For comparison the 2 maps played were streamed on twitch and you can find the corresponding video by clicking this
A Few clarifications regarding the Group:
Our observations were the following:
A Few clarifications regarding the Group:
- All 5 Members were experienced HCE players, having completed at least 1 lvl 15 Map on time.
- Every DPS player was outfitted with at least 8.3 Excellent gear (8.3 MP blazing, 8.3 Exc Boltcasters, 8.3 Exc Witchwork + 8.3 Exc cryptcandle), Weapons and Offhands were all over 1600 IP
Our observations were the following:
- Money:
- When creating a 100% guild tax guild and comparing the guild balance with the lost silver there is a loss of about ~30-40k per map (230k income from lumber , ~310k from stonewars), only due to having respec activated on maximum specialisation.
- Poisons, (around 20x T6 and 5x T8) amount to a cost of ~80k silver
- Special Bufffoods like Lurcher Sandwiches require another 30k per piece for the Tank
- When creating a 100% guild tax guild and comparing the guild balance with the lost silver there is a loss of about ~30-40k per map (230k income from lumber , ~310k from stonewars), only due to having respec activated on maximum specialisation.
- Counters and Finishing Difficulty
- Changes in Mobs:
- Lumber Lunacy - We Noticed that the boss will now automatically deaggro if youre standing outside of his attack range, disabling the current whispering bow tanking Method. Due to the high amount of damage dealt by the bosses autoattacks the map now becomes significantly harder to complete on high levels again. A few people brought up the suggestion to add some indication of the attack to the boss (short uninteruptable casting bar) to make it easier for the tank to recognize and dodge these attacks or to apply protective effects to him
- Stone Wars - The Miniboss now spawns an fireball totem (similar to those found by dungeon bosses). This is increasing the difficulty of the engage by a bit, although it shouldn't have much impact on how the Map will be handled in the future
- Lumber Lunacy - We Noticed that the boss will now automatically deaggro if youre standing outside of his attack range, disabling the current whispering bow tanking Method. Due to the high amount of damage dealt by the bosses autoattacks the map now becomes significantly harder to complete on high levels again. A few people brought up the suggestion to add some indication of the attack to the boss (short uninteruptable casting bar) to make it easier for the tank to recognize and dodge these attacks or to apply protective effects to him
- New Quests:
- Multiplication Error: Currently each mob killed counts as 5 kills on the quest, this is probably caused by a kill getting counted once per one of the 5 players in the engage
- Lumber Lunacy: We couldn't make any predictions on the difficulty of the map so far, since we failed to count the mobs when originally beating the map due to the bug mentioned in 2.2.1. If anyone were to count the amount of mobs we killed before defeating the main boss and send me this number via discord (DrNye#9092) or PM on the forums / ingame it would be of help
- Stone Wars: Due to a watcher of the stream (thanks to you toseidon) we were able to count the number of mobs killed using the usual skip route when completing a stonewars map, resulting in a total of 53 kills before defeating the boss (54 if the boss himself is included, we were unable to verify that due to the mentioned multiplication bug.) After defeating the boss we had a bit less than 3 minutes remaining after clearing the map with us wiping one time. (loosing around 2 minutes). This would mean around 5 minutes remaining for defeating another 10 monsters, which should be possible but hard when focussing on clearing smaller mobs instead of the current pulls designed to beat high-hp mobs, especially giants. I would assume you could beat the map with a total of around 2-3 minutes remaining on level 12 if you were to play it perfectly and without anyone dying. When comparing lvl 12 maps (525% HP bonus) to lvl 15 maps (888% HP bonus) you get around 58% more HP on every mob (988/625 ≈ 1.58), increasing the time needed by roughly the same factor. This would result in a time requirement of around 30 minutes with the current quest (we took 20 minutes -> * 1.5 equals 30). Decreasing that number to around 55 would probably make for the best balance between the challenge of time while making the map still beatable with a single wipe on level 14 or 15.
- The most likely effect the new quests will have is that players will shift from trying to kill packs with tanky enemies like before (berserker and giant quests) and focus on killing enemies with less hp (knifelings and wildlings for keeper maps, dogs and the squires for morgana, rats for heretic and skeletons for undead maps). Another fix to the high time requirement mentioned in 3. would be to keep the amount of required kills the same but add an x2 kill multiplier to "Big" mobs.
- Times that our group achieved will probably be hard to achieve using normal HCE groups, since we were used to playing with each other and were using 1600 IP+ gear on every DD, which is both unusual for current random party building.
- Multiplication Error: Currently each mob killed counts as 5 kills on the quest, this is probably caused by a kill getting counted once per one of the 5 players in the engage
- Changes in Mobs:
- Balancing of new Parameters in accordance to other Oberon changes.
- Change of the current silver respec cost: since with the introduction of oberon both the amount of combat fame and famecredits required increased by 15%, the cost of silver/credit should also be lowered, in order to balance this out
- Silver and Loot adjustions
- Results of silver drop reduction: By keeping watch on around 3-4 Trade channels of bigger discord servers dedicated for HCE related content you can currently see a big amount of players trying to sell off their gear out of fear of possible worthlessness. After noticing those changes, a lot of players will probably quit doing hces / not invest in expensive gearsets anymore. This will have an overall negative influence on the game, as people who spent millions of silver (100s of millions in case of 8.3 MP players) will feel underappreciated after investing lots of their money into gear that doesn't pay off anymore. This will cause a lot of players to feel like they wasted hundreds of hours of time to get "worthless" gear sets that won't pay off anymore. Also HCEs currently are a great way to famefarm as a solo player (either by choice or when none of your guild / friends are online) as a filler activity and is a fast way to get into farming, when you dont want to spend an hour on building a group and walking towards a dungeon. By loosing one of those filler activities and making people feel punished by investing into equipment that feels worthless for them the chance for people to quit the game because of the update will be given, since a lot of players out there do either enjoy HCEs as one of their favourite kinds of content or loose 100s of millions when HCE items they own get worthless (for example the seller of the 8.3MP caerleon marketplace blazing will have a loss of over 100M on the value of 1 item alone). Also people who built their entire specs only around being competitional in expeditions will have to either respec or start a completely new weapon tree adding further frustration.
- Currently HCEs and GvGs for Mercia Townplots are the only activities to justify the use of 8.3 gear in any way. Removing HCE players from this pool will cause a massive backlash in high level crafting, especially for Non-Meta GvG items, basically loosing all of their value over night.
- Impact of HCEs on the black Market: HCEs currently drain a lot of the T4-T6 loot from the Black Market due to the high loot modifiers. This is correctly assessed by the developers of the game and reducing the loot drops from high level HCEs is a reasonable change. In addition to that it would probably be a good idea to further encourage players to use the black market, by having it create more buy orders, to increase the circulation speed of loot and making the game feel more rewarding.
- HCEs as a silver sink mechanic: HCEs provide a big role in "destroying silver" from the game, since silver and fame gained are in a roughly equal proportion everywhere. Whereas in Openworld activities such as normal dungeons, people usually dont pay high repair costs (over 50k per death), this is commonplace in hces. Therefore the amount of silver gained in HCEs is already beneficial compared to the open world system, whereas the only "sink" in the open world is the 10% trashrate of items, which only affects the item / ressource markets respectively (the 2% market tax is neglegible).
- Possible changes on Gold-sales by decreasing the attractiveness of HCEs: One of the biggest driving factor for people to pay ingame items with real life currency are usually items that will be "Permanently useful" . By decreasing that "usefullness" less players will be willing to spend real money on those items, which will reduce the amount of gold on the games markets and perhaps lead to problems like rising costs for the premium subscription etc.
- Results of silver drop reduction: By keeping watch on around 3-4 Trade channels of bigger discord servers dedicated for HCE related content you can currently see a big amount of players trying to sell off their gear out of fear of possible worthlessness. After noticing those changes, a lot of players will probably quit doing hces / not invest in expensive gearsets anymore. This will have an overall negative influence on the game, as people who spent millions of silver (100s of millions in case of 8.3 MP players) will feel underappreciated after investing lots of their money into gear that doesn't pay off anymore. This will cause a lot of players to feel like they wasted hundreds of hours of time to get "worthless" gear sets that won't pay off anymore. Also HCEs currently are a great way to famefarm as a solo player (either by choice or when none of your guild / friends are online) as a filler activity and is a fast way to get into farming, when you dont want to spend an hour on building a group and walking towards a dungeon. By loosing one of those filler activities and making people feel punished by investing into equipment that feels worthless for them the chance for people to quit the game because of the update will be given, since a lot of players out there do either enjoy HCEs as one of their favourite kinds of content or loose 100s of millions when HCE items they own get worthless (for example the seller of the 8.3MP caerleon marketplace blazing will have a loss of over 100M on the value of 1 item alone). Also people who built their entire specs only around being competitional in expeditions will have to either respec or start a completely new weapon tree adding further frustration.
- Balancing of OW content against HCEs
- Due to the Addition of random dungeons we now have an Open World activity that doesnt require massive use of relics or territories like normal dungeons do, for a higher reward than high level hces when using enchanted dungeon maps. If those dungeons are recognized as the new best famefarming method in the game people will naturally prefer those to in city activities, due to them being more rewarding and interesting (Due to the many different possibilitys they can be structured). Also they are designed to be designed to be quite similar in structure to expeditions, making them a possible alternative for HCE players since they are a similar type of content. Therefore i believe that especially high level HCEs should stay around the same level of reward as they are currently, since they also require relatively high skills and risks (100ks and mapcosts in the millions).
- Due to the Addition of random dungeons we now have an Open World activity that doesnt require massive use of relics or territories like normal dungeons do, for a higher reward than high level hces when using enchanted dungeon maps. If those dungeons are recognized as the new best famefarming method in the game people will naturally prefer those to in city activities, due to them being more rewarding and interesting (Due to the many different possibilitys they can be structured). Also they are designed to be designed to be quite similar in structure to expeditions, making them a possible alternative for HCE players since they are a similar type of content. Therefore i believe that especially high level HCEs should stay around the same level of reward as they are currently, since they also require relatively high skills and risks (100ks and mapcosts in the millions).
- Change of the current silver respec cost: since with the introduction of oberon both the amount of combat fame and famecredits required increased by 15%, the cost of silver/credit should also be lowered, in order to balance this out