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12th Anniversary Ultima Event


R-78

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While we are here talking about Naka's Cards, last time I checked, Challenge Mode on Ultima was semi-broken, glitchy and unbalanced. How do I know that? I did plenty of cmode on other servers and in fact there are still things here that definitely needs to be improved. Here is a list of the problems I encountered so far:
 

  • Dropping items from your inventory or getting items dropped from other players can potentially crash/disconnect you.
  • Weapons and techniques are definitely not balanced, and it touches borderline impossible especially on stages 5, 6 (Mines Area) and 9 (Ruins and Final Boss) of EP1. The majority of times, you don't get enough weapons with Hit % in order to complete the stage without a lot of sacrifices (Hit is a very important attribute due high EVP from Mines/Ruins mobs)
    Another stage that was pretty unbalanced was Stage 3 from EP2 (aka 2C3). I remember when me, @Fyrewolf5 and a few other people once grinded this stage for good RNG in order to get good weapons to fight Gal Gryphon. Same problems from the list above.
    And the same problem also happens on 2C4 (Seabed), where if you don't get Hit% on weapons, you will have a bad time with Deldepths (very high EVP, and they hurt a lot if you don't deal with them fast enough) and Delbiters.
     

(And yeah, I played enough of challenge mode on other places to be 100% sure such issues only happens here).

  • There were a few instances where the attribute from a dropped weapon didn't correspond to the attribute of the specific area it dropped. Example: A Palasch with 65 Abeast dropping in a Mines area (R.I.P.)
  • On Ultima, you are not required to do the stages in a numerical order. One can simply complete stage 9 first, then stage 3, then stage 4, then stage 1, etc.
    Which can lead to a few bugs:

1. There is a little chance you won't be able to claim your S-Rank/A-rank/B-rank prizes. Happened to me once and @Soly had to manually gave me the items.
2. Your final title on lobbies will correspond to the last stage you completed from the set of nine stages of Episode 1. So unlike other servers where stage 9 gives your final title "Bu-Ei", you won't get that on Ultima if you don't leave stage 9 for the very end.

 

So if anything is to be changed regarding Naka's Card system, I believe it would be handy to at least fix the issues from Challenge Mode. They might have been fixed already, last time I played cmode here was on past Summer Event, and I came across with most of the issues I mentioned here.

So I don't really blame Naka's Cards for "ruining" Challenge Mode, considering it never received that much attention here.

Anyways there are not many reasons to do cmode here either, because most of the important weapons you would get from it were made obsolete:

Hell Slicer/J-Cutter -> Boomerang/Kiss of Death
Hell/Demon Mechgun -> Hell/Demon TypeME-Mechgun/Yasminkov9000M
Arrest/Hell/Demon Needle/Shot -> Arrest Needle, Hell TypeSH/Shot, Demon TypeSH/Shot

And probably something else and important I forgot to mention.

Either you would do cmode because you need Zalure/Jellen s-rank weapons - Gods Shields, or because you want some  ̵̶̵u̵̶̵s̵̶̵e̵̶̵l̵̶̵e̵̶̵s̵̶̵s̵̶̵ unique s-rank weapon/name (I once made a PIZZA SLICER lmao) or because you are masochist and like to suffer XD

I appreciate all the work from the developers/moderators/admin done here on Ultima, and this post goal isn't to attack anyone/anything :) Just wanted to share some of the experiences I've had so far playing here and perhaps indicate how a few things can be improved. Thank you! 

Edited by Yannv
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@Yannv Disconnects in cmode is almost entirely an item desync issue. It can be avoided by 1: not picking up items at the exact same time as another player (this leads to both players thinking they have the item, but when the one that doesnt actually have it uses it, they dc), and 2: dropping item directly on a room border (game doesn't know which room it's in, leading to d/c then or later). Avoiding those things has cut out >90% of all d/c of runs I've done since. I hope that helps you for any future runs.

2c3 is definitely kinda rng, but alot is the rushing strats (it's the ttf of cmode stages, can skip areas 16+17+18+19), basically no farming even though ep2 attributes are any stat, and a boss with small attacking window that likes to waste time. Other than 2c3 though, I've never failed a stage only due to weapons, 5/6 are slowed more due to excessive baranz/dubchic spawns rather than weapon %, and stage 9 if one gets any pallasch to drop (attribute more important than hit) then one can do fine on falz. 2c4 deldepths are also not something you use Hit% for, since you actually want to Miss Miss Hit if not using traps on them (they're reverse cave slimes, instead of 3rd hit split, they're 3rd hit stay up and do nothing). All delbiters in cmode are avoidable or rampable (I think there's < 3 you actually have to kill?), which makes them unable to hit you while you kill them freely.

You've had a pallasch drop in mines with abeast? And that sort of thing happened more than once? That... shouldn't be possible. Pallasch should only drop in 1c9, and I've never personally seen or heard of any reports of false attribute in ep1 either, nor does anything come up in forum search. If you have any more info on the incidents or can point me in the right direction I'd like to look into it, that sounds like a pretty crazy bug.

As for titles, iirc the title is the last stage you did, so if  you want it to be the stage 9 title, even if you've completed cmode you can simply replay 1c9 and get that title instead (if anything, this lets people pick the title they want to have). The extremely rare 'not getting reward' bug is something we will fix for players manually since the benefit of being able to play stages out of order is an extraordinarily huge boon for cmode. For example if someone were to d/c at the end of a stage, suddenly they wouldn't be able to continue with their group normally. IMO being able to play any stage at any time is not something that should be changed if it can be avoided.

I do appreciate the feedback, and I really hope the tips to avoid d/c help. If you got some free time in this event I'd love to do some hunts (or even cmode) with ya again.

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Anyways there are not many reasons to do cmode here either, because most of the important weapons you would get from it were made obsolete:
 

 

Not at all , ES Weapons are especially useful since specials added to them are unreduced regardless of weapon type. This gives them a much higher success rate or special power at inflicting special effects to multiple targets, or repeatedly inflict special effects to a single target, compared to most other weapons. 

 

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5 hours ago, Yannv said:
  • Dropping items from your inventory or getting items dropped from other players can potentially crash/disconnect you.

      Dropping items to close to a door way will cause this, this also happens in normal game

  • Weapons and techniques are definitely not balanced, and it touches borderline impossible especially on stages 5, 6 (Mines Area) and 9 (Ruins and Final Boss) of EP1. The majority of times, you don't get enough weapons with Hit % in order to complete the stage without a lot of sacrifices (Hit is a very important attribute due high EVP from Mines/Ruins mobs) 

      Stage 5,6 Mines is all about survival and fight technique's not how much dps

  • Another stage that was pretty unbalanced was Stage 3 from EP2 (aka 2C3). I remember when me, @Fyrewolf5 and a few other people once grinded this stage for good RNG in order to get good weapons to fight Gal Gryphon. Same problems from the list above.

       Ep2 stage 3 is not unbalanced was like this back on sega servers 20 years ago , it is a rush stage as

      Fyrewolf stated yes the gun drops are RNG for stats , but there are  defult autogun drops in end box's to              help this, and is easy to complete with defult autogun  in  30mins

 

 

  •   And the same problem also happens on 2C4 (Seabed), where if you don't get Hit% on weapons, you will have a bad time with Deldepths (very high EVP, and they hurt a lot if you don't deal with them fast enough) and Delbiters.  

     As Fryewolf said these are reverse slimes and actually missing helps , as for delbiters only thing you need to      worry about is if you have enough health to survive a attack with out dieing and surroundings help to stop            charges or  get the right combo with a freeze trap he is not going any where.    

 

                                                                                                                                                                 

 

 

Only thing which i would say needs looking at is ID games , as far as i know this is stuck as viridia 

 

Edited by ink
missed my opinion on fix
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I just completed Challenge mode not long ago with my teamates, we got a very few DCs including one when I used a monogrinder in temple last area so I assume it was a monogrinder that "someone else picked at same time" as Fyrewolf mentionned in point 1.

Otherwise I didn't see many issues, we got a lot of weapons with hit (up to 100) and all respective area attribute(s), everyone could claim S-rank weapons even though one of us missed a Cave stage that we did after stage 9 for him.

 

And I wouldnt say it's pointless to do CM. It was a funny and interesting experience, and I didn't even think about which S-rank I wanted. (ended up with a twin (double saber) with tempest and of course I don't expect it to be very useful)

 

The only thing that really disappointed me is that you don't get any title for completing episode II stages.

 

2 hours ago, ink said:

      Dropping items to close to a door way will cause this [crash/disconnection], this also happens in normal game

At worst you get a little character freeze time and the item staying in your inventory, but I never disconnected or see anyone disconnect because of this. Are you sure about that? Could you show me in game?

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21 minutes ago, R-78 said:

At worst you get a little character freeze time and the item staying in your inventory, but I never disconnected or see anyone disconnect because of this. Are you sure about that? Could you show me in game?

Will try and replicate ,its something i steered away from when doing cmode , mainly happens in mines from my experience

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13 hours ago, Yannv said:

Dropping items from your inventory or getting items dropped from other players can potentially crash/disconnect you.

The starting inventories for cmode are hardcoded and definitely were not sync'd server side, I am fairly sure I looked at that before, but I could probably look into it again to make sure.

 

13 hours ago, Yannv said:

Weapons and techniques are definitely not balanced, and it touches borderline impossible

The game rng for cmode is the same as it comes with teth, so idk about that... monster stats are the same in cmode tho, so if they were modified that might be an issue.

 

13 hours ago, Yannv said:

On Ultima, you are not required to do the stages in a numerical order. One can simply complete stage 9 first, then stage 3, then stage 4, then stage 1, etc.
Which can lead to a few bugs:

I am aware of this, but I was asked not to fix so yeah... people have to be aware that if they skip a stage, it's on them for doing so.

8 hours ago, ink said:

Only thing which i would say needs looking at is ID games , as far as i know this is stuck as viridia 

Afaik, all of the IDs are exactly the same in CMode... if anything, tethealla loads viridia (section id 0) and copies it to the others so there is that...

@Yannv @ink @R-78
If you guys find a way to reproduce it consistently, I can look into it.

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12 hours ago, Fyrewolf5 said:

@Yannv Disconnects in cmode is almost entirely an item desync issue. 
2: dropping item directly on a room border

Might be possible, but such disconnect issue didn't happen with me on Ephinea, for example. As a team, we are told to drop items we don't need, such as techs, materials, weapons etc. next to the door for other players to pick. So if the problem were the room borders, we would have serious problems with disconnections there. As @R-78 mentioned, on Normal Mode, what happens when you get/drop items between room borders, you get a little freeze, but not a disconnection error.

Anyways yeah, we can give it a try again here, now I have a really good internet so I'm sure desync won't be an issue anymore 😋

Did you know that on Ephinea, on normal mode, if you are to pick/drop a desynced item, a pop-up message appears asking you to reload ship/block to sync yourself again with the server instead of imediately disconnecting you from the server?

 

12 hours ago, Fyrewolf5 said:

You've had a pallasch drop in mines with abeast? And that sort of thing happened more than once? That... shouldn't be possible. Pallasch should only drop in 1c9, and I've never personally seen or heard of any reports of false attribute in ep1 either, nor does anything come up in forum search. If you have any more info on the incidents or can point me in the right direction I'd like to look into it, that sounds like a pretty crazy bug.

Pallasch was just an example, didn't mean it literally. My point was just that there were one or two times I'm sure we got weapons which attributes didn't correspond to the area it was meant for, looks like a rare bug apparently.

When that bug happened where I didn't get rewards for cmode, my title didn't change either. Since then, I always tried to leave 1C9 for last to prevent it from happening again. Still IMO it is strange getting other titles than "Bu-Ei" after you already completed cmode, makes it look like you didn't really finished it.

 

9 hours ago, ink said:

Not at all , ES Weapons are especially useful since specials added to them are unreduced regardless of weapon type. This gives them a much higher success rate or special power at inflicting special effects to multiple targets, or repeatedly inflict special effects to a single target, compared to most other weapons. 

 

 

Most of the useful S-rank weapons already have custom weapons versions exclusive to Ultima that either have unreduced specials and you can increase Hit% up to 80. So yeah, they were made obsolete and only worth hunting if you don't have access to seasonal event items. While you can still do SNS glitch on S-ranks, there's just no way they are better than customized weapons. A blank stats Boomerang/Kiss of Death is already better than S-Rank Slicer/J-Cutter, and you don't even need to spend PDs to add a special to them.

@Soly: The disconnection issues happened with items dropped by monsters/boxes, then discarded from inventories later (example: picking a mind material/cane weapon from a box just to later give them to a force player)

Afaik, monster stats are vanilla on cmode, the issue I was refering to was about the RNG table.

(Also, first time I heard section IDs matters somehow for cmode. I never found any evidence proving that.)

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22 minutes ago, Yannv said:

Did you know that on Ephinea, on normal mode, if you are to pick/drop a desynced item, a pop-up message appears asking you to reload ship/block to sync yourself again with the server instead of imediately disconnecting you from the server?

 

(Also, first time I heard section IDs matters somehow for cmode. I never found any evidence proving that.)

 

You still DC on Ephinea after some number of detected desync issues, or earlier if the desync leads to something horribly wrong from the server's perspective.

 

Section IDs shouldn't matter for CM. There's only one table defined for CM in the itempt and it's just the first ID table, which happens to be Viridia. From Soly's post, sounds like Ultima is using that table correctly.

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To expand upon the point #2 I made, dropping items near door is usually fine, but directly on the border between rooms is a bad idea. Whereas normally the game just kinda freezes you for a second and doesn't drop the item, occasionally it instead does drop the item, but it's a strange ghost item that no one can pick up. D/C always follows within a few minutes of that happening every time. I've had it happen the most in 2c1, especially where you have the small maze rooms (especially area 4 by the 4 laser gates, I've failed many runs to dropping items poorly there). I don't drop items in there anymore, I just wait until next room instead. I have heard before that it's an issue in nmode too, though never personally had it happen (but I don't usually drop like that in nmode).

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3 hours ago, Soly said:

Afaik, all of the IDs are exactly the same in CMode... if anything, tethealla loads viridia (section id 0) and copies it to the others so there is that...

http://www.pso-world.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1954

 

list of what section id you should use and % on item drops

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#teamCmode

 

 My personal opinion people dont play Challenge not for DC/issues or  another problem, they dont play because just have to wait until november to hunt naka and get their srank with special  more simple and easy, no?. But we have to make 7hr or 5hr all day for one and 7hr or more to get 60 PDs to add special complicate. no?

 

Nice ink a pure cmode player you are studyed :) that's my sensei.

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To correct myself, cmode doesn't come with teth, but the cmode code we have was made by someone else (Doberman, iirc, maybe with help from other people).
 

@ink thanks for poiting that out, I just checked the default PT file, and it defintiely is not the same between the first 2 cmode IDs (also seems kinda pointless to have multiple difficulty tables for CMode if only normal is used).
I'll be looking into correcting this then... but I will probably take a little bit to review all the tables.

 

12 hours ago, Yannv said:

Did you know that on Ephinea, on normal mode, if you are to pick/drop a desynced item, a pop-up message appears asking you to reload ship/block to sync yourself again with the server instead of imediately disconnecting you from the server?

 

While this is "nice", you are already out of sync... so yeah, think the issues of dropping X item and what other people see is the real Y item.

 

11 hours ago, Ender said:

Section IDs shouldn't matter for CM. There's only one table defined for CM in the itempt and it's just the first ID table, which happens to be Viridia. From Soly's post, sounds like Ultima is using that table correctly.

 

The "only one table in PT" is not true, there is in fact all tables (all SIDs and all difficulties), the code we have only loads viridia tho... but I guess this is actually wrong, given that those section IDs are not the same through out normal difficulty.

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To update here before I go to bed.

 

Talked with Ives (Ender asked him) and it seems that after all, the "single section id" for cmode is the right thing, this based on the fact that the other IDs seem to have data of normal mode and not data similar to the cmode one.

 

Also the fact that we don't know what the data for that psow page is based on, can't really use it for much and we have literally no source for what the other section ids would be, if they were actually different

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