Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105553&page=1#10 Author: Typhlosion Time Posted: 3/23/2023 at 6:45 PM [quote=2698594] As someone who has loved this game for so long, I have to agree. The LG has been forced down our throats. I remember when Krin first announced it - this new, epic "MegaZone" that was supposed to lead us to salvation. Well...one of the reasons I stopped playing this game so much was because everything had become so centered around the LG. Always. It feels like such little reward for so much grinding; and forcing players to interact with it just to get anything in the minifests? To be completely honest with you, I hate it. It hurts my heart to see that it's gotten worse. WoL used to have its own zone. You used to be able to participate from Astryl's Tranquility and the Orchard. You used to be able to do a lot of things. It just sucks, man. [quote=2698710] I even remember it being possible in a fest to get items from the bandit dungeons in Esior's Haven - whatever happened to that accessibility? Why did we have to remove it? Why are we going so far backwards? Krin himself said that, when he announced the "MegaZone", that the LG was not permanent. It was never meant to be. Why is so much effort being put into something that is supposedly going to go away? What happens to all these minifests when we're out of Beta - or are we ever getting out of Beta?

I absolutely agree with all of your statements. I left the game for quite a while (I believe about two years?) because I was just so. . . bored with everything. I came back and soon enough realized "wow I can't even do any of this. What's the point?" And the only thing keeping me on was breeding. Why do we need to sink so much time into the LG when its:
1: not even permanent
2: pretty boring (at least for me)
Even some of the veteran players don't want to sink that much time into it. I just found out yesterday that there are 13 different quest thingies and then 3 temples after that. So why should we be forcing new players, who just want to play the festival and game, into the LG? It honestly feels like it's pushing players away rather than enticing them into the festival.

More options for participation can only be a good thing (as long as things like daily tasks don't become more cumbersome by requiring *all* rather than *any*). However, one point in favour of the mini events being in the lost grove rather than a seperate zone like the festivals is that event grind and lost grove grind don't become two seperate chore lists like when there's a seperate festival zone you have to switch to for festival participation.

Again, having options for newer players to participate is important, especially since they are new and don't have the broader perspective of these being the minor events. It must be a lot harder for newbies to feel excited about the event calendar when their first experience is with an event designed to help spruce up grinding at end game, even if I do like that these events are meshed in nicely for those of us doing the lost grove.

I understand not wanting to give those in the LG two sets of completely different daily tasks to grind to, but... imo, that's not really enough justification for almost completely locking the event to the LG. The way the megazone was originally described was a timesink to keep players occupied outside festivals while other things on the site were worked on, and while I understand that may have changed a bit over the previous years, the minifests becoming nothing but some bonus drops and bosses for the players in the LG is wildly unfair.

So, a proposition: I am not a coder and have no idea how it might work, but would it be possible to at the beginning of a minifest, allow each player to pick from one of two sets of daily/overall task lists? You'd be locked into the list after making your decision, but it could allow players to pick between tasks focused either in the LG or in the mini fest zone/Ethernia, whichever is potentially available that particular fest. I'm not opposed to the drop rates being higher and having some of the top tier rewards being found only in the LG, as long as there are still daily tasks and bosses to drop avatar items available outside the LG for players who haven't reached it or, like myself, just don't want to deal with it.

Between the fact that I didn't get to do this festival beyond daily login stuff, the lack of accessibility, the removal of an accessibility add-on due to toxic ex-player, being ignored and picked over in the now locked thread by the admins, the fact that the ppl who wanted to push my post weren't allowed to before the lock, and the lack of privacy features, I just feel really. Really. Really burnt.

Just to add an official statement to this.

Yes, I agree entirely with this sentiment. However, the problem is feasibility. At this point in time, Exploration is divided into three entirely different sections. The first section is Viridian Meadows and Umbra Forest. The second section is Astryl's Vale and Festival Zones. The third section is the Lost Grove.

There are two major issues with this. The first is that just simply the coding required to keep these three sections in sync is significant and takes both a lot of effort and time. One tiny change has to be duplicated between all three sections in three entirely different ways. This is why there are so many differences and discrepancies from one section to the other.

The second is that the difficulty and challenge is massively different from one section to another. A veteran player could probably defeat a couple thousand enemies per hour in Viridian Meadows, for example. They could probably easily defeat a thousand+ enemies per hour even in Astryl's Vale. On the other end of the spectrum, a newer player wouldn't even be able to defeat a single enemy within the Lost Grove.

When combining these two issues, it creates a situation for me where it's virtually unfeasible to maintain content succinctly between the different sections. The only solution is to code three entirely different reward systems, one for each section, for anytime we do limited rewards. This code would have to auto adjust based on a player's progression as otherwise everyone would just go to Trollsblight Caverns to farm as they can just slaughter enemies at light speed.

In the past, I have attempted to code some reward features into three different systems for players of all progressions, but as emphasized here, it's incredibly time consuming and tedious. To do this for every event becomes incredibly time consuming. It already takes me a couple hours to set the Lost Grove up for a new event. It would take 3-5x that amount of time to set the other regions up and calibrate them based on people's individual progression. Generally, I don't have that amount of time before an event begins to spare just for in-zone loot rewards.


All of that said, this is a massive reason for me wanting to rebuild our entire exploration system from scratch - which is 100% planned and near the top of our list of major projects to work on. Our new exploration systems will handle all of these problems and more. Once finished, the game will feel like new. Everything will be in sync with each other. Progression will be nice and smooth. Limited time events will have their own location so that they don't have to constantly be injected into static content. Etc, etc, etc.

Sadly, until we can reach that point, everyone will just have to make the best of what we got for now. The one positive though is that if a player wants to, they can reach the Lost Grove fairly quickly. It generally doesn't take too much time to speed run through the first three regions of content and to unlock the Lost Grove.


I hope this helps to provide some additional context on the reasoning behind gated content.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105553&page=2#12 Author: Wavypavy Time Posted: 3/26/2023 at 7:05 AM More options for participation can only be a good thing (as long as things like daily tasks don't become more cumbersome by requiring *all* rather than *any*). However, one point in favour of the mini events being in the lost grove rather than a seperate zone like the festivals is that event grind and lost grove grind don't become two seperate chore lists like when there's a seperate festival zone you have to switch to for festival participation. Again, having options for newer players to participate is important, especially since they are new and don't have the broader perspective of these being the minor events. It must be a lot harder for newbies to feel excited about the event calendar when their first experience is with an event designed to help spruce up grinding at end game, even if I do like that these events are meshed in nicely for those of us doing the lost grove.

Just want to add my two cents regarding this.

I agree with this. I have played games that have a lot of event content (and Sylestia is in the top percentage with regards to that) and it gets exhausting and exasperating for me very quick. When there is an event going on near constantly, it can become tiresome to try to decide 'do I want to work on the main story, or do the events', especially if there is then content where you can easily and quickly fall behind if you don't work on the main story, but there are prizes you want in the events.

I do also agree that having ways for newer players to be able to participate is an excellent idea, and perhaps there could be ways that are locked somehow to prevent a more veteran player from exploiting it? (such as perhaps locked by pet levels) At least until Krin has the time to recode the exploration system.

It might also help if some of the rewards for doing the lower level stuff is still LG as it would give newer players a sort of 'head start' once they do hit the LG and might help lessen the grind for them.

I feel like there is a noticeable attempt to enrich the event with forum contests, and minigames like the tournament, and the card guessing game. Perhaps it's less noticeable because those are set to end after the event ends.

Perhaps for future events, side games with daily rewards would help? Like how the tournament has daily rewards for voting, perhaps the card guessing game could have had a daily leaderboard reward!


As for the grindy battling zone content and nurturing, I'm not a huge fan in general of games that demand so much of your time for trivial tasks like mowing through dozens of mooks, and I'm always more in favour of higher loot rewards with earlier caps. But I'm still having fun. Like, the battling system is genuinely compelling especially in boss battles.

Wow, that was fast! :D