So i wanted to create this thread to discuss two issues that i hear commonly about the OMs, and my suggestions to improve on the current system.
Online Missions are boring. And i agree wholly with this. The current online mission system boils down to who can put together a strong enough team and click quickly enough. There is almost no reason to play beyond the first couple of hours. And things will only get worse in any given season as time progresses. Pool B will grow each week, and the competition for the small pool of Arks will continually increase, creating more of a need to rush through everything, including the eggs, to try to get the Ark. These are week long events that are primarily over in the first 5 hours after the event starts. Why even make the event a week long at that point? You may as well make the event 24 hours long with a week between events. There is also no variety between the floors. They get progressively more difficult, but they are all the same design, all the same Arks for the floor groupings, its very monotonous after a point, and over extremely quickly.
My Suggestion: Instead of doing a dungeon, why not do a large scale tile map. You could do alot with this approach. Say create a 25 x 25 tile map area with a trainer you must find and defeat to progress to the next map area. Each map area and trainer can become steadily more difficult as you progress, and you must defeat all x number of trainers to “win” the event Ark. You can vary the art work, the map shape/size the Arks you will face, etc. It allows for alot more variety than a dungeon does, and its much more interesting because you have a larger surface that you must search to find the trainer you need to defeat in order to progress. You could also do quite a few other things with a system like this instead of a dungeon, such as address complaint 2.
Component Arks in the eggs are almost pointless. And i agree with this too, for two reasons. If you are in pool B and trying to win the event with the current dungeon system, you have no time to even attempt to try to get the Arks from the eggs. You cant take the time to even try or you will not succeed in winning. This will even get worse as time progresses in a season. Yes i realize that this is designed that way to encourage the purchase of gold and golden mission eggs to try to get these Arks. But there could be ways to still encourage this and provide people the ability to get Arks that they may have missed due to being in Pool B.
My Suggestion: Keep the current method for the components of that week’s Ark, this keeps the exclusivity of that week’s Arks. But, either in a tile map system, or the dungeon system, make a previous week’s component Arks available for capture, or even that week’s if you wanted to. Put it at a low spawn rate so still not everyone will get them, on par with the hatchlings i would say. This way people don’t have to wait 10+ weeks for a crack at an Ark they may have missed in a previous event, they can try to find the location of the spawn and attempt to farm for their components to get something they may have missed or been stuck in Pool B for in a previous event. i get that part of why everything is not obtainable currently is to increase the longevity of the game. But 1 new Ark a week to a limited number of people that gets progressively more difficult as time goes on in a given season is going to get so frustrating for players that people will stop playing. Longevity is good, but you could easily stall the game by making people wait too long for something. This approach also helps balance PVP and the future OMs. The current system of egg exclusives and OM exclusives gives rise to a commonality in these types of games. You get a core of elitist players with the exclusive Arks, who are then able to use those to their advantage to get further exclusive Arks, and the cycle progresses that way. Leaving less lucky players, and new players so far behind the curve that the game loses value to them, and they are not able to be competitive at level with everyone else.This would even the playing field, while still not giving absolutely everyone everything all at the same time.
I strongly disagree, here. They aren’t boring at all- it’s extremely exciting to push through the dungeon as quickly as possible, with an optimized team, racing against the clock. It’s a time trial of sorts. The only change I’d make is to have non-randomized dungeon floors, so it’s at least equal among players (as the randomization will become an enormous factor as the season presses on).
Here I *do* agree- the eggs need to be replaced by some other system that doesn’t slow us down. Timing eggs is difficult and takes time; during a time trial, time is precious. Further, I personally feel the game should discourage egg-timing. So please take away all the eggs- what would be preferable, in my mind, would be to stop the fusion nonsense and just make the event Arkadians able to evolve. Have the one gold egg at the end, still, but remove all the others. So you have one free shot at it, could purchase more shots, and players aren’t impeded on their way to the objective.
If you want to make this a time trial, then that is what they should make it. Currently peer pressure is what makes the event a time trial, not the event itself. If you want to make it a time trial then it should be something more like, the event lasts x amount of time, get as deep as you can get. X number of players who reach the deepest get the reward. Or something similar. The events are week long. Why have a week long event when the prizes for the event are gone after 5 hours. If a “race against time” is what the devs are wanting the OMs to be, then they should be shorter, and more frequent, and absolutely not have eggs, because the eggs serve no purpose other than slowing down the player who cannot afford to take the time to actually use the eggs. The only arguable reason they have a week long event is so players can still try for the eggs after the event Ark give away has ended. If that were taken away after the winning players have been decided there would be no point in the event existing anymore
And my point is not to get away from the time trial aspect, but to make it more interesting than “enter the dungeon and find the stairs”. Online missions can be so much more interesting than they are now, while still maintaining the excitement of a timed event. Winning an exclusive Ark is really exciting, but why shouldn’t the environment in which that happens be more interesting and take longer than a few hours?
And you could still have the golden mission eggs be purchasable from one event to the next, just not have eggs be given out at each stage of the event
They are repetitive, yes, but that’s how the game is. You play the story and eventually farm but what you do is always the same thing because the only reason you (or at least i) play is to get new monsters and that’s exactly what the OMs are for. And the thing about having a map and NPCs is cool but you have to remember that they are not a company like EA with thousands of developers and there is only so much they can do every week. Also i’m absolutely against eliminating the egg. If you don’t want to rush the event just relax and time the eggs, it’s really not that hard. You could have an option to store the eggs you get and open them later but DO NOT get rid of them.
One thing I don’t like is making missions about luck. Why should the luckiest get the reward? I think the most skilled should get the reward. And that’s pretty close to what we have now, though we’re not quite there. There’s still too much of a luck element and finger tapping/swiping speed element.
I, personally, love the idea of having a sort of infinite dungeon that progressively gets harder and harder. Let people tackle it for a week, and at the end, grab the top 10% people who are farthest. Give them the reward through the bazaar or something.
This would require a very different system coded in, though.
I don’t think the idea is perfect. There are a few flaws. But it’s an idea, and maybe it can be improved from here or can serve as the basis for other ideas.
The by far biggest flaw imo opinion is the egg spin, or more like the fact that it rewards 5k gold. Since its easily timable, you can aquire immense amount of gold in short period of time, which completly ruins the fun of the game.
That being said, i have to agree with slighter about the weekly mission. So far i won everytime, and probably been on the top to. But i feel that it’s wasted when you have to rush through it. The short time it lasts though its fine (about 20 min). I think it’s as skillful it can be atm, i don’t agree that you can get screwed by the randomness since theres an obvious path every time. And if you have the best monsters you will finish faster.
Otherwise when taking in consideration the price this is on helluva game.
we are making variations, you have to give us time! we have to code it and upload an update. a) world map, first x to find the event monster gets it B) x percent who got to the deepest part etc. we will see what we can do, all those shouldn’t be hard to code.
I like the dungeon part, but the world map idea… actually, that’s pretty interesting. I just worry about it being completely luck-based. I like to feel that I can get the reward with skill, and not lose it because I got unlucky.
I wonder if there would be a way to make it work in a way that’s less luck-based.
These events are the same as in real life. The stronger only get stronger, the richer only get richer.
Make these events so that EVERYONE regardless of their lvl / timezone have a chance to win.
It’d be cool to see the online missions more integrated into the single player/world map, where it’s more like a treasure hunt and less like an OP dominated run through?
I think we’re all just starving for new monsters tho, tbh
I have a few goals in my suggestions, I like the ideas that Admin put forth, and i know you are a smaller company and that only so much coding can take place in the day, just wanted to put forth some thoughts and ideas.
My main point though was that there needs to be a balance put in place to prevent a power imbalance from developing as time progresses for both new users, and for users who do not get the OM Arks. As time passes players who consistantly win these Arks will most likely develop a significant advantage in the PVP aspect of the game. If a season is 10 weeks i would say this will be abundantly clear by week 6. I think that waiting until the end of a season to release some other method to acquire the recipe components for the Arks from that season will lead to a PVP environment that becomes increasingly unbalanced and very difficult for new players to enter.
Balance is key to a productive and competitive PVP arena, and even now it is a bit lopsided. I think as time progresses this could be evened out by making the previous OM arks available earlier rather than later. Since alot of them are trending to be on par with the Arks available to egg timers and gold buyers.