Light of the Immortal - Developer Follow Up

[JJJ428]

I want to thank Sparton for taking the time to try and communicate their thoughts on this I know he is the liaison between them and us and can’t be a fun job.

That being said the more I read into everything being said it just pushes me away. Last year was a mistake people got too many souls and it devalues other souls. Well if this is how they look at things they completely misunderstand the players and this game.

When I got 6 immortal souls it motivated me for months it also made me willing to spend money on deals when I thought appropriate. Getting those souls did not make me think less of legendarys, getting my 20th desert marauder from one does. I know they are trying their best to communicate to us but the more I read into what is being said it just furthers my conclusion I am done with the game because they are not interested in players like me.

YUP I cleaned my inbox then.

[Patrice-1201]

I want to thank Sparton for taking the time to try and communicate their thoughts on this I know he is the liaison between them and us and can’t be a fun job.

That being said the more I read into everything being said it just pushes me away. Last year was a mistake people got too many souls and it devalues other souls. Well if this is how they look at things they completely misunderstand the players and this game.

When I got 6 immortal souls it motivated me for months it also made me willing to spend money on deals when I thought appropriate. Getting those souls did not make me think less of legendarys, getting my 20th desert marauder from one does. I know they are trying their best to communicate to us but the more I read into what is being said it just furthers my conclusion I am done with the game because they are not interested in players like me.

YUP I cleaned my inbox then.

Fully agree, I don't even see how this makes business sense... if you are after the new guys, give them something to cheer about ;-) fix Event Souls, make them get rewarded so that they stay longer, I was motivated before but I am less and less...

[Sparton_LOTB]

So my question for you Sparton is should we keep the immortal soul fragments for future events? Or will they become redundant and replaced with an upgraded immortal soul frag?

Like most other fragments, those exact fragments will not be claimable in the future.

The only fragments that are "refeatured" in future events are ones that are statically available (such as Rare Class Soul Fragments, Heroic Soul Fragments, Legendary Soul Fragments, etc). The intent for fragments made for specific events is that they are converted to Precious Soul Fragments once the event is over (or kept as a sort of trophy list, as myself and some other people do).

I see NF as testing the limits of their player base by making events slowly cost more resources and then slowly decreasing the rewards. I see price testing essentially, to find out what they can get away with. Events this month have markedly cost more ironite to achieve and absolutely offered less rewards.

This is something I largely track, and that should not be true at all. The "cost" of events is nebulous, and is largely tracked on a per-event sort of basis (Arena events have par Sands of War requirements, monthly character fragment events have certain expectations for Sands of Time to get the featured character/get a Lilith soul, etc), but the rewards have only become larger over the last few months. Hell, June itself has like... 9 different kinds of fragments to be earned, some of which are earned and/or used in new ways done in parallel with existing event reward structures, all done in parallel with an addition to the game to be able to earn more of the new Nat 5 fragments every week (Cyborg Eddie Fragments, Warrior Child of the Damned Fragments, etc).

If you have actual numbers to back up that claim, though, I'd be happy to see if I'm missing something.

Clansman Eddie is a natural 5 star.. so why is he only worth 10,000 essence at max and not the 12,000 like other 5 Star Eddies??

Other than a handful of exceptions*, all standard characters' essence values are based on their natural star tier, type (eddie/ally), and class. A W/M/S Nat 5 Eddie, at level 100, is worth 10,000 essence (which Clansman Eddie is). Only Gunner/Assassin Nat 5 Eddies are worth 11,250 Essence at level 100 (for example, Vampire Hunter Eddie). Nothing is worth 12,000 naturally (although some Nat 5 Eddies could get there with skill shards).

Basically, the "par" essence for a Nat 5 is 10k essence; it's worth more if it's a Gunner or Assassin, and worth less if it's an Ally.

*There's a known issue that Warrior Allied Soldiers give 2x the essence they should (which, be warned, will be fixed at some point, I just didn't want to mess with people's expectations of that for the time being), and the four Eddie "The Bird" characters are worth 2x essence relative to other Nat 4 allies.

But, nothing said about the server issues many faced?

In what is a hilarious bit of irony considering the prevailing discussions, the drastically increased activity during the beginning of the event caused server instability, despite what people were saying about how they were approaching the event.

There was a period of about 3 hours between 6 AM and 9 AM PT on Sunday where responses were slow, but the servers were never down, just struggling with load. It's not a simple thing to solve (getting more people to play more stresses the servers even more), but I'll be keeping that in mind for future events to see if there's ways the team can better prepare our server resources/event design to accommodate that.

Nothing said about why no 50 frag drops this time?

That wasn't explicitly addressed, but it largely had to do with aiming for making 2-4 souls achievable. If the drops were 2, 5, and 50, then either the 50's are comically rare, or getting a fragment drop at all would be even rarer than it was. That's why I went with 2, 5, and 10; at least the fragments would be seen in match rewards far more often (while yes, still being fairly rare).

In general, there's a fine balance between making the fragment drop frequencies stable (ie not too rare), while giving out quantities that feel like making reasonable progress, while meeting a goal for how many souls can be earned across the event.

[Patrice-1201]

There was a period of about 3 hours between 6 AM and 9 AM PT on Sunday where responses were slow, but the servers were never down, just struggling with load. It's not a simple thing to solve (getting more people to play more stresses the servers even more), but I'll be keeping that in mind for future events to see if there's ways the team can better prepare our server resources/event design to accommodate that.



That wasn't explicitly addressed, but it largely had to do with aiming for making 2-4 souls achievable. If the drops were 2, 5, and 50, then either the 50's are comically rare, or getting a fragment drop at all would be even rarer than it was. That's why I went with 2, 5, and 10; at least the fragments would be seen in match rewards far more often (while yes, still being fairly rare).

Sparton, i am sorry but this is simply not true, I am based in France so 9 hours ahead of you and I can assure u that from Saturday morning to Monday morning my time the game was completely unplayable.

[Yup]

Well.. there may be more frags... I can't argue that.. but the need to expend ironite to get those frags has seemingly increased. Yeah.. I don't have game data.. so yeah.. I don't have the stats. All I can point to is player satisfaction... which you don't have stats regarding either. It's a fairly poor argument to always cite stats if they aren't public record.

However, thanks for explain the essence. That does make sense. I was checking Aces at level 91 he was roughly 11.2 or something so I just lept to 12k at 100. Class being a factor didn't dawn on me.

[kkkreg5]

The "evidence" we can provide is our experience in game play during this past event.

1. Servers "struggling with load" should never happen during heavy grind events. This is the pattern, a heavy grind event, servers "crash" causing players to lose SOT, costing ironite to refill. (Money to be made here.)
2. Duplicates that are supposedly high odds against receiving, being pulled back to back. RNG is not functioning properly. Something is off.

[Liebhild]

Lot of "blablabla", lot "we know", lot of "we are sorry".

They are tricksters and so the write. If they would care about new players, why then BNW on L10?

That they are frauders is for me 100% clear, since one of them wrote, that there is no defense bonus (funny that he edited his post later and not for typos).

And that they think, that all players here are simply stupid:
"This is something I largely track, and that should not be true at all. The "cost" of events is nebulous, and is largely tracked on a per-event sort of basis (Arena events have par Sands of War requirements, monthly character fragment events have certain expectations for Sands of Time to get the featured character/get a Lilith soul, etc), but the rewards have only become larger over the last few months."

WTF costs were not higher on light of the immortal? Huh, yes, larger rewards? What are you smoking????

That's also a blatant lie, like the the one with the defense bonus.

@Cyborg Eddie Fragments: Useless, as far as I remember nowhere is written, when the next Fragments will come, so when will there be enough to get the soul? 1 year? 2 years?

[Blade]

In general I really appreciate the communication from the devs. And also I see some of the reason for the change - 15 souls in the immortal event last year??? And on the other side some players without even 1 soul?? I think I had 2 souls last year and as it was said 2-4 souls is ok I think as 5* Eddies are just very worthy and must me rare therefore.
The wording ("better than...") was misleading for many players, that's a problem - hopefully won't happen again. Because of that "wording problem", the server problems and the reduced drop rates I would really recommend to have the immortal event in a higher frequency in the future. Also because for players that do not have time to play in these 48 hours of the whole year (like me...), its a real unlucky situation. So please consider a) announce it long before the start to enable better planning and b) let it happen maybe 3 or 4 times/year if you stay with the 2-4 souls/event concept!

[hold]

In general I really appreciate the communication ...

If communication =

- lame excuses for no new content (since August 2017!)
- soon
- soon
- soon
- our events are great!

OK

[T-Man]

Well.. there may be more frags... I can't argue that.. but the need to expend ironite to get those frags has seemingly increased. Yeah.. I don't have game data.. so yeah.. I don't have the stats. All I can point to is player satisfaction... which you don't have stats regarding either. It's a fairly poor argument to always cite stats if they aren't public record.

However, thanks for explain the essence. That does make sense. I was checking Aces at level 91 he was roughly 11.2 or something so I just lept to 12k at 100. Class being a factor didn't dawn on me.

Sacrifice info thread.
http://forum.ironmaidenlegacy.com/sh...p-Me-Complete)