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Roving encounters & resources

Discussion in 'Release 35 Feedback Forum' started by redfish, Oct 27, 2016.

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  1. redfish

    redfish Avatar

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    I'm intentionally going into the roving encounters because they typically have excellent resources, and its a good break of pace getting them from these encounter scenes than cycling through the same scene multiple times.

    For example, I went into a forest encounter scene with stags, and found several silver veins in addition to resources of other types. So, now, I'll look for stag encounters in the future just because I know stags seem to like spots with silver. It would be cool if in the future there would be some lore behind resources you might find in certain encounter scenes. So, for example, deer might be attracted to mineral licks, and there might be sulfur and salt nodes too in encounters with deer. Or there might be a lot of tree resources, with the idea that the deer are attracted there to strip the trees off the bark. Wolves, on the other hand, might be associated with other resources, or they might be out for a hunt, so you catch them in the middle of a hunt.

    Bandits, even though they're generally easy to defeat, can provide me at least a hundred or so gold, just taking the gold and leaving the weapons on their bodies to not encumber myself. So, if I'm on my way from point A to point B, and find bandits, I'll run in, defeat the bandits, and earn some quick gold. Strangely, even though the individual bandits have a lot of gold, the chest usually contains paltry resources, like 1 mandrake root (I think they steal from the chest).

    I think its good that you can run into encounters that aren't necessarily your level. I'm taking advantage of these low level encounters for resources and gold, and I think it'll be fun running away from high level ones. I don't think the devs should do level scaling. It might work for some, however, if low level encounters were less likely to aggro you if you were high level. Or there could be warding magic and amulets and such that would keep low level encounters away. Undead ward, animal ward, etc.

    I hope we see random encounters like spiders as well, although it seems to me the size of the creature should have some impact on what distance you can see them at. So, for example; take a dragon, a bandit, and a spider. You should be able to see the dragon at the greatest distance, since they're large, but the spider only at a short distance, since they're small. This would make spiders "near-ambush" encounters if you were wandering off road through places like forests and swamps where the spiders would pop up right away. You could still avoid them because you would know the places where they would spawn and be harder to escape from. And there could be Spider wards, or they could be avoidable by higher level characters. But you might be rewarded by rich resources in that scene, like tons of spider silk or spider eggs.

    One of the unsatisfying aspects of the way they currently work is that your avatar teleports in the center, like he teleports into every scene (ugh, why?). So, I teleport into the bandit scene, where there's a bandit standing right next to me waiting to attack. I see the bandit before I see myself materializing. Sort of kills any sense of reality, storytelling, etc..

    Running into a roving skeleton and ending up in a burial shrine scene were all the skeletons are lying on the ground undisturbed doesn't work. Either this should return to the "ambush" style hidden encounter, or the burial shrine on the road should appear on the map whenever the encounter is generated. The second is the better solution, imo. There could also be similar encounters like campfires, where you find bandits around a campfire, or broken down wagons.

    True ambush encounters could also exist, but would be rarer and maybe more particular to quest lines or spoken about in warnings ("there are bandits along this road ambushing travellers") if they end up annoying players.
     
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  2. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    I'm kinda torn on this one.

    While some of the encounters are decent resource spots, true, currently I find them more annoying than anything else.
    Sure, if I *want* to go kill a few bandits and chop a few trees, I might steer myself toward one, but there are far better places to gather, well, pretty much everything.

    By annoying I mean regardless of speed changes to the map, if you walk anywhere near one of these things that is stood on the road, you cannot actually escape from it. It chases you, and even though there's a good amount of distance between you and it, you get pulled in anyway. Which at the very least is two load screens of messing about.

    Yesterday I was going to meet up with someone. I was in the Brittany area. I had to run to get something in a house near Etceter then nipped through the mountains and around to Soltown.
    I got pulled into FIVE of these encounters, all of which I was trying to actually avoid.
    This was ten unnecessary load screens and easily quadrupled my travel time, and this was just entering/exiting, not getting any stuff. Ok maybe a couple of cottonbushes cause they were right next to me.

    I would suggest that these 'roving' encounters actually 'rove' - instead of standing blocking the well-travelled road right where you need to walk. I thought keeping to the roads was supposed to be 'safe' but the only way to avoid these things is to give them a huge wide berth by slogging through trees/mountains.
     
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  3. ValsNoisyToys

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    Actually, after the spawn rate changes that I've experienced since r35 went live, in order to fight yellow mobs /and/ be able to harvest resources I've actually been looking for these roving encounters. Right now, (of my admittedly limited experience), my current spot I was learning the lay of the land in (West Ravenswood), I'm basically stuck just in one corner with the wolves - spiders respawn is now way too fast to handle by myself and have a hope of getting any non-skinning type resources, and the wolves are only marginally better. I haven't been able to get further to see if the issue is only mostly with the spiders.

    I love the roving encounters right now because its the only place that I can
    a) fight yellow critters,
    b) control the scene by clearing said critters, then
    c) relax and take a breather while I gather the resources before exiting the encounter scene.

    I didn't have an issue with the r34 spawn rate & scenes, its the new spawn rates in r35 that makes it very difficult for me to learn a new area and actually do much more than get stuck in one corner and maybe get a couple of resources. I really hope the devs take another look at the spawn rates, even if only for people who enter the scene alone in Friends Only / Single Player mode.
     
  4. Arya Stoneheart

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    Yeah I love the gold ore I get out of them.
     
  5. Vladamir Begemot

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    While I love them, they do need some balancing, but that is to be expected on a first release.

    Rather than having deer dictate what metals are available in an area it would make more sense for the geographical area to determine what metals are available in the area.
     
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  6. redfish

    redfish Avatar

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    A place where hidden ambushes still might work is bridges... like we had with trolls in Ultima V. A player would expect a possible encounter on a bridge.

    Though, on the other hand, they would be a good staging point for PvP ambushes. Say, you could camp there to ambush another travelling PvP player.
     
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  7. ValsNoisyToys

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    I wanted to update this - I was in West Ravenswood tonight, and the spawn rate resembled what I experienced in r34. So I'm assuming the rate was dialed back? Since I hadn't gained any bow skills between the play sessions, something was different. And I appreciated it! I actually was able to explore the area for the first time, harvest, and fight my way through instead of being stuck in a corner. For a solo person, fighting yellow critters, it seems about right now.
     
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