The Talent System and Xenoslayers

Eukelade

Hi! Per announcement news posts 109 and 110, we've recently introduced a couple of rather PVE-heavy new systems for you all to enjoy - the Talent system and Xenoslayers are intended to liven up the endgame of Starmourn, as well as provide more opportunities for cooperation and grouping.

If you're not yet familiar, check out those announcement posts I linked above, or this post on our website.

We invite you to log in and play around with them - and then let us know what you think! What do you like? What do you hate? What should we change? What should we keep?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Rylek

Xeno-slayers: This shouldn't in any way be tied to pvp. Like, at all. Game needs more end-game content that isn't trying to force Pvp. 
Also, I don't know that it should be tied to the wilderness. UNLESS you go about making it pop something similar to a cache when it happens.
Also also, the conflict channel should record when the monster get's killed or despawned.

Talents: This needs a supported gmcp channel, or to have current xp tracking convert directly over. Pretty please

Squeakums

Seconding the idea of conflict channel announcing when the mob dies.

My biggest problem with xenoslaying is that I have so much trouble actually participating in it. The lack of wilderness map makes it very difficult, for starters. Why is it unavailable in Wilderness, but available in caches, when they are almost the exact same thing? Currently, I can check conflict channel and try a few places where *maybe* there is a mob (if it hasn't been killed already) that *maybe* I can find in my wilderness (if it even spawned there, unlikely), though without a map I am bound to waste tons of time and likely miss some rooms. Might miss it entirely even if it's there. 

On a related note, some clarity on how the spawn happens would go a long way. Is it possible that the mob spawns in a random person's wilderness and stays there, completely inaccessible to everybody else?

The mobs themselves are fantastic! It's just a shame that in all this time I've only been able to find a single one, from the original batch right when they released, and nothing else. It can be pretty frustrating to have an amazing new mechanic so inaccessible.

And to end on a positive note, thank you **so much** for trying this out. I know it's breaking new ground for IRE and I have been hoping for PvE content like this for a long time. It has the potential to be one of my favorite things about Starmourn. 

Pink_Candyfloss

Talents

My feedback for Talents is that I really enjoy the extra bit of progression. It is nice to have that PvE grind back and I like how they are mostly exclusive for improving your PvE capabilities, with the increase to resistances as the only exception. This has the bonus of still making the entry to PvP still easily obtainable, as hitting level 75 and getting the first 10 talent points does come swiftly. I can imagine it will be pretty easy to bolt on extra things onto the Talents system to continue to reward those who are obsessed with the grind (Ata and Necerursh). I do not think there needs to be any changes to this current implementation and now that the double experience buff has ended, the talent points seem to be appropriately grindy to acquire, even with the speed increase to bashing that criticals grant us.

Xenoslayers

I enjoy the story around them, genetics research lab has had a few breakouts and now there are freakishly large beasties around with bounties for those who end them. What I don't enjoy is this forced mixture of PvP and PvE surrounding them. To me, trying to cater to both in the same mechanic merely cheapens the experience of both. If you allow people to PvP during them, it leads to cheese tactics such as attacking the one getting hit by the monster, leading to them dying. This did not take any skill to accomplish, you were just an opportunist, akin to a griefer.

On the other hand, the PvE encounter feels lessened because the mechanics of the battles just aren't in place. It is a bullet sponge, a tank of a mob, with no real way of interacting with the fight. You beat them through sheer numbers and smashing your bashing macro repeatedly. This is not engaging gameplay and if you have to draw people away to deal with a PvP fight as well, it likely means these PvE encounters will never have meaningful mechanics because nobody will have the numbers to field two teams. It also means anyone engaging in the PvP side misses out on the kill participation.

My take is, we have systems in place that cater to PvP and cater to PvE. Cache fights are frequent and encourage team based ground warfare. Cosmpiercers are a mix of ship PvE, ship PvP, ground PvP and Hacking. That's a lot going on, but nobody engages in this at the moment due to how the numbers are balanced, everyone has their portion of Cosmpiercers and there's no need for conflict. I'd like to see tweaks to Cosmpiercers to make ownership relevant again and I'd like Xenoslayers to become the new PvE group experience, akin to raid encounters from MMOs. I gave an example on Discord lately, which I will share again:

Imagine an escaped specimen had been infused with ice powers. While fighting it, it encases a random player in ice. If that player is not freed by their allies, the Xeno will shatter the ice block, dealing significant damage to everyone in the room and instantly slaying the one encased.

As for Cosmpiercers, remove the ability for them to fight back and make them tankier. This allows the occupiers time to get to their ships and turn it into a true ship PvP. Reduce the number of Cosmpiercers across the game and tweak the numbers so you need to hold a number of them to keep significant progress. Make it so a successful capture of one, or a successful defence, puts it into a lengthy lockout timer so people aren't fatigued over these grand battles.

Tl;dr

Firmly establish PvE content and PvP content, make each fully engaging without gimmicky stuff attached. Have rewards to entice participation.

Adrenn

I'm not nearly close to ready to jump into xeno-hunts I don't think, but when I read it would be PvP around them I more or less immediately wrote them off.

Imagine an escaped specimen had been infused with ice powers. While fighting it, it encases a random player in ice. If that player is not freed by their allies, the Xeno will shatter the ice block, dealing significant damage to everyone in the room and instantly slaying the one encased.

This sounds awesome though. Having to do more interactive things than just setup and hit repeatedly would be fun for boss-style mobs. Also, I'd love to have a good laugh reminiscing about the time no one freed me from the ice so everyone died. (Or similar)

Also as someone who is a fair bit slower on the leveling end, the I love the talent system. It's something to look forward to me without throwing up more walls to make me feel like I'll never catch up to be effective in PvP. Really looking forward to getting them some time!

Kirin

Talents
1) Progression  - feels quite fast in terms of acquiring talents as it is now. It shouldn't be possible to complete 1 or 2 complete branches of talents in a weekend (JMHO). By contrast, learning complete modding is a much harder endeavor. I would imagine talents should be much more difficult to acquire and incremental progress should be harder and harder. 

2) Scavenging - scavenging is a bit confusing. Does scavenging increase the base rate of 'valuable' drops? Or do they keep the base rate of drops constant but adjust the relative drop rates of various things? If so, maxing mods and droploots would be 'racing' against each other? 

Xenoslayers

1) I haven't found a single alpha or betarch creature thus far. I'm not sure whether this is a product of not getting there fast enough or the chance being truly random. More consistency in finding mobs please.

2) Rather than have a single escaped mob, an area of high level creatures would be preferable as an end-game high level hunting area. PvP or PvE is a matter of admin choices but this feels more PvE vs PvP. These could potentially spawn as 'cache-type' shared instances. 

3) Honor lines/ titles for slaying different types of xenohunters. 

4) Daily credits for slaying a xenohunt creature

Eukelade

A common theme I'm noticing is "more info about xenomobs" and "a firmer separation of pvp and pve content"

We are definitely going to be tweaking/changing/adjusting things this week since these systems are so new, and feedback like this points us in the right direction. 

Keep it coming!

Steve

Personally, I'm waiting for clarification on how xenoslayer mobs are intended to spawn before offering my feedback on them. First impression: awesome direction, relatively tough mobs, need more info about how they're spawning or how they're intended to spawn (or both). Also might need some kind of toughness scaling to deal with bringing too many people. Will wait.

As for talents, I'm enjoying having a reason to bash beyond getting marks and looking for better equipment. Personally, I don't mind that the first 20 or so points take what feels like a manageable grind; the critical hits talent is pretty much essential. Right now I do not have enough information to say whether I think it's too easy or too grindy beyond that 20 point threshold. I'm at 22 points so far, 18 of which I got during the double experience weekend xenohunt and far more playing than typical.

During my grind for talent points, I have noticed that scoundrel's at a large disadvantage for these extended bashing sessions (such as a xenohunt) because of how much time and junk it takes to make IEDs. I've resorted to using suckerpunch for reloads, and it's certainly lackluster compared to a ripper shrapnel. I have no desire to sidetrack this thread, so I will leave it at that.

Steve

I forgot to say here that the talent for getting chips is really neat except that the chips that drop just aren't that exciting. Getting a random chip that can be captaincy, or psyche, or whatever with no indication of what it does before slotting it just doesn't sit right with me. I'm putting points into chips to learn more about how they work, but that's my first impression.

Update: first talents chip sold on the promo market for 10k marks, just for grins. The buyer was a scoundrel. He slotted it and got a strength buff. That's not even close to helpful; if nothing else, I'd like for these chips to be a whole lot smarter and pick from what the person can actually use. And please remove hacking and captaincy experience from the pool, if it's going to be random, too; why would the pve talent system feed into hacking and captaincy when there's very little need for those chips to begin with (and a huge supply to boot)?

Steve

Final idea about chips for a while: what if the personal augmentation chips buffed all stats? That would eliminate the problem of the chips doing nothing for some people and would make them actually exciting and would create a demand for them.

Ikchor

Or

New syntax - SOCKET CHIP FOR <stat/experience type>. Only works with personal chips.

Eukelade

Thank you guys so much for this feedback. As of today, Ilyos has updated the Xenomob system to be a PVE only activity - check out this announcement.

He also pushed through some tweaks to talents - thanks, Ilyos!! 

Steve

Ikchor said:

Or

New syntax - SOCKET CHIP FOR <stat/experience type>. Only works with personal chips.

Now that would be a good thing to have!

If it's too good, I'd still be happy to see the personal augmentation chips replacing the stats chips entirely. SOCKET CHIP FOR <stat>.

Azlyn

Good changes, and I have a few more suggestions. 

I think there would be value in making xenohunting more competitive, while still preserving the opportunity for everyone to participate. Per the most recent changes, you have to wait for random spawns, and then rush to the area with your crew before others get to it. This unfortunately falls into how a lot of mechanics exist - waiting around for things to happen, and then you're limited by friend/faction availability.

So I would suggest expanding the opportunities for participation. An easy solution would be to use the existing wilderness triangulation mechanic to potentially spawn bosses upon completion (maybe like a 20% rate). (This could also return a message with the vnum where the boss spawned in the wilderness, to appease the "no map" complaints.) This means that everyone would have opportunity to actively xenohunt on their own time with available crews, and without competition from outside forces since they're in personal wilderness areas. This also gives more value to wildernesses, which are still pretty weak, having the smol asteroid/gas rewards. For fairness, possibly have these active xenohunts award less points than completing the random wild hunt.

Further in the spirit of competition/sustained interest, I think it would be cool if xenoslaying rankings were more seasonal than perpetual. That is, perhaps introduce a yearly competition for xenoslaying, where there are tiered rewards and/or rewards for the top X, and then this gets reset. The reward could be something as simple as chips, loot tokens, honors/titles, etc. You could also have an all-time rankings, as it is now, or just track this through HONORS STATS as a personal achievement type thing. But I much prefer the concept of dynamic rankings, as it gives new players a better sense of relevance/renown, and it makes it more of an opt-in activity than a perpetual grind. (There are already many obnoxiously grindy activities.)

Finally, I think it would be cool to have greathunts on a smaller scale. In Lusternia, sometimes there would be weekly XP challenges which were themed. To translate the concept to Starmourn, we'd cycle through competitions for: Normal XP, Quest-earned XP, Hacking XP, and Captaincy XP. These probably shouldn't run all the time, but it'd be nice to have bursts of double XP and competitions to opt into. Even if you did something like a Captaincy Taco Tuesday or whatever, it'd give people something to look forward to.

Rylek

I, and several people I've spoken with, really support the idea of being able to throw a group together and head out to hunt the big monsters. On our time. I agree having a chance to spawn them in the wilderness seems like a way to boost it, although maybe have it tied to clearing out all the other monsters? With a decent chance. Or even have a quest that needs finishing for one to spawn. Then a person can 'pop' one a day, but require a group to do more than one.

It's certainly fun to have random spawns in the world, those should likely stay. But a way to force spawns would be really nice for some group end game pve.

Azlyn

I like the idea of having to clear the wilderness or doing some type of quest. I just thought using triangulation would be less to code, and would help incentivize using the existing wilderness mechanic. In any case, in re-reading the original announce it sounded like there could be a way to actively find these critters in the future so I guess we'll have to wait for that.

But another issue I have with the current system is that only one person can turn in a corpse and get Fantom standing (whatever that means), which isn't super ideal given that this is designed as a team activity (and it's pretty easy to corpse swipe). I guess I'd just suggest giving Fantom credit to everyone who contributes to the kill, probably easily tied in with the xenoslayer rank score. 

Ilyos

This is good stuff! I'll see what we can work in here

Azlyn

Another thing we're running into is that there aren't enough mobs/places to sustain many people bashing at end-game. Crits have significantly decreased the time-to-kill, and I don't think the spawns have been adjusted accordingly. I'd suggest increasing the respawn rates, and maybe even have let wilderness mobs respawn if people wanted to use them as bashing grounds.

Rylek

Firmly support wilderness respawns, and mapping.

Azlyn

Also the chips drop rate seems somewhat high, which might be okay right now, until you presumably change them to be selected buffs. Edit: Also may be okay when you nerf crit damage.

Rylek

Talents: Might want to consider changing the crit one. Lower it to ten points, lower max crit chance to 20%. Or 30% if you think the damage is to low for one in five.

Steve

One of the good things about crits working they way they do is that a talented-out player CAN survive fighting multiple aggressive mobs. It feels like a really meaningful increase in power. There's still substantial risk in taking on 2 mobs, and 3 is a roll-of-the-dice situation (but doable, if lucky).

I'd rather see more areas than increased mob spawn rates or reduced crit power (whether that's by damage or % or whatnot).

Rylek

Xenoslaying:
It's fairly frustrating to be waiting around, finally see one pop, and have it die before you get off the shuttle. They're very very much at the mercy of people with 20 in crit. It's not a group effort, which I believe was the goal here?
-They need to be crit immune.
-They need 3x hp.
-An interesting suggestion I saw, give them (maybe just Apex?) "interrupt shields" that would require more than one person to actually interrupt a windup.
-Also, should make it so caches appear with an Apex. Give a good reason to get people in there fighting instead of in there farming.

Edit: Another interesting idea. Give them crit immune until they take X amount of subsystem damage. Which would stop crit people from destroying them instantly, giving everyone else time to show up. And would give a reason to bring a group. One section keeps the subsystem low, the other hurts it.

Rylek

So, there's a pretty lame thing with Xenoslaying where one pesron who's faster at getting around can show up and kill it before anyone else shows up. Even if it was pvp free, it wouldn't change the situation. It effectively negates anyone else taking part in this new system.

These things need to be stronger, or they need a 10 minute period of time after the announcement in which they're 'mutating' in an invulnerable egg or something. Thus allowing groups to show up and take part.

Soza

Would be super cool to have GMCP values for crew members hp-percentages as well so that you could make proper group fights against these bosses instead of just simplistic bash it till its dead type things.

How cool would it be for an ally to hit low hp and be the main target, and you playing a nanoseer to interdict damage saving their life, or being a beast and smashing that ally out of the room so they dont have to crash away, or even so the beast can easily make use of PROTECT.

Soza

Also as a proof of concept I quickly threw together this.