Underlight Discord Chat: http://discord.underlight.com/
Production Server: Online (Version 3.1.15)
Player Test Realm Server: Offline (Version 3.1.15)

Gen Rates

This is a game for roleplayers. We want your ideas how how to build the better game. Post your suggestions here.
Post Reply
User avatar
fr3y
Dreamer
Posts: 221
Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2016 8:38 pm
Character Name(s): Frey, Kendo, That one guy
Location: French Camp, Ca.

Gen Rates

Post by fr3y »

I'm writing this while very sleepy.
The cost versus reward ratios seem to be all bad on gens lately. I'm in a position where I can often gen a few hours a night and currently don't have a single 50.... AND i'm a seer.

it seems that like 6-7 months ago when frey was in Ool he was turning in 3-4 46-50 chaks at night for house reward , but lately I wake empty-handed much more often than not. If I do find a decent chak its inevitably slow- minimum

All of this is a bit frustrating, but it's tolerable.. Frey does ok for himself.

But I foresee a major problem with the patch changes.. and perhaps this has already been addressed internally... Not only will we inevitably be dealing with more pmares but they're going to be more powerful. Keeping stocked up will be a significant pain. Will I stop playing? No. Will I have to make the unfortunate decision, as a Calenturian, to sit out battles due to lack of gear? Definitely. And the worse part of that is if stronger dreamers are hoarding items then mares will get whoever they can. Newlies who love exploring are going to be in for a rough time.
I'm not asking for chaks to fall into my lap by any means.. It's like fishing to me, I love the rush of finding a 50. But as much as I've genned, it's gotten to the point that I've experienced far too many 3 hour gens with absolutely zero to show for it. This happens repeatedly now and really eats away at any motivations.
To make it worse, I have to devote significant for hunting flat eles also, which is a whole different thing I

How to fix it ? hell, I dunno.
let flats drop from gens. That would be nice. Or switch it up so maybe eles and shields are made common drops for mares and chaks and alts are almost exclusively gained from genning.. and how about standardizing the gens themselves? lock in the gens at harrow for example to only drop say sand or better as the secondary color? Sitting at harrow as it's throwing out orbit 22 chaks all evening is ridiculous. Also these "cycles" really screw us during late nights. I notice the best time for chaks is during the daylight hours when population is at its least.

A higher base color can only help things. Or standardize the levels of chaks according to the gen. If I was looking for low 31s and low 22 chaks I'd be in Bog Heaven at harrow lately because(see what i did there?)... but I'm not. And why not fix all these gens no one gives 2 craps about.. I guarantee a solid percent of the gens are barely used if at all. Why do the best gens spawn so many low chaks anyway? How about narrowing the output of some of these gens so if someone needs a focal chak in its 20s they can go to specific gens and not have to sit at the same place someone who needs 50s are trying to camp.

I'm not asking for all-powerful drops, just narrow the output range a bit which would inherently increase the quality of drops.

Today might be a big day for fighting and something I'd love to participate in, but thanks to lol earlier this week i'm very low on gear..
11:11:28: Purple Lace: Frayed logic
11:11:39: You Say: no
11:11:43: You Say: Freyed logic

I don't compete, I'm the prize.
Koi-Shadow

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Koi-Shadow »

Improving gens is something I want to ask dev investigate. In the past, dev has said doing anything to the fonts is a huge pain and ends up messing up the items in people's inventories also, but we have a few new eyes that could look at it now.

Contrary to what people will swear up and down to you in game, there are no "cycles" to gens. They use a random number generator. Human's brains are designed to look for patterns in things, even when they do not exist.
User avatar
Tember
Dreamers of Light
Posts: 390
Joined: Wed Jan 22, 2014 2:35 pm
Location: Georgia
Contact:

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Tember »

I didn't read this whole post but, I agree that this could be improved. I actually have been "genning" over the last few weeks and it sucks balls. Everything that was picked up was garbage :p

Cursed items should be left to the unsphered planes. IMO those are a risk for the young dreamers that cannot identify.

Maybe if the the gens could drop new and unique items in some of the higher lvl gens. For instance, Higher lvl chaks, chaks with new effects. Maybe even up the charges on the dreamsoul elems... It may give the players a new kind of excitement and a want to gen.
User avatar
-Lacie-
Ascended Dreamers
Posts: 351
Joined: Fri Apr 15, 2016 1:23 pm
Character Name(s): Purple Lace, etal
Location: Huntsville, AL
Contact:

............

Post by -Lacie- »

............
Last edited by -Lacie- on Sun Aug 27, 2017 12:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
~Lacie~
Keeper of the Eternal Shadow
Screchethan Kabal
"Cuz Clever got me this far, then Tricky got me in."
User avatar
Koi-Ajax
Dreamer
Posts: 134
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2016 5:46 pm

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Koi-Ajax »

I really wish this had come a little sooner since it would have allowed me to put into yesterday's patch. However, I did investigate this briefly yesterday and it should be possible to improve the genning process. It would be helpful if some specifics could be listed, though, since it will be an arduous process to come up with a means of reworking it without much guidance. Assume that the number of generator types will not change and the possibility of cursed items will not be reduced to 0. Otherwise please throw out any ideas you have, including specific item sets for each level of generator.
User avatar
Cherokee
Dreamer
Posts: 413
Joined: Wed Jan 22, 2014 8:55 pm
Character Name(s): Jade

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Cherokee »

I honestly think cursed items should be removed entirely from the generators, as they serve zero purpose but to waste time, that could be otherwise spent roleplaying or at least hunting. Even though there is a chance that weak items will spawn, they can still be used for something: hunting, given to newlies, and so on.

I brought this up a while back, actually.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=739&p=3799&hilit=Cursed+items#p3799
23:48:24: Laviticas: (( I am going to ****ing say this now because I will not be back in the stupid game.)

22:44:20: >Jawsman evokes his own dreamquake, which is bigger than Magnilia's dreamquake.
Koi-Echelon

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Koi-Echelon »

Modifying gens is actively being looked into. Continue sharing your ideas for improvement.
Erasmus
Dreamer
Posts: 47
Joined: Mon Feb 20, 2017 7:45 am
Character Name(s): Erasmus

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Erasmus »

Couple of suggestions:

1. I agree with removing cursed talismans.
1a. If removing them is out of the wuestion, seriously increase the spawn rate to lessen the effect of a "wasted" spawn.
2. I also like the idea of putting gens on house facades or in public areas that would ENCOURAGE grouping rather than spread people out over vast distances.
2a. If you don't want to put them at house facades, how about grouping multiple gens in tighter areas so that groups can still gather and be productive.
3. Increase spawn rates significantly. Genning is boring. Plain and simple. It's a time sink.
4. What if unique items could spawn? Power tokens maybe? Rare items like invis alter IRS? Items that can grant experience? I don't know the technical details of this but since we are making suggestions I thought I'd throw it in.
5. Put gens at houses. Just reiterating a great idea.
6. Power doesn't need to be increased, just the frequency.

That is all.
User avatar
Arnaya
Dreamer
Posts: 831
Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2015 2:25 am
Character Name(s): Arnaya

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Arnaya »

BARE MINIMUM:
- Halved (or more) Gen timers (Items disappear from gens in about 2 minutes. So there should really be NO longer than a 4 minute delay between spawns).
- Increase Dreamsoul drop odds from mares by 50% of current (If current "Chalk" first color is 3 to 8 on a random number, increase to 3 to 12 for example).
- Increased Shamblix/Horon odds of dropping 40+ chakrams of Slow and faster.

If More Sweeping Changes are even remotely under consideration:
For specific item sets...
- No alteror with a duration of less than 1 minute, from anything.
- No elem (That isn't cursed) with less than a 1 to 10 range.
- No chakrams below Slow Speed.
- No shields with Durability lower than 40
- Gen spawn times decreased by half, flat or VERY small spawn delay range (no more than 3 minutes variance in times. So, if Current spawn delay is 4 to 15 minutes. New delay should be 2 to 5 minutes).

Emphants:
1-10 through to 10-30 elems
1-3 min through to 1 to 10 minute alterors
Charm projectiles are fine.
Shields of 5% to 15% absorb, 40 to 55 Durability

Bogroms:
1 to 10 through to 10-30 elems
1-3 through to 1 to 15 minute alterors
Chakram levels are fine, but speeds of Slow, Moderate, Fast
Shields of 10% to 30% absorb, 40 to 60 Durability

Agoknights:
- Elem's no lower than 1 to 25, and up to flat 35
- Dreamsoul drop odds increased by 50% (From current)
- Shields of 15% to 40% absorb, 50 to 70 Durability
- Chakrams: Same levels, speeds: Slow, Moderate, Fast
- Alteror drops: Nothing lower than 1 to 2 minute duration, but that's pretty close to what they drop now.

Shamblix:
- Elems 1 to 25 to 1 to 50
- Alterors Same as current, decrease cursed chance by 50%
- Shields 10% to 75% absorb, 40-99 Durability
- Chakrams: Same levels (increase odds of 40+ chakrams by 1 or 2 numbers in the generator range), Speeds: Slow, Moderate, Fast, V.Fast, Fastest

Horron:
Same as Shamblix, but double drops.

If that means changing what colors equal what, fine. But something along those lines at least makes each item USABLE. 1 to 10 seconds, or flat 2 seconds of an alteror... is utterly useless even to a brand newly. Same with 1 to 3 and 1 to 4 elems, and Minimum speed Chakrams (of any level. You'll hit more often swinging your characters blade than you will shooting a minimum. They're even tricky to use while hunting lesser mares in a few places). V.slow COULD probably be maintained... but they're only marginally more practical to use than Minimums.
The most important lesson I've learned over this past year, is not to let anyone make you cruel. No matter how badly you want to give the world a taste of it's own bitter medicine, it is never worth losing yourself.
Lu Chaos
Dreamer
Posts: 275
Joined: Mon Oct 27, 2014 1:44 am
Character Name(s): Lu Chaos

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Lu Chaos »

Focus Specific Gens - Plains for Flats, Plains for 12-40s and below.
Dreamsoul Specific Gens - Plain for Flats, Plain for 12-40s and below.

Mare Drops:
Horrons: Flat dreamsouls and strong focal chakrams.
Shams: Flat Dreamsoul, and good shields.
Agoknights: Pure dreamsoul, good and bad
Emphants: Newly leveled dreamsoul

Facade gen points like the man above my post said ^^^ which would definitely inspire more interactions via facade gatherings.

That's about all I can come up with for now, will post in another post once I can think of more things.
User avatar
Golah
Dreamer
Posts: 132
Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2014 7:15 am

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Golah »

Most planes have some specific focus about them, Albino caves is very Fatesender Dreamseer, The Pits Gatekeeper Soulmaster, so on so forth.

Some Gens should have that feeling to them to match the area, making a need to spread out where you gen, and why creates an interesting way to navigate the city, and interact with others, also gives a more important aspect to guarding your home and or area assuming that ever comes into play.

As for Gens themselves, and how that relates to forge, Gens were meant to me slower and less reliable than forge, that was one of the main things that made Forge so powerful, the concept to create items, WE wanted, when we wanted them, with the effects, and colors we wanted, that was why it was so hard to get, so hard to level, and in those days hard to keep.

If we want to look at it from a balance issue, all you really need to do is remove cursed items, and increase gen spawns by 50 percent, that alone would bring it to speed with Forge creation, as for power that in of itself is another issue all together.

Lets take the invisible gens for example, in about 1 hour you can gen maybe 20 items if you are lucky, of those 20 most will be semi ok, not Darkmare fighting okay but okay.

So lets look at creating what I call level gens there are 9 spheres so we should have 9 level gens

Thresh levels 1-4
Outter Rim of thresh first 4 portals towards houses
4-7
Just before houses outside planes 7-8

Hidden Gens, and guarded gens 7-9

Now level those gens with specifics, for example

1-4 Gens create 5-10 Min Alts, 5-15 elemens, 2-10 chakrams, charms, random exp token (range varies 1-10000 chance to obtain=exp=1/25000 exp) random equation so xp can flux between 1 xp and 25000
Build off that to cause and effect the other gens

Level 7,8,9 Gens 1-50/2-25/10-20/10-30 Elemen level 41-70 Chakram Shields (random) Alts 30-40-50 mins Random XP token 1-50000 chance to obtain xp =1/100000 random equation so xp can flux between 1 xp and 100000

The xp aspect is just as important as the reasons for changes to forge, to create a balance, right now there is very little balance between warriors and pacifists, and that leaves a small portion of gamers in the back seat, and makes for no so fun game play

I talked with Wish before about Forge and Gens, being where I stand on forge this would be a better compromise, and to be honest give me a reason to want to gen as it would make more sense to gen for most items, and forge emergency ones
Dina

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Dina »

Golah wrote:Most planes have some specific focus about them, Albino caves is very Fatesender Dreamseer, The Pits Gatekeeper Soulmaster, so on so forth.

Some Gens should have that feeling to them to match the area, making a need to spread out where you gen, and why creates an interesting way to navigate the city, and interact with others, also gives a more important aspect to guarding your home and or area assuming that ever comes into play.
We had focal gens in Idoaclese. It was awesome. You would only get chaks and elemens from them and they were based on one focus. Granted we would still get the shit items and it would take a while to get something good; however, it was still nice.

I still want gens to pop up 60s, considering we have so many 6th sphere and ups now.
Koi-Shadow

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Koi-Shadow »

Dev has figured out how to update and make improvements to the gens. Right now, they are focusing on improving the existing 4 levels of gens by removing many of the "junk" items, reducing the chance for cursed items, and improving the amount of dreamsoul elemens compared to other focal elemens. Adding new gen levels would take significantly more time and new gen locations would also require a client patch that everyone would have to download as well as likely take longer for dev to deploy. We also have the ability to change the timings of the gens now, but we will likely want to see the new gen tables in action before determining how much if any they need to be shortened.

The gens seem to be working pretty well on test server, so we will likely be pushing them to live as soon as dev has the time and availability. Stay tuned for more announcements!
Dina

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Dina »

Didn't the gens in Idoaclese spawn every 3 min, instead of 5? Can't remember, I know it was less time.

I'm glad yall are working on it, thank you!
User avatar
Tember
Dreamers of Light
Posts: 390
Joined: Wed Jan 22, 2014 2:35 pm
Location: Georgia
Contact:

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Tember »

Koi-Shadow wrote:Dev has figured out how to update and make improvements to the gens. Right now, they are focusing on improving the existing 4 levels of gens by removing many of the "junk" items, reducing the chance for cursed items, and improving the amount of dreamsoul elemens compared to other focal elemens. Adding new gen levels would take significantly more time and new gen locations would also require a client patch that everyone would have to download as well as likely take longer for dev to deploy. We also have the ability to change the timings of the gens now, but we will likely want to see the new gen tables in action before determining how much if any they need to be shortened.

The gens seem to be working pretty well on test server, so we will likely be pushing them to live as soon as dev has the time and availability. Stay tuned for more announcements!
Woohoo. This is great. Is this still happening??
User avatar
Noshkapana
Dreamer
Posts: 35
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2017 1:38 pm
Character Name(s): Nosh

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Noshkapana »

Cherokee wrote:I honestly think cursed items should be removed entirely from the generators, as they serve zero purpose but to waste time, that could be otherwise spent roleplaying or at least hunting.
I know I am new, so my opinion may not be worth much, but I think Cursed items are interesting and serve to tie into the lore of the game. Chaos, corruption, evil, etc.

I think it would be neat if instead of removing them, they were given purpose.

I won't begin to offer specific suggestions about /what/ to do, as my depth of knowledge is fairly shallow, but it would be neat if Purify could be invoked on a cursed item and resulted in /something/.

Just a thought.
Everyone's a hero in their own way,
In their own, not that heroic, way.
User avatar
-Lacie-
Ascended Dreamers
Posts: 351
Joined: Fri Apr 15, 2016 1:23 pm
Character Name(s): Purple Lace, etal
Location: Huntsville, AL
Contact:

..........

Post by -Lacie- »

................
Last edited by -Lacie- on Sun Aug 27, 2017 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
~Lacie~
Keeper of the Eternal Shadow
Screchethan Kabal
"Cuz Clever got me this far, then Tricky got me in."
User avatar
Koi-Ajax
Dreamer
Posts: 134
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2016 5:46 pm

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Koi-Ajax »

Tember wrote:
Koi-Shadow wrote:Dev has figured out how to update and make improvements to the gens. Right now, they are focusing on improving the existing 4 levels of gens by removing many of the "junk" items, reducing the chance for cursed items, and improving the amount of dreamsoul elemens compared to other focal elemens. Adding new gen levels would take significantly more time and new gen locations would also require a client patch that everyone would have to download as well as likely take longer for dev to deploy. We also have the ability to change the timings of the gens now, but we will likely want to see the new gen tables in action before determining how much if any they need to be shortened.

The gens seem to be working pretty well on test server, so we will likely be pushing them to live as soon as dev has the time and availability. Stay tuned for more announcements!
Woohoo. This is great. Is this still happening??
Yes, we are finalizing the testing of certain aspects. The feature will be deployed when we have the resources in place and the GM Team has signaled enough in-character progress has been done to initiate a change.
User avatar
Koi-Ajax
Dreamer
Posts: 134
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2016 5:46 pm

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Koi-Ajax »

Noshkapana wrote: I won't begin to offer specific suggestions about /what/ to do, as my depth of knowledge is fairly shallow, but it would be neat if Purify could be invoked on a cursed item and resulted in /something/.
Interesting idea.
Dina

Re: Gen Rates

Post by Dina »

Koi-Ajax wrote:
Noshkapana wrote: I won't begin to offer specific suggestions about /what/ to do, as my depth of knowledge is fairly shallow, but it would be neat if Purify could be invoked on a cursed item and resulted in /something/.
Interesting idea.
Oooo I like this idea! Maybe a strong Purify could have a better purpose somehow.
Post Reply