tap Soul just to be able to continue.
    • Nodes seem to regenerate faster, but it doesn't really matter, because:
      • My digging seems slower, and
      • Enemies regenerate like crazy, which makes both points above are even more important.
        • Enemies can "feel" you over greater distance now too?
    Focus regeneration --- I understand it was done to promote food, and it is a noble goal. I remember my frustration, when I found no difference in regeneration rate between a mundane bark bread, and an elaborate recipe. Frankly it was too little in all cases to make a difference. I tried the same comparison now, and ... there is a difference but not enough to help with focus in any meaningful way.

    Enemies respawning --- I am just a medium-level player, so when I went to dungeons to dig, usually I dealt with earth elementals / satyrs / kobolds / undead, and had some quality time digging. Now I am frequently interrupted while digging. It helps my adventure XP pool, but hurts, well, digging --- that's why I came to that place. And frequently enemies comes in waves, like 3 waves. And now I see how they appear next to me during the battle! I saw it before, but it was a rare occurrence, now --- all the time.

    Probably I kill them too slow. And dig too slow. But with my play time in hundred hours --- when can I do it at a decent speed?

    With a slow focus regeneration I am dead because my focus is low after the first wave, and 0 after the second. So you see how both tweaks created this situation.

    Practical situation (happened several times already): I am digging at the 3rd area of a dungeon, and went to the far side. When I go back, there are two waves of earth elementals (3-4 in the first one, and 2-3 in the next one) I'll be facing. Running out is not an option too (ask me how I know) --- elementals use spells to stop me, and I have no viable recourse for that, so I am getting a beating for ~2 seconds or so multiple times per retreat, and just outside of the area there are 4 satyrs waiting for me, with last earth elementals overlapping with satyrs (rooting me for satyrs). I would be lucky, if the combination were 2 satyrs + 2 fauns, but nope.

    BTW, I mentioned the 3rd area, because the 2nd area is now usually unexplored --- the respawn rate does not allow me to dig both sides of it thoroughly, like I used to do. Now either I am killed and go to the 2nd ankh, or running through trying to get away from multiple enemies.

    Does it make it impossible to play? No. Yet fun is being sucked out. At this rate we can remove any digging and harvesting and nobody will notice --- everybody will be fighting.

    All in all it creates a very tight situation, when RNG decides an outcome of a battle --- if for some reason you were "unlucky" 3-4 times in the row, or just randomly unlucky --- you are done, because there is no safety layer in available resources (mostly Focus is lacking for me).

    My suggestion: fix the focus and the spawn rate.
     
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  2. Makaryus Drach

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  3. Makaryus Drach

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    I just took this picture in Serpent's Spine Foothills. Turned the corner and had all these guys after me. There had to be 20 of them in an area of 10 square feet.

    [​IMG]
     
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  4. Gravidy

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    I agree, the spawn rate is too high. Too be honest, I thought it was too high before R34.

    Another risk is with meticulous collection. If you get a meticulous collection you now have a much greater chance of having something spawn right beside you and attack you. That'll result in an interrupt, which means you lose *all* of your collection.
     
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  5. Bom

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    From the screenshot there appears to be 10, so when you say 20 are you exaggerating by twice the actual amount? Did backing away not result in some of them running back to their spawn points?
     
  6. uhop

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    It looks like the spawn rate is up, enemies feel you from bigger distance, and can travel farther from their spawn points. All that produces effects we see. Somebody has messed up thinking that tweaking were minor.
     
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  7. Makaryus Drach

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    I didn't count. The point is that there's dense congestion on the spawn point. That's a pretty realistic indication that tweaks might be needed on the recent spawn mechanism changes.

    EDIT: I actually ran away instead of backing away because the nerf on my 2-handed weapon damage... could probably only take a couple now. :p
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2016
  8. Joeble

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    Agreed. Was in Serpent Spine Foothills and they were engaging me from across the valley, and 3-4 at once were ok, but they would re-spawn before I even cleaned out the camp. In over 2 hours of hunting, I never left the first bandit camp, as they were continually coming at me.

    I cannot imagine that sort of spawn when mining, you would get almost nothing done!

    I did notice that I had some extra breather time if I waited to loot the bodies...I had to do that each round of killing as the health and focus regen seem quite slow. Only using Bark Bread, so not surprised at that.
     
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  9. Some Dude

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    So I don't normally post comments on the forums, but this increase in spawn just plain bugs me for a few reasons that I'll try to expand upon here.

    On the one hand, this increase in spawn is a good idea because I recall seeing several threads - mostly in R32 when the highest density of players were in the smallest areas - where players were annoyed with the insufficient spawn in zones, resulting in high competition for the resource of 'things to slay' in these highly traveled zones (likely fueling the move to FPO/SPO along side the gathering resource competition). In some sense, this increase in spawn seems as if it was intended to alleviate that problem, which has likely persisted but shifted into the higher level zones, but the implementation of this behavior seems completely confusing when considered in anything other than that exact scenario, and it seems to almost defeat the purpose of having larger zones in some ways.

    I'll try to explain what I mean through what I've been observing, and while I don't know whether my play style reflects that of the average R32 release day player or not, I'll use my own MPO mode experience with farming in Sequanna Colossus over the last couple of weeks of R33 as a reference for this (from alvl 62 to my current 66). While in the Colossus, I would occasionally see up to 4 different names of players listed in the area consisting of parties of 2 or sometimes 3 people farming the area as a group or occasionally solo players that were well equipped to steamroll the cultists in the area without much effort. However, even with several other players in the area, I found that there was almost never a lack of things to kill in the area, which suggests that the spawn rate was reasonable for that density of players. Additionally, under R33 combat mechanics, I could steadily clear out a camp of cultists, and move on to the next camp, leaving me with a small sense of accomplishment for having successfully cleared out the camp, while allowing me to get the know the scene and "make the rounds" in a reasonable fashion. This was generally true whether I was alone in the zone (the most frequent case), or there with others farming the scene as well. This provided a pretty decent way to gain experience, gold, and develop my character in an area that felt proper for my alvl.

    However, under R34 combat, I now take more time to kill cultists due to critting less, have much more down time between engagements due to the decreased focus regen and the need to use more focus on each cultist, and to top things off, the respawn rate is not only faster, but cultists sometimes respawn in batches, surprising me with an archer, wizard, or both jumping on top of me from behind in the middle of combat! As a result of this, my comparative effectiveness in clearing just a single camp has dropped so low that I can generally spend my time killing things and recovering health/focus rather efficiently (given the lack of food) yet be virtually guaranteed that I can't clear out a camp in the area before cultists begin respawning in that camp. Thus, for me, the relevant scope of the Sequanna Colossus has been shrunk to a single camp, introducing tedium and making me wonder why the rest of the scene is even there.

    Now, whether this particular assessment is a reasonable one or not, this brings up a number of questions, some of which pertain directly to the spawns themselves:
    • If the area spawns so quickly that a single person (that I assume is approximately the proper alvl for the area) can't even clear out a single camp, then exactly what good is the rest of the zone for that player?
    • Conversely, if an alvl 66 character in basic crafted gear (basic epic cloth set/maple bow) isn't expected to be able to reasonably clear a single camp in a 5 skull area, approximately what level/gear is expected to do so?
    • Assuming that the increased spawn rate is intended to support multiple players in a zone, how does this comport with the fact that players seem be experiencing the same high respawn rate and multi-spawn "traps" in SPO, FPO, and solo/party only scenes (e.g. mines)?
    • Expanding on the above assumption, has any consideration been given to scaling spawn rates to the number of mobs killed in a scene over time using various control variables as an alternative method for managing high density spawns?
    • Conversely, if this isn't intended to better support multiple players in a scene, was this strictly intended as a nerf in effectiveness for players, along with the other combat changes? If so, a clear yes would explain a lot about why the spawn works this way.

    In short, while my concerns with R34 combat extend beyond that of spawns, to me there is a fundamental design problem with the way the spawns currently behave. I don't really see the logic in speeding up spawns when any given scene seemed perfectly adequate for a single person or small group of properly leveled people in R33. I also don't see the reason in respawning things in groups as it speeds up the spawn even more, further constricting the ability for properly leveled players to do anything other than focus on a small part a given scene. If left unchanged, I believe it will force players to be over-leveled to explore a given scene thoroughly and with a minimum chance of death (which will become relevant in a release or two) should they choose to do so alone. This provides little support for your more solo minded players (or those in solo/party scenes), be they SPO, solitary MPO, or offline players, and limits their ability to explore the game fully.

    Anyway, that's it. Sorry for the long post.
     
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  10. Lifedragn

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    I was in East Vauban yesterday. The Spawn Rate seemed okay. The aggro radius is a bit crazy though. At one point I feel like I was fighting 75% of the kobolds in the region of the map. Battled off a good eight or more, only to have another four chain in as I was finishing the first 8.

    I was fighting down-level (green) fortunately or I probably would have died a lot. I did have to re-summon my elemental quite a bit.

    That said, I haven't really been having problems with focus. In fact, I locked a lot of my actives at 60ish a few weeks ago so I could build up my passives more. This has been having a positive effect on letting my Focus passives raise to catch up. Since actives raise a lot faster than passives, you can run into focus issues if you don't manage your passive to active ratio well. If I were to invest in the proper food buffs, I'd probably be able to keep up pretty well with on-level mobs.
     
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  11. moko

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    In the 4-5 skulls overworld zones I tried I liked the faster spawn rate. I mostly fight 2-3 mobs at a time, then continue to fight the next cluster. I agree that I am not "clearing" zones any more like I used to before - it might also have to do with having to pause for regen every few encounters.

    I agree with @Lifedragn on the aggro radius though, I often find myself fighting more mobs than I wanted or have them join after some time without being anywhere what I'd consider "close" to new mobs...

    What I did not enjoy was the spawn rate (and aggro radius) of the enemies in the lower levels of e.g. Elysium mines. My harvesting has been much slowed down. I do not harvest the room with the kobolds anymore because I constantly find myself having to fight the whole room, which is a bit much to handle. I can still handle the elemental room, although the first time entering it I am usually rushed by 3-5 elementals at once and mostly if it's "only" 3, 2 more will join the fight at some point. A smaller aggro radius would fix that probably.
     
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