Amaranthine
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Posts posted by Amaranthine
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Hello, Larva:
If you are actually looking to make changes, I'm probably say a few things that I know you may not like but need to hear. HH is not the only thing that drives who comes in and out of the server. It's a lot more than that and there is no sweeping it under the carpet either. It's both HH and Events that both do it solely because of how they operate. You see, your server does NOT operate on a whim, meaning that people won't bother (in most cases) to just log in and play in often intervals at any given point of the year. Instead, players of your server, for the most part, will only play in those given time slots.
Now bear in mind that most that do play in these time slots are established players or players that at least have a foot in the door to hunt. The FOMO nature of this server is extremely detrimental, and the way that it has lingered for so long more or less set the stage for what you see going on in present day. You need a lot more than a simple nudge of the HH system if you are looking to encourage a way to bring a higher interest among people.
I know that it's been this way for so long and that trying to make big changes to 'revolutionize' things is often met with the fact that the vets already have all the wealth and the gear. Since that rock won't budge, trying to fill in the void that brings more general attraction is your next best alternative. Not saying it lightly here: HH doesn't need to be rebalanced, it needs to be destroyed. The main reason I can see it even existing is because time gated gear is stressful to hunt and it's there to try and mitigate problems. Well, you see, the problem here is that the time gated gear is a bigger problem that rests right behind HH itself. If you want to make a change for the better, you need to kill it at its roots.
Look over the drop charts and see which items can use nudging around. Fill it out with the custom gear with reasonable, but also difficult rates. Something akin to a slant uber and/or up to uber tier. Putting them on a permanent list will need to have them be harder to access in general as you don't want to make the mistake Destiny Server did. They made all the vanilla drops standardized with some being easier BUT also made a lot of their uber customs easier to obtain for some bizarre reason.
Doing what's stated above, you can vanish HH, and look to try and come up with some kind of community driven goal that supplies boosts when reached. Make the players WORK for the boosts rather than just spice boosts without any effort. I'm sure the Events here can be looked at and adjusted to be more interesting than periodic FOMO slots.
Your proposed change won't change anything BECAUSE the best times to log on for hunts is STILL when HH is happening. Sure, my suggestion to you will require more work, but with how much weight this server has in terms of issues that birthed the creation of this thread, the effort I feel should be made for people that genuinely enjoy playing here.
If you seriously won't take any other suggestion or proposal to what you are showing, then any change would be better than none.
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Hola, Larva:
Si realmente estás buscando hacer cambios, probablemente te diga algunas cosas que sé que pueden no gustarte pero que necesitas escuchar. HH no es lo único que impulsa quién entra y sale del servidor. Es mucho más que eso y tampoco se puede esconder debajo de la alfombra. Son tanto HH como Eventos los que lo hacen únicamente por su forma de operar. Verás, tu servidor NO funciona por capricho, lo que significa que la gente no se molestará (en la mayoría de los casos) en entrar y jugar en intervalos frecuentes en un momento dado del año. En su lugar, los jugadores de su servidor, en su mayor parte, sólo jugarán en esas franjas horarias determinadas.
Ahora ten en cuenta que la mayoría de los que juegan en estas franjas horarias son jugadores establecidos o jugadores que al menos tienen un pie en la puerta para cazar. La naturaleza FOMO de este servidor es muy perjudicial, y la forma en que se ha prolongado durante tanto tiempo más o menos preparó el escenario para lo que se ve pasando en la actualidad. Se necesita mucho más que un simple empujón al sistema de HH si lo que se pretende es fomentar una forma de suscitar un mayor interés entre la gente.
Ahora bien, sé que ha sido así durante mucho tiempo y que intentar hacer grandes cambios para "revolucionar" las cosas a menudo se topa con el hecho de que los veteranos ya tienen toda la riqueza y el equipo. Como esa roca no se moverá, intentar llenar el vacío con más atracción general es la siguiente mejor alternativa. No lo digo a la ligera: HH no necesita ser reequilibrado, necesita ser destruido. La principal razón por la que veo que existe es porque el equipo con límite de tiempo es estresante de cazar y está ahí para intentar mitigar los problemas. El problema es que el equipo con límite de tiempo es un problema mayor que se encuentra justo detrás del propio HH. Si quieres hacer un cambio a mejor, necesitas matarlo de raíz.
Revisa las tablas de drop y mira qué objetos se pueden mejorar. Rellénalo con el equipo personalizado con tasas razonables, pero también difíciles. Algo parecido a un nivel uber inclinado y/o hasta uber. Si los pones en una lista permanente, será más difícil acceder a ellos en general, ya que no querrás cometer el error que cometió Destiny Server. Hicieron todos los drops vainilla estandarizados con algunos más fáciles PERO también hicieron muchos de sus customs uber más fáciles de obtener por alguna extraña razón.
Haciendo lo que se ha dicho antes, puedes desaparecer HH, y tratar de llegar a algún tipo de objetivo impulsado por la comunidad que proporcione mejoras cuando se alcance. Haz que los jugadores TRABAJEN por los potenciadores, en lugar de limitarse a conseguirlos sin ningún esfuerzo. Estoy seguro de que los eventos pueden revisarse y ajustarse para que sean más interesantes que las franjas horarias periódicas de FOMO.
El cambio que propones no cambiará nada PORQUE las mejores horas para iniciar sesión en las cacerías siguen siendo cuando hay HH. Claro, mi sugerencia requerirá más trabajo, pero con el peso que este servidor tiene en términos de problemas que dieron lugar a la creación de este hilo, el esfuerzo que creo que se debe hacer para las personas que realmente disfrutan jugando aquí.
Si en serio no vais a aceptar ninguna otra sugerencia o propuesta a lo que estáis mostrando, entonces cualquier cambio sería mejor que ninguno.
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2 minutes ago, Lobotomy said:
Soloable. *Soloing this is a completely wretched and unenjoyable experience that I recommend to absolutely no one tho*
Wow, this took no time at all. Congratz! (Where's the video :eyes:)
But yeah, the issue has been addressed and I've spoken to Soly. It may not be immediate, but a fix will be on the way.
Also, the changelog was updated
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1 hour ago, DevlinKhodabaks said:
Update: redria drops windmill from del lily, which is also the mil lily drop on ultimate
2nd update: gibbles seems to drop the regular redria drop (god/battle) on ult ep 2
Okay so this is definitely Server Side with this confirmation. Staff that can handle drops should be able to fix this. As I said, I cannot do anything with drops through quest creation when it comes to what an enemy drops from the raw tables.
The reason this is happening I believe to be tied to the server not recognizing the monster dropping the items. Epsilon is a Sinow Zoa outside of Tower as they both share the same ID. Del Lily outside of Tower is a Poison Lily which then the server thinks can have the rare variant which is masked by the Del Lily enemy.
^ As seen here. Sinow Zoa drops Secure Feet. Sinow Zoa share Epsilon ID so in Tower, they become Epsilon and still drop what is thought to be a Zoa. Same goes for the Del Lily.
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11 minutes ago, DevlinKhodabaks said:
Hello there, so Pompon and I are currently running the quest on Yellowboze. We came across like 7x secure feet (Which should be a mil lily drop). Epsilon and del lily (and maybe ill gill) were dropping secure feet (0dfp 0evp).
Is this a bug or part of the story?
Update: redria drops windmill from del lily, which is also the mil lily drop on ultimate
My guess is that this is something server side. I cannot influence what monsters drop and should default to their respective tables. Mil Lily is a Temple enemy in ep2 and none of the Towers use either Temple slot to overwrite with the tower maps. They're Mountain, Seaside and Seaside Night maps which get overwritten for Tower.
Del Lillies do share their skin ID with other Lillies though. Something beyond my doing is probably at play here. My question would be if this is occurring in other tower quests? If so, then something may have been poked recently.
So yeah! Can't really help you here.
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Okay!
Apologies for the content inconvenience. A severe issue was mistakenly slipped into the end product of version 1.0. The quest has been updated to 1.1 and the issue has been resolved.
(PSO is interesting though and it cropped the version number. Nothing too significant)
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The server bug causing wrong area drops has been squashed. Sorry for the long inconvenience!!!
Interesting/Unironic side note before getting into this:
I learned/noticed yesterday night (10th November, 2022) that Shiida's Capital of the Unreturned quest narratively takes place in the same general region that this one does. The southern regions of Gal Da Val simply are prone to dangerous anomalies I guess, idk.
Anyways...Moving on:
The Gloom Spire
Quest Details:
A party of three (3) were assigned to exterminate monsters that were swarming Gal Da Val Island's southern region. The Lab had suspected that if the rate of monster infestation were to continue growing, they could become a problem to other parties assigned to investigate other targeted zones of the island. Along with this party of three, the Lab had sent a specialized Cast with them to assist with the extermination assignment. The mission was projected to be cleared within the hour; and the party was projected to return within that same hour or the following hour at the very most. However, there was no word or communication between the dispatched party over the span of several hours. Not a single member of that party returned the Lab either which rose concerns.
Natasha Milarose directed several teams to band up and form a rescue search operation. The southern regions of Gal Da Val were vastly scanned on foot, by carriers and by radar. Hours go by and no reported findings made their way back to the Lab to the frustration and dismay of The Directrice. More time passes and one search team that traveled down to the deep south came upon a discovery that was reported immediately on sight. A tall ominous tower that was seemingly swallowed by the wilderness was reported within the deep, dense forest trenches. The origins of this tower are unknown and remained unsettlingly so. With this new information, Natasha posted up an urgent search mission where only experienced and equipped personnel could take the job. A crew member of the search team making this discovery planted a teleporter signal in the mouth of this tower before search teams made their way back to the Lab by the day's end.
Will you take the job and help search for the missing party?
Quest Mechanics:
This quest will vary in length depending on the difficulty chosen:
Normal Mode = You have access to only 1 Tower before quest completion.
Hard Mode = You have access to only 1 Tower before quest completion (Just like Normal Mode Difficulty).
Very Hard Mode = You have access to 2 Towers before quest completion.
Ultimate Mode = You have access to the entire quest.
--> You get +50,000 Meseta for each party member you find (Ultimate Mode Only).
SpoilerGloom Spire 1-10:
17 Del Lily
33 Ill Gill
10 Delbiter18 Recobox
13 Gibbles
13 Gi Gue
10 Mericarol3 Merikle
3 Mericus
3 EpsilonGloom Spire 11-20:
40 Del Lily
54 Ill Gill18 Delbiter
23 Recobox
21 Gibbles
23 Gi Gue
23 Mericarol
12 Merikle10 Mericus
12 EpsilonGloom Spire 21-30:
63 Del Lily
93 Ill Gill
52 Delbiter
29 Recobox
41 Gibbles
44 Gi Gue
52 Mericarol
35 Merikle
37 Mericus
45 EpsilonTOTAL: NORMAL HARD VERY HARD ULTIMATE
Del Lily 18 18 57 120Ill Gill 33 33 87 180
Delbiter 10 10 28 80
Recobox 18 18 40 70
Gibbles 13 13 34 75
Gi Gue 13 13 36 80
Mericarol 10 10 33 85
Merikle 3 3 15 50
Mericus 3 3 13 50
Epsilon 3 3 15 60
Meseta Rewards:
Normal = 8,000
Hard = 15,000
Very Hard = 40,000
Ultimate = 200,000 (Base Rate)
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Creator: Amaranthine (Esther)
Quest Version Number = 1.3
SpoilerVersion 1.0:
- Removed a test warp that was in place for section checking during development of the quest. I forgot about it and it managed to slip into the main ship. While in testing, its usage is justified. In real time, however, it's a major exploit. This test warp has been instantly removed on sight.
Version 1.1:
- Arranged the map floors to Floor 15, 16 and 17.
- Removed a few unnecessary labels in the quest file.
Version 1.2
- Server currently not supporting 'off floors' for being Tower floors. Will be resolved in the future!
Version 1.3
- Slight monster adjustment and added a few warps to some floors.
- Server bug for drops has been patched.
- This quest has a timer at a prompted start without a quest fail condition. Added Meseta Rewards for Ultimate Mode, on the other hand, "do" have fail conditions in regards to the timer (Which counts up).
- This quest has a prompted console style initiation. However, only one (1) player needs to engage the console to start the quest for the party regardless of what map they are in (Even during bursting animation screens). When a player is occupying the console, no other player can access it unless the engaging player declines the quest initiation. This means that you DO NOT need to all gather to start the quest run like traditional console initiated quests.
Anywho! That should be everything I need to say about this. Will edit the page should versions update due to things such as potential bug fixes.
SpoilerThis quest I was originally making for another server quite some time ago. However, it was quickly becoming too strong for the standards allowed before getting that far into it. Considering that, along with the sheer length the quest was aimed to be, there wasn't really anything I would have liked to have done with it. So, I set it aside and haven't ever looked at it again since January 5th of this year (2022).
After several banters at different times, one common thing was repeatedly mentioned and that was quests I've made being shared. Due to the quests available year round (Among other personal reasons), I refused sharing. After a few prods, instead of sharing work that I've done, I picked this abandoned project back up and dwelled in qedit for 2 weeks to which I then emerged with this quest in completed form.
:boreusip:
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That was an incredible run video. One of the most entertaining and engrossing things I've seen with this game in a very long time. Loved it.
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Uhhhh, so a 100h Cvulc. Right, so this gets a lot more complicated since there are a lot more variables to work with. The first of which being that you're looking for a common so you're off the range of Pattern 5 and need to be in certain areas. Secondly, you need to be hard focusing enemies that have weapon set drops. Thirdly, you are looking at a likely mixed assortment of enemies with varying DAR. If we were to assume you were running a quest with no boosts that had nothing but Claws in it...lol. So Claws have a 30% DAR. If you were running on Purplenum, you'd get the best Mech wep rate at 13%. Then you need to have it drop with hit% which is a hairline short under 5% within three rolls which totals out to 14.2625% in Ep1 which is where you'd find Claws anyway. Three rolls for Hit% chance cuz three different % areas are available to weapons (0/0/50/50|50 for example). Assuming you land the slot for hit, you still need it to hit 90% untekk which is only available in Pattern 4 which is appicable in any section of Ruins as 1, 2 and 3 are all home to Pattern 4. 90% in the Hit% slot is a 1/10000 roll. 100h is impossible to drop as 90h is the cap. Which means the item HAS to drop as an untekked item to tekk it to 100%. The Untekk chance on weapons is best in Ruins 2 and 3 at 30% unless this server has the 82% jank. THEN there are 40 Special Attacks. You need the weapon to hit the Charge Special.
With all that in mind, let's look at ALL the munbers to go through:
30% DAR on Claws to drop something provided they don't drop a tool which all enemies can. If not a tool (Mate, Fluid, etc), they have weapons as set drops.
13% for Mechgun drop on Purplenum.
14.2625% for the weapon to have Hit% on it.
0.0001% for the Hit% to be 90%.
30% for the weapon to be Untekked.
0.025% for the weapon to be a Charge Special specifically.
So now that we have all the numbers, let us plug all that garbage above into a multiplication string! After turning everything into proper decimal form with some rounding, we then take the answer to which we multiply by 100 to get our actual percentage.
Getting a 90h Charge Vulcan from a Claw on Purplenum in Ruins 2 or 3 is roughly 0.00000053% or 1/1,886,792.45 when properly reduced.
You had better not mistekk that Vulcan!
EDIT: The rate is probably higher since Claws can also drop tools and not just weps. I dunno what that rate between tools and set drops are tho so I can't add it into the rate.
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Adding another little bit to this to let you guys know how to actually calculate how a rare item drops from an enemy (Excluding PDs as those are rare rolls on tools and not an RDR check).
First you need to know what the DAR of an enemy is. Let's use a Sorcerer from Ep2 in Spaceship as an example. Let's pretend there's a drop from them and the drop rate for that rare item from said enemy is 1/1137. Here is how you calculate it and it's very easy to do. Assuming there is no drop boosts, you need to form a cross multiplication formula followed by a divider. Ep2 Sorcerers have a DAR (Drop Anything Rate) of 25%. You take 25% and you stick it over 100 to get 25/100. You then take the rate you see on the drop table and stick it into the denominator (Bottom value) of the second fraction which would be X/1137. X in the fraction is the RDR (Rare Drop Rate) of the enemy.
So you end up with: 25/100 & X/1137. Multiply 25 (Numerator) by 1137 (Denominator) and then divide by 100. Thus, you learn that a rare drop that is 1/1137 from an Ep2 Sorcerer yields a 1/4 DAR and a 1/284.25 RDR. It just happens that the rate you see on the drop table is the math of those values in calculation.
This concludes the PSO lesson. Good day.
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Uh, so there are two rolls per enemy. The first roll encounters DAR. Which as already stated, is the rate at which a monster drops anything for you. However, the other side of that is RDR (Rare Drop Rate). Should a monster pass the DAR and fail RDR, you'll just get whatever drops. If you pass both DAR and RDR, you get whatever rare item that enemy gives. The drop table rates are not what you get given an enemy drops something. The rate you see on that table is the calculation of DAR x RDR. Noting which enemies have higher DAR rates for given hunts can help you as opposed to similar rates on another enemy that may appear the same but has a terrible DAR and sucks to hunt from without boosts.
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Change blocks in the lobby and try again.
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There tends to be a usual concept that advertising and/or promoting this server will help it. It won't and won't ever help it. No matter how many people you bring into this server, the outcome will fall back to the issue it has right now as those new players quit to move onto something else or even defect to another server.
No server is perfect but efforts to make a server better is the most constructive way to go. Throwing a ton of new quests and items into the game isn't fixing anything.
If the structure of the server is bad, then it will never improve. This isn't 2008 anymore. The amount of decrepit qol that still lingers on Ultima hiding behind all the customs is preposterous. Just look at these threads. Has anyone counted the amount of times a thread has appeared on Ultima forums covering how "the server is dying"?
Now I won't go into any details because anything and everything I can say has already been said. My point here are 4 simple things:
- HH is a disaster
- DTs and WoI are disasters
- The QoL needs lot of modern touch ups.
- Events need to spice the gameplay and not be the pinnacle of progression.
Customs are amazing and fun when kept in check. Ultima power crept the game to the moon though when the game is already easy. All these broken customs should have been relegated to another drop chart in some Post-Ultimate Difficulty. This way, new players aren't gatekept from advancing. Some customs that can help advance into this higher Difficulty could be distributed throughout the Ultimate Mode drop chart year round. Of course, this would shift the meta to a new dimension but that already happened with the release of Blue Burst.
This is likely all just going to be words to the wind but it has to be reiterated. No matter what you do or say; if the QoL is bad, then everything else is bad.
If you want to read an in-depth take on my thoughts on this server, click here:
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9 hours ago, R-78 said:
@Amaranthine Ok let me know when you want to trade
I'm available now at any time.
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On 8/6/2017 at 10:06 AM, R-78 said:
2 sword Slicer of Vengeance [0/0/0/50|70] 50%70H 33dt
I want this ❤️
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11 hours ago, Yannv said:
Super Mario Bros 3 was my childhood game, I still remember and miss playing it with my father. It is my favorite game of all time by far.
But when I discovered SNES emulators and played Super Mario World for the first time, I got really interested in making my own levels and started researching until I discovered Lunar Magic, a program made by FuSoYa that edits SMW roms. A few years have passed until discovering SMWCentral, which is a community dedicated to host romhacks, patches, custom musics and graphics and many tools that complements the stuff Lunar Magic can't do alone. I think I was like 11 or 12 years old at that time.Although I don't really mess with this stuff nowadays (now I'm 25 years old), I still really like to see what's being done on the scene (and I still hope for some of the unreleased romhacks I really like to be finished one day). Unfortunately I never finished any project but I contributed a lot to the community with a few patches/graphic packs and so on.
BTW, one of my main goals with SMW was to completely recreate the SMB3 engine and mechanics into the SMW. That was because the tools available for SMB3 romhacking was very limited and difficult to work with. The hacking community put all their effort into coding stuff for SMW, so it was kinda easier to go that route to recreate the experience of my favorite childhood game.Well hey! Small world.
I'm glad I managed to find someone here that shares the fondness of this franchise. My first experience with a ROM hack was when I saw my brother using his old no-service phone as a game tool. He imported hacks into it and I later built him a little handheld contraption that he could hold it in and also support his controller (A Wii-mote). When I randomly decided to watch what hew was playing, it was a SMW level that I've never seen before. When he told me that it was a ROM hack of SMW, my mind exploded.
While I never actually got into the dev side of any hacks, I certainly took the role of playing many of them. Maybe one day I'll look into it, but until then I just stick to what I have. The game I was referencing in my post is actually what you could call a Super Mario Maker on PC. It was released by Hello Fangaming in 2010 and is stylized in the SMB3 design. Hello Fangaming hardly ever responds to his audience and his websites are extremely low profiled. His website for Game Master had actually been shut down in 2015. So I'm basically taking the initiative to try and preserve what may end up going under the same fate as Game Master (Websites revolving around two other Mario Maker style games). They are made on the Hello SMB3 engine, but you put the level together with the tools provided in game.
TL;DR, I'm on a little quest to form a community of those who enjoy Mario to inspire some creativity to make courses/worlds for each other to try!
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Hey, everyone.
As a major classic Mario lover, I've mainly spent my time growing up around Nintendo. Playing various Super Mario games was a great bonding experience I had with my brothers and I still play some of the older classics along with ROM Hacks that I may find from time to time.
One of the main art styles I loved the most growing up was without a doubt, the SMB3 style with a panel to panel level design. So I've decided to share something with you guys that I came across nearly 10 years ago called Super Mario Bros: Game Master.
What is it?
SMB: Game Master is a fanmade non-profit game that functions like a Super Mario Maker on PC for SMB3. It's really quite old and hasn't had a single update since the date of launch so the quirks and physics in it won't ever be seeing revisions. During the first year of its launch, a website was made where players of this game could upload and share their levels (and worlds). After 5 years of running, the site was unfortunately shut down.
I play this game to this day off and on a bit regularly. Ever since the website for submissions was shut down in 2015, I've mostly been making courses and worlds for myself, knowing that others won't see them or play them. It wasn't until very recently that I had found out that there were two different Mario Builders that succeeded Game Master.
So! The purpose of this thread was to share some of my work with anyone who may be interested. If you'd like to try some of my courses on this old fangame, come join the Discord and give them a try or make creations for me (and others) to try out. I know I'm not the only Mario nerd out here ^^
https://discord.gg/BkSZTCEjjE <------ My SMB: Game Master Discord-
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10 hours ago, Heather Siren Tide said:
Iron Faust +18 [0/100/100/100|0] cost , i had iron frust 0/0/0/100 dark
He isn't accepting any currency from Ultima. He isn't accepting any trades from Ultima. He isn't accepting splits from Ultima. He isn't accepting anything from Ultima until further notice.
Just posting here to give anyone else that may want to post here a heads up.
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This has been attempted numerous times without any success. It's extremely rare that anyone here would bother moving over to Ephi to farm gear to give in order to obtain gear here. Also, you might already know this, but TJS/SJS cannot have 3 % on it like most weapons. Ultima spoils the people with this perk but Ephi will not do that. So unless you want one with hit as a beatstick...idk
SpoilerCent/Battle is unnecessary. It's a luxury here but an unnecessary unit overall.
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This post is so pure. I'm glad that you're able to enjoy yourself and that we were able to make that much of an impact on you.
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Even if it were possible, adding original expansions to this game would flatline the server without the rights from SEGA.
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13 hours ago, jdhenry124 said:
I do agree that the server is too segregated between lvl 200s and the casual players, as well as the dependency of many on HHs. I think you brought up a great solution that I hope is implemented. Have the players of the server work towards the rewards, instead of them being random. I brought this up in the "ideas to improve the server" thread and was shot down, but there should be an incentive to play every week/month. Let the community unlock green names or a boosted drop rate, or a special item added to the drop list, or even access to a special event (one of the one or two day Mio events). People like working towards a goal, even more so when they are part of a community.
Not on topic but I really wanted to reply to this.
On the concept level, I couldn't ask for something more incentive based than this. This kind of plan work in-line with the game's native flow. Only thing I'd fear is having back-seaters wait until the unlocks are smashed before logging in. So maybe the rewards should be entitled to those who play the game. The game is literally a grindfest. Why not make it more interesting by paying off the grinds players do with whatever free time they may get. I'd love it so much.
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My likes about Ultima: Different angle of play, quests I cannot find elsewhere, different meta strategies.
My dislikes about Ultima: Feels outdated, never being fine-tuned where flaws are made, not welcoming to newer players.
Solution:
SpoilerI keep looking at this thread and always told myself not to post in here. Since it's a thing now, I suppose I finally will cave in and say my part as an outsider looking in (I say this because I only play Ultima for the different PSOBB angle and quests that not present where I'm from. I main on the Ephinea Server and have been there for 5 years since March 2020.)
Unfortunately, due to my time on Ultima being on the late end, I missed what kinds of things have taken place in the past. However, the past is the past and by the looks of things, that time period won't be coming back. Why? Well stepping foot into Ultima today is like stepping in a time machine. Take yourself out of your own shoes for a moment and put yourself into the mindset and shoes of a person playing on the server for the first time. Don't assume they know the backbone of the PSOBB structure and know what to do on day 1. Make this out to be a casual player that wants to play for the main reason most of us tend to give: Nostalgia.
I'll be deconstructing things as I go on, so put a pin into that message just above this one since I'll be getting back to it later. To address issues/dislikes that I have here amount to a number controversial topics that may get quite touchy for a number of veterans here. Issues that I see are: No incentive, HH, event exclusives, DTs, buffed monsters and lack of communication. Again, I'll be deconstructing these topics and I know they are easily more than just 1 as the OP listed as the title. After playing on both servers, I've come to feel very estranged to my own gear. Seeing things lined up with 80h on Ultima is actually a yawn. It's not even impressive and it can be extremely disappointing to newer players once they find what the cause behind that is. Seeing 80h gear (Desired gear) on Ephinea, however, looks above and beyond. It's the lottery, the grand hotel of gear. Something that stands out from the crowd and makes those players feel rewarded for the hunt they did to get those items. Most players on this server that I've spoken to or 'overheard' don't even seem to realize just how ludicrously rare it is to find that kind of hit percentage on a weapon (Not just any weapon, but the weapons they want).
Somewhere around the middle of my Ultima grind, there was a particular incident that completely flattened my desire to grind on this server. One day during the Anniversary Event while I was hunting for Sonic Team Armors, I found a 70h Arms from a box in Shambertin's boss room after killing him. My immediate thought was 'OMG OMG OMG OMG' because I know just how crazy strong Dark Meteor is on this server. The response I get for showing such a find off?....It's easier to max a RL Arms.The topics
-------------------No incentive: PSOBB is a game where you live for the grind if you plan to reach the endgame. It's something not everyone is into but it's there for those that want to reach that point for their own self-fulfillment or to make it there with their friends. I love this game with a burning passion since I was little and always was the odd one out with my brothers who'd lose interest. I always stuck to the game while they moved on to play other things that I'd occasional join to have a fun time. Deep down, however, I always come back to this game like it was calling my name. I definitely sucked on console when I was young. I had no clue what I was doing or how to get the basics of how to load out the best DPS (Damage Per Second) at the time. I lived through the era of constantly corrupting Memory Cards and the like and only managed to play online GC once in my life before they moved to PC. It wasn't until SCHTserv that I finally moved to playing on PC and we all know where that server went. Where else would they go at that time? They wanted to play PSO somehow and Ultima was up at the time. It certainly blew up at the time and many, many, MANY memories were made.
As time passed, I feel that at some point a slowly creeping disinterest started to form due to a lack of updates and content. The game has more stuff but it still feels like it's stuck in the past. Based on what I've seen on the late end, it's like things are added to the server, but the server is never fine-tuned. Conveniences and a newer 'feel' never seem to come out and instead, it's all new content that more than likely ends up as an exclusive. Now let's get back to the pin I mentioned earlier. Imagine a brand new player coming onto the Ultima Server to relive the burning nostalgia they felt for this game from deep within. They may even see that Ultima has all the customs which looks incredible (And I am a personal fan of it, myself) which gives them the green light to register and play. What are they met with? It's surely not the experience they'd expect as they'd see a board full of locked rooms, and that literally everyone left on the Server are maxed out and 200. New players need some kind of incentive to engage in their hunts. Especially if they are going in solo. To really get into the 'Incentive' point, we need to move onto how it can be applied with Ultima which can segue straight into the topic of:HH: HH (Happy Hour) is a device turned on at random by the GMs. It triples the droprate of rares across the grid for 3 hours. What this device does is creates an insecure barrier of retention on the players. This hardly is an issue when it comes to children or young adults who still do the chores. However, when it comes to adults that have full time jobs, a family to take care of, bills, people to see and things to do--the problem can easily be pointed out by anyone who can put 2 and 2 together. HH to a new player will seed the extremely poisonous thought of only playing and hunting during those times...But due to them being random, they need to keep an eye on the forums (or their phones if they follow). This isn't keeping player retention out of the sheer desire to play. This is literally gripping them by the collar to keep on top of the status of HH just so they don't miss it. There are no boosting activities to play in or participate in with others and while HH isn't as destructive in early game (But still is I think), HH is incredibly pressing when it comes to the events. Once a player who just started starts to find their first bits of gear to get by, they are very quickly left behind when it comes to event hunting. Event items are essentially the incentive most of the time, but to get them reliably, HH is needed due to crippling drop rates. The incentive is to get that gear but the gate in doing just that makes it distasteful.
No. TTF and/or CCA powerleveling does not help a player catch up to start event grinding. There is an extremely overlooked problem when it comes to helping a new player out. Again, let's refer to that pin from above. Imagine starting on this server and actually finding someone to help you. They take you and say they will speed you to the endgame. In most instances, what would a new player say to that? It's quite obvious. They'd go along with it and take the help. So they powerlevel fast since Ultima has it's EXP rates quite high through the year and run into a problem. They are overleveled and undergeared. This is one of the biggest things that turn players away from any PSOBB server or game in general. The player would want to contribute in games and have fun. At this point, they'd likely start trying to dip into events in order to get the gear they need, but remember the issue of locked games and nobody helping beyond an entry level? Imagine being stuck where you can enter the fun parts of the game but not being able to have fun. This is a legitimate reason I was given from a player that jumped over to Ephinea when I asked. So we have the issue that a new player feel like they cannot progress since there are no activities outside of events, HH causing a rabid play schedule and being the sole device that brings in a population when no events are live, and now just getting into the next point which is:Buffed Episode 2: So about feeling stuck.....................Put that sentiment into a blender and mix it with fruits/yogurt so you can make yourself the dessert that kills so many newer player's motivation. I don't even know where to begin with this point because of its overwhelming presence. Throw event exclusives into Episode 2 and waiting on HH when you feel like you cannot do anything in the game but die. Quite a bit a cases ditching the server because of this reason alone are out there and will continue to be as long as this problem exists. When any player puts on a video of this server on screen to watch (Since the Tower of Dreams video was mentioned, I'll use that as the example), they'll see a group of people ripping through a quest. Sure, there are deaths, but fun comes out of it in the end instead of frustration or even embarrassment. They'll admire the players and aspire to be like them one day. The question is how to get there? Let's just throw them into an end-game quest to see if they land anything, am I right?.....Recall how I said 80h gear is hardly that impressive on this server? Let's revisit that, shall we?
0.000000000000000000000000000000001% . What exactly does that percentage mean or relate to? Well it isn't quite as low as displayed. That number is the legitimate chance of obtaining a specific yellow photon weapon in Ultimate with 80h on it with a specific special on it. A Diska, Vulcan, Calibur, etc. Garnering hit% on weapons was never supposed to be a requirement to play this game. It's a bonus to have but due to EVP on so many monsters in episode 2 being so high, it's basically required to even play the game. Obviously SEGA never thought up of just how powerful some of the specials in this game are. So in our eyes, we see hit% as an absolute must to abuse those specials as much as we can. 35h, 40h, and namely 50h are typically good enough to get by when playing the way that we do but Episode 2 here makes that all a joke. It's so sad to me to see all the new players I've seen come leave a Server that I'd genuinely want to see thriving like the rest of you want. So...Where to get 80h gear like it's meaningless? This leads us quite awkwardly into:Donation Tickets: I have nothing against donating to a server. Especially a server that hosts a game that I thoroughly enjoy down to the bottom of my heart. I've donated to this server numerous times (I will not say that I won't) and I've even done so in quite large amounts in the past. Larva publicly claims on this forum that running the server interferes with his finances to an uncomfortable level. That, combined with the fact that I do not main on the Ultima Server was enough to throw money into it. Again, I don't think there is anything wrong with it. However, donating to keep a place going should be all it's there for. The fact that you get what everybody falls over for (Donation Tickets) by using actual money to effect what you can do in the game is a massive turn-off and hideous in nature. Just look at the gaming industry today. There are so many titles that have some kind of payment sham to either play multi, expand the game, or grind faster to catch up with the rest of the community. That's a commonplace thing today, but on this game? 20 years old? There is no faster way of killing this game for people than being able to endgame if the only requirement was to have a stable job and cash to throw. If DTs were used for things such as cosmetics, I'd love them.
Mio, one of the server's GMs hosts an event to actually obtain hit% on weapons at the cost of in-game currency: Photon Drops. While I'm against it being used on all kinds of weapons, I'd all for such an event being there for event exclusives that cannot be hunted year-long. This way, players don't have to be let down by knowing they'd have to wait another year to hunt that beautiful 50h+ SoV. This can also be a gateway to simply uprooting HH all-together. However, the grind is, once again, stunted by the fact that World of Illusion exists. The ability to grind or be carried (If this happens) through constant PD increases would undercut this process and pretty much becomes the only thing people run if this were the only way to garner hit% just to perform well in Episode 2. I've already covered enough regarding Event Exclusives so I'll be skipping that point and moving right to:Lack of Communication: I will start this point entirely based on what I've seen with my own two eyes. I've come to believe that due to the sheer segregation of players on this server, new players would easily end up lost. I do a side hobby of story writing with my younger brother. I tend to make details and profiles covering the stories we write while I idle in the lobby. I've only been super active on Ultima for a little over a year. A year and some months, etc. Over the course of that time, I've easily seen more than twenty new players register to Ultima. This is 20-25+ players that would be seen adding to the player count. Instead, the count cannot ever seem to rise outside of events/HH, HH alone, green names or a combination of the three especially. I've spoken with numerous over on Ephinea who said they came from Ultima with bad experiences with the newest one lasting on this server for not even 1 month. It's undeniable that that there are issues that are stopping these people from having their fun on the game. Of course, it goes without saying that some of them only wanted their fix before meandering back to whatever other game titles they call home.
Upon seeing these new players, the very same thing tends to happen (referring to that pin again). They appear in the lobby and start to say their greetings. If they're lucky, they will get a response. They may ask for guidance or help next. I've even seen a player begging the lobby to answer the simple question on how to move as he was stuck in typing. In this instance, there was not a single reply until I spoke up to hit F11. More often times than not, I see newcomers that know how to speak Spanish get more help than any other player I've seen in the lobby. Sure, there's a language barrier but some names that speak both were in that lobby and refused to answer the poor player's question (I will mention no names). I may see that same newcomer again from time to time...But then I never see them again after the first or second week. It's depressing and it always hurts me inside to tell these players to pace themselves when playing. Most I help always want boosting but I let them know what they should be focusing on which is gearing, matting, learning and adapting. But inside it pains me to know that with the information I give them, it will not stop them from running into all the problems I've addressed in this post.
For a closing note, I could be overlooking a lot of conversations that I simply do not see. Based on what I can physically see, it seems excessively quiet. The Ultima Server's Discord to me feels like an abandoned grocery store with the music still on trying to make it seem functional. Most players are split into their own teams with their own Discords which slowly covered the main one with a blanket of dust over time. Hundreds of members in it, yet I can still find a post of mine just a few lines up and it was made back in June. We're in August and approaching September.If you read through all of this, please note that I don't mean anything I said with malice. I want this server to do well and not be stuck in a time bubble for the rest of its life. Sure, advertise the server in places but this won't stop the problem. It's only leading more players into it and the cycle will just continue over and over again.
Thank you, everyone.-
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DS4 is taking priority over PSOBB. I never ever used DS4 when I used a PS4. I either just plugged it in or went BT.
The Gloom Spire
in Quest development
Posted · Edited by Amaranthine
Update to the quest. While the server is still unable to properly run remapping and have proper items drop, the quest has been lightly touched up in the following ways in Version 1.3:
- A few warp panels were added: Floor 27 was given preceding warp panels to prevent potential soft locking should there be a DC (Each appear upon portion clears), and floor 28 was given a floor panel that returns back to the top section from the mid section (These appear upon room clear.)
- Removed alternating fog on floor 26, and replaced it with darkness that is controlled by central floor panel.
- Very slightly trimmed the monster count. Took one Gibbles from floor 30 and placed it on floor 26.
The Monster count to the quest now is the following:
120 Del Lily (-0)
180 Ill Gill (-0)
80 Delbiter (-0)
70 Recobox (-1)
75 Gibbles (-3)
80 Gi Gue (-5)
85 Mericarol (-1)
50 Merikle (-3)
50 Mericus (-1)
60 Epsilon (-6)