As for easier, I really doubt it. It's still going to be a challenge and it's still rife with its pitfalls and unique brand of mayhem. It just isn't 15 mobs per room (even in the desert) anymore, ideally.

If that's your brand of fun then I would counter recommend warcamps right back at you. At least that way you're not tanking the gameplay experience for other players since your warcamp is instanced.

Having a hunting area accessible by only a few professions without severe concessions is the same dumpster mindset that got us trashtier mechanics like spellburst and self-spell. Having a hunting area only accessible by MA armies and AoE cheese is arguably worse.

-james, bristenn's player

---

You think to yourself, "FFF-"

A giant white bunny hurls a powerful lightning bolt at you!

You evade the bolt by a hair!

I mean, it's absolutely easier though? That's subjective based on build gear etc, but either of my capped guys can super easily solo in there now whereas before I grouped them to be safe. I don't know what would have to happen for me to die in there now but it probably involves my internet connection dropping. I wandered around for a half hour earlier and at times went a full minute before even seeing a creature. I never saw more than 4, maybe 5 things in one room. I didn't see a fanatic summon even a single lurk; I think their lurk summon is either turned off or not working right anymore, really wrecking the favor generation ability in the area.

Ominous.

I enjoyed the goblinswarm-esque danger of the area. I dislike random maneuver sniping, or other "You have suddenly died" type of dangers. Like other posters, I like to be kept on my toes and be safe if I'm actually paying attention, and otherwise suffer the consequences.

Currently, it can get a little boring running around the area looking for a specific creature for bounty tasks. I don't recall having that problem before. Maybe they were just flukes?

:/

Pre-change Sanctum (in plat) was never difficult. Aside from my initial 'whats the mechanics of this area' forays, I never died at fresh capped.

It was super easy, super trivial, and I didnt need to use all my skills. I just 950'ed/518'ed everything. I'd cap essence VERY quickly and the loot was super nice.

After-change, I dunno. Its still not that hard. But shapers spawn all over which before I could entirely avoid (and I did, as they're the most dangerous thing there)...now I cannot. It actually got a smidge harder for me then it was.


Just my 2 cents

---

AuchandToday at 11:28 PM
I would like to reiterate: Whick is my hero.

What is love? BB don't hurt me05/13/2020
Whick's so helpful! He's our villain even in our backchannel chatter as staff. :smile:

GemStone has experienced a whole lot of positive and awesome changes lately. This is most emphatically not one of them, for me.

As an actual longtime and regular hunter of the Sanctum for the last multiple years, this has been the place I go for a challenge. This is where I go to really be kept on my toes, showcase my prowess, haul in the boxes and finally have a hunting ground where using many of my spells and abilities is required to stay alive. Otherwise, 2nd floor Nelemar is readily available to everyone, for an easy capped faceroll option.

Why did the Sanctum need to be nerfed to artificially inflate the Scatter difficulty? I don't want to hunt in the Scatter. I find it wildly inconvenient for a multitude of reasons, with exactly zero of them being: it's too challenging. Why could we not just fix Provoke to spawn less mobs specifically in SoS? It hasn't been a problem for years, as an established hunting ground, now suddenly we have multiple MA (sorry, "larger player") groups casting provoke. That seems straightforward to fix.

Sanctum swarms were a challenge, and there are a vocal number of sanctum hunters asserting to such. It was also fun, flat out. That was the most fun I've ever had in a regular hunting ground. It was by leaps and bounds, my favourite solo challenge locale. This change has quite sucked the fun out of the sanctum, for me.

To say that I am disheartened, or demotivated, would be an apt summary here.

The change feels heavy handed, and there was no discussion leading up to it. When I broached this in discord, the staff reply was less than reassuring. I'd still politely and sadly suggest that when we are contemplating changes to a longstanding capped hunting ground that many rely upon and enjoy, that we engage in discourse first. Especially since this is very longterm, high retention players being discussed, in what is a very sparse amount of grounds, for the total capped inhabitants of the game.

My opinion is offered as a 3x cap wizard, who has spent a whole lot of time in the same capped hunting areas, and Sanctum held a special place in my heart.

~Amanda, player of Treeva

I withheld my forum feedback until physically going out to hunt in the sanctum post changes. From my perspective, there are people offering "this is great" feedback who didn't regularly hunt this zone for years, nor have they loved and used it faithfully for years. That to me, is disingenuous.

>>I am all for options. You want easy? It was available. You want hard? It was available. Now, only easy is available.

>>What do you think we highly-skilled hunters are feeling now? What makes your preferences superior to ours?

+1 to these, in as amiable of a fashion as possible. A lot of people are losing their favoured challenge hunting mode, as a result of this. It is clearly a divisive and controversial decision.

~Amanda, player of Treeva

As well KRAWTON, I'm not certain how you hunt or what your profession is, or even who you are. Perhaps you could write a wiki guide on how to be a high skilled hunter, if it's not too late.

-james, bristenn's player

---

You think to yourself, "FFF-"

A giant white bunny hurls a powerful lightning bolt at you!

You evade the bolt by a hair!

"We want to have fun playing a game we pay for."

Exactly, James, we ALL do. So hopefully after a few days of monitoring and collecting data from the new changes a suitable compromise will be considered to benefit everyone. Equally.



Siierra O'Leigha
Faith Healer
Devout Follower of Imaera

Classic false dichotomy here: "because some hunters prefer a challenge that is more difficult than what I consider appropriate, they must be min/max profit hunters and their opinions don't matter." This is the source of the "intellectual dishonesty" if it exists.

I'm not familiar with gemstone code and whether this is possible, but what about two different periapts that influence how often creatures gen?

1. A black and silver skull and crossbones periapt. Full gen (as it was before), with passive PROVOKE type mechanism for SoS only.
2. A golden star-shaped periapt with the words "Participation trophy: You're Swell!" inscribed on it. Current gen, one per creature per hunter. Rub 5x a day to make any creatures above 1 "disappear into the ether."

Note, some of the above may have been tongue in cheek.

>>A golden star-shaped periapt with the words "Participation trophy: You're Swell!" inscribed on it.

You have to admit that all the condescending "We players who are more skilled hunters enjoyed it and now we are dragged down among the nublets" stuff is completely hilarious, though. There is nothing particularly difficult about any aspect of this game. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada.


Avaia, player of

:starts to say something, then stops. . . :

You're coming across as very hostile and angry, James. This makes it difficult to have polite discourse or a true exchange of ideas.

I'm looking for a compromise, as I think all SoS hunters who want to preserver their beloved area, as is, are seeking. I'm happy to listen to other perspectives.

~Amanda, player of Treeva

You may interpret my challenging of this campaign and its intent however you see fit.


-james, bristenn's player

---

You think to yourself, "FFF-"

A giant white bunny hurls a powerful lightning bolt at you!

You evade the bolt by a hair!

So the crazy swarms caused by the 8+ person group + 1235 aside, the experience of an "average hunt" has gone from:

Original style: Many rooms have 3-5 critters in them. Most rooms have at least 1. Occasionally you'll find rooms with 5-8 in them (those are the groups I'd really aim for).

New style: Most rooms have 0. You have to wander around to find rooms with anything in it, usually 1. Occasionally you'll find 2. I only saw 3 in a room a single time out of several trips into the area. There aren't enough periapt charges being created to sustain portal use, energy will have to be deliberately farmed at some point.

I hope this is revisited. :/

KRAKII

"It was super easy, super trivial, and I didnt need to use all my skills. I just 950'ed/518'ed everything." -- FudgeHJ

And this just highlights the point that was made: some classes have exceptional AoE capabilities.

Others got the shaft, because they didn't.

Hey can we just remove 950 and give wizards some ability that we can use guilt-free? Or I guess we could argue that we get the shaft in warcamps with the shroud mechanics. We get the shaft in OTF from the construct shields stacking RT. We get the shaft in the Rift with the 100% magic immunity. We are very well suited for aoe combat - please direct me to the appropriate venue for its use lol

Consider the value of earth lore in combination with that capstone spell. In what scenario should I be considering the value of casting 950 more than 1x/min?

FudgeHJ

It was super easy, super trivial, and I didnt need to use all my skills. I just 950'ed/518'ed everything.

This game is too easy for you! I found the "impossible" conditions quite challenging. I felt as if my every decision mattered. Every second of roundtime stacked against me was important. Every tremor rumble and feint was dangerous in the swarm, and to keep yourself safe you couldn't be encumbered with treasure. It was an amazing blend of fun and risk that left me feeling like Indiana Jones rolling out of the cave tunnel with a bag of gold at the end of every hunt - and I even came to love "that damn toilet drop" (the secret entrance/exit) that was incredibly annoying to die to at first but incredibly satisfying to survive when you figured out HOW to survive the fall.

SHAHRON

So the crazy swarms caused by the 8+ person group + 1235 aside, the experience of an "average hunt" has gone from:

Original style: Many rooms have 3-5 critters in them. Most rooms have at least 1. Occasionally you'll find rooms with 5-8 in them (those are the groups I'd really aim for).

New style: Most rooms have 0. You have to wander around to find rooms with anything in it, usually 1. Occasionally you'll find 2. I only saw 3 in a room a single time out of several trips into the area. There aren't enough periapt charges being created to sustain portal use, energy will have to be deliberately farmed at some point.

It is definitely intentionally that will have to wander about to find creatures. That's how almost every hunting ground works. But the old SoS wasn't just a matter of finding 5-8 creatures in some rooms. Numerous players would walk into back-to-back rooms with 10+ SoS creatures with great frequency. However, even after the change, the area can swarm quite a bit. Here's a clip from just last night, and the character died after walking into this:

[Sanctum Tower, First Floor]
Drastically unfurling from the narrow halls, the arc-shaped room expands into a sizeable foyer. Iron-caged lanterns, each alight with a sickly green radiance, are hung strategically in the outer most corners of the area. A pair of wall-mounted alabaster serpent heads with glinting bronzed fangs leap out from either side of a polished acacia archway. You also see a pale scaled shaper, a gas cloud, a lithe veiled sentinel, a white sidewinder, a deathsworn fanatic, a gas cloud, a patchwork flesh monstrosity, a pale scaled shaper, a pale scaled shaper, a patchwork flesh monstrosity, a shambling lurk and a lithe veiled sentinel.
Obvious exits: southeast, southwest, up

Then the character who went to rescue them also died. Wandering about to find creatures, then occasionally running into swarms (although not like the above with any frequency) is the intention and normal ebb and flow of hunting.

We do agree with there being an issue with how periapt charges are handled now, so there will be an change there in the future.

The suggestion of having one area swarm and the other area not swarm is not a solution, as it doesn't address points 2, 4, and 5 from my previous list of why the change was made. However, I've been talking with Auchand on some other changes we can make to add more challenge to the existing creatures without needing to change their spawn rates.

GameMaster Estild

It's amazing how closely parts of this thread resemble a twitter exchange between the Oompa Loompa in Chief and pretty much any bleeding heart he's targeted...

...nothing constructive to add, just making an observa... oh, my popcorn's done, carry on!

Starchitin, the OG

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

Apologies for the long post.

tl;dr: Either bring back the swarms to a compromise level like 6 per room being seen regularly (as opposed to the 15+ that were becoming common) or we just lost the only good "real" capped hunting. (Bandits don't count.)



And now the long-winded explanation...






I thought the Sanctum was some of the most genius hunting design in the game and explained why two weeks ago: http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Combat,%20Magic,%20and%20Character%20Mechanics/Character%20Creation,%20Stats,%20and%20Skills/view/484

For me, the design intricacy was inseparable from the swarms. The Sanctum enemies felt like they were their own team of characters, creating their own synergies and playing off one another's abilities.

I'd actually disagree with the idea that the Sanctum was ever "challenging"; it was usually either pretty painless or nearly impossible, depending on the profession. Rather than challenging, I'd say it was engaging because of the blend of fodder enemies, more challenging ones, the looming threat of FOF, myriad abilities to watch out for (lurk poison, snakes, Powersink, dispels), and simply feeling unlike any other capped hunting ground.

And in the absence of its swarms, there are now no capped hunting grounds I enjoy. All of them are either a slow, boring slog or an exercise in annoyance. (I'll admit I've never tried Nelemar outside the test server, but since almost everyone says it's the easiest and most scripted capped hunting, I assume it's in the "slow, boring slog" category.)




I do understand why people who play only one profession hated the massive swarms. There were many times I wanted to ragequit my cleric when I tried hunting solo--and this happened in every era of the Sanctum, not just the most recent months. The era when the Sanctum was new and I never ran into more than 6 or so enemies at peak. The era when enchanting potions could be infused with mana and wizards started flocking over. The era when enchanting essence had just been finalized. The era of multiple hunting parties of 3 or more.

At every turn, no matter how driven I was, no matter how hard I grinded, just when I felt that I could have thrived in the previous era, the Sanctum cranked up even further and went beyond my cleric's reach. The cleric survey, in fact, was born partly out of the combination of disappointment and frustration I felt over and over.

So yeah, I get it. I've been there with rage and hate for the Sanctum. (On my cleric, at least.)

But to that I say two things:

A - My wizard and bard and empath adored the Sanctum. No hunting ground is going to be equally enjoyable for every profession.

B - What's even worse than rage and hate, never mind worse than a love-it-or-hate dichotomy, is ambivalence. And that's what I feel now. It's true I couldn't survive a room of 20 enemies (usually), but it's equally true that I didn't even bother stopping in a room for less than 4 enemies and ideally tried to chase down 8 or more. Like I said earlier, the dynamics between enemies were what kept things interesting. And now it's not there.






All that said, let's look at the reasons for this change...

1) its spawn rates were unintentionally set up improperly compared to other hunting areas, we initially left them in place until it was clearly causing the other issues below:

2) it caused performance issues.

3) it became completely unhuntable by many professions who don't have as reliable AoE attacks.

4) it trivialized the hunting experience for those who do have reliable AoE attacks by taking only seconds to hunt.

5) it led to orders of magnitude more silver gain than other hunting areas for specifically those characters with strong AoE.

6) it was considered the hardest hunting area when it was not designed to be that way. The Scatter is meant to be our current capstone hunting area as is reflected by the creature levels.

#1 - I'm writing this off as a happy accident (well, happy for some professions).

#2 - Here's a good reason why the days of 25 enemies per room can't come back. The question to me is if we can get to a compromise point of, say, 6-8 enemies per room. Every profession has at least one way to hit 6 enemies with enough training, so in that range, no one could claim it's unhuntable; at best they could say they don't have enough exp to hunt it yet, or that other professions do it better. Which brings us to #3...

#3 - This to me isn't a reason to tone down a hunting ground (at least not to the degree of the current Sanctum), but if anything to elevate the professions who can't handle the swarms. Improved AoE skill trees are something I'd been hoping for from post-cap, even long before ascension was announced. Honestly, probably the most disheartening aspect to me in all of this is the question of whether swarms are being written off as a viable method of balance. Which brings us to #4...

#4 - I don't think this is a problem in and of itself, but only becomes one when #5 is in the picture. More on that in a second. For now, what hunting experience isn't trivialized with enough post-cap exp? Like I said earlier, I'm not even in the camp saying that the Sanctum was ever challenging per se, but it was definitely less trivial than other capped hunting besides the south Scatter.

The most trivial hunting in my eyes is whenever I only have to fight 1-3 enemies at a time--and I don't see how that could possibly be any other way. There has to be a chaotic, dynamic element that merits paying attention to, or else it's mindless enough to ask the question: why not just script hunt? And, of course, many people do script hunt... but where do they flock to? To me it looks like it's usually the slow hunting grounds. Makes sense to me, because the slower the hunting ground is, the more of an efficiency advantage the script probably has over manually playing.

#5 - Is there really no way to fix the silver generation issue while keeping a relatively swarmier area than other capped hunting? If not, that strikes me as a huge problem and something that should be looked into. Maybe a way to artificially add pressure to the loot? Or turn off boxes on one of the enemies and turn off gems on another of the enemies, perhaps?

#6 - I kind of already touched on this, but I don't think it was the "hardest" hunting ground so much as polarized between those who stood no chance and those who steamrolled it. See what I said for #3; to me that's a reason to bring other professions' AoE abilities up.

>I thought the Sanctum was some of the most genius hunting design in the game and explained why two weeks ago: http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Combat,%20Magic,%20and%20Character%20Mechanics/Character%20Creation,%20Stats,%20and%20Skills/view/484

I really appreciate this analysis. When I originally coded the Sanctum back in 2015, it was my goal to create a fun, colorful hunting area within the rigid constraints we apply to all capped areas (in terms of access difficulty, mechanics, etc) and to give Solhaven easy access to that hunting. Through a lot of collaboration, sometimes contentious, with GM Coase, I think it was pretty damn close.

Unfortunately, factors have changed in the intervening time that have made the Sanctum unsustainable and we needed to make a change.

I'd ask that you not assume that either I or GM Estild have become entirely dysfunctional in the intervening time. We're talking regularly about ways to bring that engagement back into the Sanctum without reverting changes in a way contrary to the health of GS. If you liked the original design, I hope you'll trust the designer to make judicious choices (within reason.)

>#1 - I'm writing this off as a happy accident (well, happy for some professions).

>#2 - Here's a good reason why the days of 25 enemies per room can't come back. The question to me is if we can get to a compromise point of, say, 6-8 enemies per room. Every profession has at least one way to hit 6 enemies with enough training, so in that range, no one could claim it's unhuntable; at best they could say they don't have enough exp to hunt it yet, or that other professions do it better. Which brings us to #3...

>#3 - This to me isn't a reason to tone down a hunting ground (at least not to the degree of the current Sanctum), but if anything to elevate the professions who can't handle the swarms. Improved AoE skill trees are something I'd been hoping for from post-cap, even long before ascension was announced. Honestly, probably the most disheartening aspect to me in all of this is the question of whether swarms are being written off as a viable method of balance. Which brings us to #4...

>#4 - I don't think this is a problem in and of itself, but only becomes one when #5 is in the picture. More on that in a second. For now, what hunting experience isn't trivialized with enough post-cap exp? Like I said earlier, I'm not even in the camp saying that the Sanctum was ever challenging per se, but it was definitely less trivial than other capped hunting besides the south Scatter.

>The most trivial hunting in my eyes is whenever I only have to fight 1-3 enemies at a time--and I don't see how that could possibly be any other way. There has to be a chaotic, dynamic element that merits paying attention to, or else it's mindless enough to ask the question: why not just script hunt? And, of course, many people do script hunt... but where do they flock to? To me it looks like it's usually the slow hunting grounds. Makes sense to me, because the slower the hunting ground is, the more of an efficiency advantage the script probably has over manually playing.

>#5 - Is there really no way to fix the silver generation issue while keeping a relatively swarmier area than other capped hunting? If not, that strikes me as a huge problem and something that should be looked into. Maybe a way to artificially add pressure to the loot? Or turn off boxes on one of the enemies and turn off gems on another of the enemies, perhaps?

>#6 - I kind of already touched on this, but I don't think it was the "hardest" hunting ground so much as polarized between those who stood no chance and those who steamrolled it. See what I said for #3; to me that's a reason to bring other professions' AoE abilities up.

Posts like this are helpful and I appreciate you putting thought into this.

Auchand

I think some players just wanted a capped hunting ground in Solhaven. People had been asking for it a long time - maybe 15 years, by the time SoS opened. (To be fair, River's Rest has been asking for about the same.)

There are also more than a few players who want an adrenaline challenge. I'd like to think there's a way to cater to the latter group without sacrificing the game's performance, but given the issues with Reim and large groups, I'm not sure the time is right for this. It seems like we're hitting a soft wall on the game's ability to keep up with what players are doing, just sending out too much garbage per cycle, cycling too often, or whatever. If we want it to do what the adrenaline folks enjoy, then we may need to make some bigger changes to other parts of the game. Changing spells and items and effects that players certainly won't like. Throttling connections. Dealing with badly-written scripts.

There are also some players who don't care one way or another and are just looking for the most efficient way to advance (or "gain" - whatever the gain might be). Despite what was cool about the Sanctum, parts of this discussion take us back into the murky areas of mechanics abuse vs. intended design, where the intent isn't always obvious to us. I suppose we can try to raise the bar or lower it. Let's say we raise the bar and it ruins the game for 10 players. Or lower the bar and it ruins the game for 15. Is then raising it always better? What if leaving it alone ruins the game for 25?

I really think there ought to be a way to load the code for instanced areas on another server. It creates a different group of issues (load/checksum/backup/etc) but it'd allow all sorts of stuff without impacting the main game instance.