TBS flawed reward downscaling system

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Xhartor, Aug 30, 2021.

  1. Rasper Helpdesk The Original Helpdesk

    You're likely remembering buying the raid level power sources
  2. Captain Video Augur

    TBS was a six-month expansion in-era, and excluding the missions done for faction farming and group progression, there wasn't all that much non-raid content. One zone was below level cap. You got to fight on pirate ships (yawn). At the time, the majority of group players were still chugging away in TSS, which was huge, and also only six months.

    The Orux you need to buy a purity aug for every piece of gear on your main can be done in a few dozen hours, and the second piece goes a lot faster than the first because by then you have all the faction. (How much actual benefit that provides in a parse is a debatable point.) There may be other content segments over the course of a TLP that could stand a little speeding up, but this isn't one of them.

    Group missions aren't popular when 90% of the player base only cares about raiding. In that respect, TLPs are substantially different from how Live servers were in-era, and that isn't going to change no matter how you try to adjust the content. Their difficulty is going to be perceived differently by someone trying to solo box them vs. any group of actual human players. The content was originally designed for humans, and the devs aren't going to completely restructure the game to suit the preferences of boxers on the TLPs. I keep saying this over and over in a wide variety of threads, but it doesn't sink in.
  3. Tweakfour17 Augur

    "few" is pretty loosely defined but let's assume you 4 is a few. 4 DOZEN hours to get a set of augs for your main means you are grinding orux for an hour a day for 48 days out of the 56 days (8weeks) the expansion is "in era". So it will take you 86% of the expansion to deck yourself out in purity augs by grinding an hour every single day and that seems easy or non-tedious to you?

    I lean towards not as much benefit as people think, very min/max in my opinion and you can get by just fine without any.
    Skuz likes this.
  4. Captain Video Augur


    No, because personally I wouldn't bother with them to begin with. I could easily skip the entire expansion. Much better purity augs show up later, and they can be mixed in slots 13/14. TBS does introduce fellowships, which last for the remainder of the game. Other than that, meh.

    In any case, the 48 hour estimate is too high. As noted earlier in the thread, the highest purity raid aug in TBS costs 1000 Orux. The mean mission payout is 100 Orux, so that's 10 missions at 30 minutes or less per mission. The remaining augs are all a LOT cheaper. And the missions nobody does will pay out up to 200 Orux per run, and they're not really more difficult than the others, you just have to work through the mission progression to unlock them. Doing the progression is a logical time commitment if you decide you want the augs in the first place. The first few missions in the progression will always have reduced payouts, so any player who tries to make do with just those, deserves the torture, IMHO. :)
  5. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    I wouldn't object to them keeping the mechanic we have now, but increasing the amount you get at each level. To bring it in line with the way they increased other coins. You still get more for doing the missions that aren't being done as much and those missions being run a lot still give less just more than you get now.
    Skuz and Machen like this.
  6. Machen New Member


    Seems reasonable to me by comparison after doing 366 ldons in 8 weeks at ~25 minutes a pop (3x the total time you estimated for this.) Not non tedious or easy, but easier than completing some other content. Everquest is good at tedious. 1 hour a day for 2 months for bis group gear seems reasonable.

    The reality is that no one is going to actually farm full purity augs, or at least close to no one, because you don't actually need all purchased purity augs--the upgrade is fairly small, especially comparing it to the dropped ones which aren't hard to get. And anyone who IS doing it isn't going to do the "average" orux mission, they're going to do the 2 sillysar missions that give twice the average, which will cut the time you estimated in half.

    Edit to add--No one will be rocking full tbs raid gear in 8 weeks anyway, except maybe on mischief where they will give you 5x the raid loot per mob.
  7. Xhartor Augur

    Since you don't play on the server, where are you getting that data from?
    If you read Mangler discord channel, you won't find support for how the system currently works, you will find complaints about it. I personally haven't seen anyone defend the system when people complain about it in game. The players who are actively dealing with the content generally think it's a dumb system.

    The system doesn't add to the challenge, it's just designed to slows down the pace that player min/max and complete the content. The grind caused from the smaller the rewards does encourage people to start raid logging, wait for SoF or just lose interest in the server in general.
  8. Captain Video Augur


    No I don't play on Mangler, but I have played on other TLPs and continue to play on a TLP today. It works exactly the same on every server.


    There's no such thing as completing the content. You can spend as little or as much time on it as you like. There is always one more piece of gear for one more alt. As others have told you, these augs have little benefit in a raid setting anyway; TBS was when the purity system was first introduced, and the itemization wasn't all that well-developed. There are much better augs with much better stats coming down the road. A whole lot changes in SoF when heroic stats are introduced.

    I've done all of these missions on a Live server, which is far more than most of the complainers can say. The ones with the boosted returns aren't really as difficult as you have been led to believe. Try a few of them before you give up so easily. And if you want to argue to get the devs to boost the currency, that argument will be much stronger if you have done more than just the first few missions.
  9. SoandsoForumUser Augur

    Cool story, but this is the TLP forum where we talk about how things function on TLPs. It's obviously been awhile since you've done them since you tried to list the learning to teleport mission as a good idea when it's part of the access chain thus it's worth basically zero reward.

    It's really demoralizing to run the access missions to get folks keyed over and over because there is no backflagging system in place then get bad rewards for it on top of it. I've seen more people who enjoyed LDoN then I've heard on Mangler who are pleased with how the mission scaling works. It's too late for us and I'm already putting in my rearview mirror but this expansion could easily have some massive quality of life improvements for future TLP servers if they just turn the stupid scaling system off. It can take 6~ hours to do the access mission line and you'll walk away with less than 150 rep at the end of it.
    Tymeless and Xhartor like this.
  10. Captain Video Augur


    The teleport mission to which I referred is named "Where There's A Will", and it is mission #6 in the access sequence. At a typical time of 30 minutes per mission, that means it should take only about 2.5 hours to get to that point. I said above that the trick to get max efficiency out of your farming time is to do the full progression sequence and not just make do with the first few missions over and over.

    This is the only group progression in the entire expansion, and if you're complaining that the access sequence takes six hours beginning to end, you're not going to survive much longer in the expansions to come.
  11. SoandsoForumUser Augur

    And you're wrong, the entire access chain is hot garbage for rewards because it's all most people do since we're all raiders on a TLP in this expansion for a very short time.

    Can you find where I complained about it being 6 hours? Oh wait I didn't, I was instead talking about the rewards you get for the entire chain vs the time investment? Then that makes your comment another attempt at an elitist non sequitur? Just checking.
  12. Captain Video Augur


    It's a TLP server. It follows the path of the original game in-era. The game was designed to have group-level content in each expansion, for the benefit of those players (of which there were once many) who didn't want to raid. In a shortened schedule on a TLP, you are not likely to have enough total hours to do all the content you might wish in-era, you'll have to make some priority choices along the way. If your priority is to raid, then you could simply skip the group content, problem solved. The devs aren't going to go back and completely re-design the game from the bottom up to suit the whims of a few people on a TLP.

    As I've said before, you may have much better luck if you lobby for a currency adjustment rather than a mechanics change.
  13. Accipiter Old Timer


    Why? He's exactly right. A lot has changed since TBS originally launched.
  14. Accipiter Old Timer


    Maybe. Lots of us did do them in-era, though.
  15. Captain Video Augur


    The comparison was being made between one current server (Mangler) with a combined total of 20+ Live servers in-era, with at least 15+ guilds PER SERVER in-era. The point was to claim that more people are trying to do this now than was the case in-era. Care to think again? Even if the comparison was intended to be made between current Mangler and any single Live server in-era, the most populated of those would have had at least double the population and double the # of guilds that Mangler has now. He's wrong.
  16. Xhartor Augur

    I said it had a larger top end population. Mangler Progress currently shows 11 guilds that have completed Solteris in Era. BloodThrist and Pals aren't listed on the site, but both guilds are farming it. I am not sure what Pavilion of Cynosure current status is regarding completion, but I know they are raiding in Solteris. I also don't know Europa or Knightmare guild current status. I find it VERY hard to believe that a single live server had 13 or 14 guilds raiding Solteris in Era. While live servers in era servers probably had a larger population, the bulk of those player were in group content gear and couldn't push these mission at anywhere the speed the volume that Mangler player base can. The only server that has had a comparable player base Mangler in TBS has been Phinny.

    The TLP experience is much different from the original live era experience of most expansions. If your only experience with the content was 14 years ago, it might be a little out of date.
  17. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    TBS missions were heavily hit back in the day, the ring was well worth doing the missions for even if you had no intention of raiding Soltaris I know I had it on a few alts back then, not just the main who raided.
  18. Captain Video Augur

    No. Just no. Even in 2007, Live servers were very top-heavy and the majority of players were in raid guilds. I can't go back in time and give you exact numbers, but any of several Live servers could have had 15 guilds raiding Solteris at some point in-era. TBS was not well-received as an expansion overall, and a lot of guilds were content to rush through and be done with it.

    Plus you keep missing the point that these missions were designed as group, not raid, content. There are only four augs on the vendors in total which are raid gear-specific. Everything else was considered group gear. Yes you can grind the missions a bit faster if you're all in raid gear, but that was not the original design intent; it was supposed to be giving non-raiders something interesting to do.

    From what I have seen in TLP history so far, and there many other examples of this: the devs aren't going to consider attempting major mechanics changes in content just because the timeline is shorter. Everyone knew the timeline when they started, it's what you signed up for.
  19. Accipiter Old Timer


    I'll pass.
  20. Xhartor Augur

    No single live server had anywhere close to 15 guilds raiding Solteris in era. When it comes to guilds who had progression tracked you had maybe 2 guilds raiding in Solteris in era per server.

    http://www.elitegamerslounge.com/home/progress/index.php?expansion=TBS

    As for the group vs raid. In era there is a huge gap between raiding gear and group available, which changes the pace that mission were run. The TLP have an easier time pushing the content in volume, which impact the system.

    The devs have tons changes for the shorter timeline on TLPs...
    SoandsoForumUser likes this.