Ranger - [outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+) - Forum

@Hank/Serleth: Yeah... pushing unfun challenges probably pushes people away from the game even more than not pushing them... I think that was part of the reason I quit within a week of reaching 40/40 in Perandus instead of sticking around and trying more dps-focused builds that can try all the end-content Versus Talisman (which I returned at with only 1 month left, and reached 28/32 the day before the league ended)... @Chrono: If all that is true, all the better for me... I can just lug around the ring I got with 14% IIR and 31% chaos resist and some other semi-useful stats, and only lose 50 IIR temporarily to reach +2% chaos resistance... I'm already in better shape since I picked up my 6L bow yesterday and equipped the IIR gem anyway	Posted by Piros#7740 on Dec 20, 2016, 8:46:17 PM Quote this Post
" hankinsohl wrote: RE 40/40 Breach Discussion Spoiler " Ah... I didn't know that the devs were, by design, making 40/40 much more challenging with the goal of retaining players. Will that actually work though - or might it prove demotivational and actually reduce participation? We'll see. The goal isn't player retention, although that might be a side effect. The goal is to give something more challenging / grindy for veteran players to work towards. But at it's core, it's just a way to please the hardcore players of the game. For my money, 40/40's been super easy. I'm glad for the change. Guardian kills are fine solo, I don't think a group is required at all. The sheer amount of high tier map drops you get will fund your next kill. " There's a point where something transitions from challenging but kind of fun to a job - and I think challenges this league have reached that point. I get what you're saying, that it feels more like work, and I respect that but, for me personally with the Essence challenges: * Two twinned runs (Core, Dark Forest) @ 15 maps apiece = 30 runs. * 100 Atziri's * 12 Vaal Temple bosses (4 maps) * 60 Izaros To get three done at the higher skill thresholds is only 34 maps. That's a day's worth of playing,and a bit of a currency investment. And like you say, grouping practically negates the cost. I don't really feel this league is that much harder, just more time-sinky but you can accomplish a lot of it sort of just as you're playing. If you're playing high tier maps anyway, you'll eventually get 40 guardian kills, you'll get 300 Prophecies complete as part of just playing, that realistically only leaves Uber as the one you kinda have to go out of your way to get done. I disagree that it's more work-intensive this league. I think it's just pushing you to play higher maps, and that's about it. I think where you're getting the "job"yness of it is twofold: a) You actually have to invest in the challenges more intensively (at least unless groups pop up to ease the cost) and b) The psychological impact of seeing "10,000" map tiers. Or perhaps you're just inherently a group player? That could be it. Playing in groups exhausts me, I have to play solo to enjoy the game. I'm playing pretty consistently at the moment, but not really going super hard and I've got 4934 map tiers complete, 10 Guardians down and 3 Guardian maps ready to go. Currently about 75 hours in. Only real difference I made is just I'm playing in reds. Anyway, regardless, I think you hit the point at the end of it: having fun is more important, and if pushing 40/40 is going to burn you out, then probably a good idea to skip that. =) Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.	Posted by Serleth#4392 on Dec 20, 2016, 9:35:00 PM Quote this Post
Yea, I prefer solo to group play because a) I've yet to play one of them builds that melts things with 6 player HP values yet, so b) my experiences in group play tend to involve chaining quicksilver flasks to keep up with the group and loot some things, while being unable to contribute much to the actual killing This is probably why the only time I group is for master rep (which I still like to do, even as its less important this league challenge-wise)... its much faster once you get all the masters in your hideout at Elreon 7 and can just do 1 super rotations... 42 master missions in a row in 45 minutes to an hour...	Posted by Piros#7740 on Dec 21, 2016, 12:09:21 AM Quote this Post
" Serleth wrote: Challenges " hankinsohl wrote: 40/40 in Breach League IMO, I think that Breach League is insanely more challenging than previous leagues. 10,000 maps as a solo player is insane, IMO. Yeah, I could do that, but would I have fun doing so? Absolutely not. Endgame grinds? Equally stupid, IMO. 40 Guardian kills? Maybe. If there was a group for this. Haven't seen any though. Solo.... 40?... maybe... but not if you have a job/family/other interests... and not fun even then. 10 uber kills?... WTF?... 100 regular Atziri kills was a pain in the butt... those generated about 6 to 8 complete uber sets... assuming 100% success in uber kills, you'd need to work regular Atziri maybe 20 to 40 percent more times just to get the full Uber sets.... which, meanwhile, a bunch of other players are after, making this challenge ridiculous 100 Uber Izaro kills... just great. That'll cost between 400 to 500 chaos for the Goddess Sacrifices assuming 100% success... not to mention how long that will take you just to do the runs... oh, and how long will it take you to generate 400 chaos? 100 Breachlord kills... not happening unless you group... check out global 820... I've never, ever seen anyone post a Breachlord kill group Fulfill 300 Prophecies in a Map - this one is OK, I think - a pain in the butt, but doable. Alright, so, a couple things here. Carl touched on this in Lioneye's Watch podcast. There needs to be a subset of challenges, aka four challenges for the push to 40/40, that are intentionally geared towards the hardcore player who really wants that extra thing to do and that prestige of having done the thing. The second function of this, which he sorta touched on indirectly, is that by having the difficult / grindy things in the challenge pool, it also provides a goal, inspiration, motivation, however you want to call it, for players to push themselves to become better in order to achieve those things. So there can't be a full set of 40 challenges that are completable (sic) for the average-skilled, solo player. Although I will note all the challenges can definitely be DONE solo, and aren't anywhere near as group intensive as you seem to be considering. You also seem to be neglecting the notion of trading, and given you haven't specifically said SSF, I'm guessing you're making your remarks in the light of trade being open. * Guardian Kills - I have 10/40 and I haven't even been actively farming T15s yet for T16 drops. You can also buy these maps if you need to. Guardians take about four hours to complete if you have a reasonably fast build to do it. And the map drops from running these alone will go a long way to funding Breachstones or Offerings. * Uber kills - Definitely the go-to option if you want to save the time-intensive nature of doing Izaro or Breachlords. Also the most profitable to fund literally anything else. It's a skill-check though, to be sure. * Izaro - Boring as hell, but you should be able to farm up at least 50 Offerings yourself if you're also pushing the 10,000 map tiers challenge. * Breachlords - You'll probably get ~25-50 yourself here as well otw to 10,000 tiers. * Prophecies - Again, something you'll get a lot of done just pushing map tiers. Which brings me to: * 10,000 map tiers. Assuming 10 minute maps, two hours a day (12 maps a day), which is a SUPER casual pace, running T9 maps will get you 8,964 tiers done, accounting for 83 days spent mapping out of the league. Now throw in an extra two hours each weekend-day, averaging out to 2.5 hours per day, per week, or 15 maps per day, that's 11,205 tiers done in 83 days of mapping T9 maps exclusively. Now of course you'd have to compensate for having to build up to T9s in the first place and run some T10-12s probably to make that compensation, but you get the drift. The real key here, casual or not, comes down more to skill level. You can very reasonably farm 40 Guardians, 100 Breachlords and 300 Prophecies putting in 2-4 hours per day. Guardians will contribute 640 map tiers on their own. Also, I think you misconstrued this challenge. It's map TIERS, not maps. Hence 40 Guardian runs = 640 tiers towards the challenge (T16 * 40). The issue is affording to buy the Breachstones, Guardian maps, Offerings, Silver coins, etc., which does require knowledge-mastery and planning in order to come up with one build that can do all that content, with reasonable speed, particularly farming the gated content and/or exclusively high-tier maps in order to be able to afford buying the missing pieces you need. But, it is doable. Completely solo. I typically finish 40/40 in a league with about 14 days /played, or 336 hours, or an average of 3.73 hours spent per day across a 90 day league period, but that's not accounting for the fact that I'm afk or alt-tabbed or whatever in my hideout for an hour out of every eight hours. So you have to chop off at least 42 of those hours. So call it 294h, or 3.25 hours per day of 90 days required to 40/40 at a reasonable pace. Am I a skilled player? Sure. Not the best, but good enough. And I guarantee you I'll hit 40/40 solo, if I decide to go for it. Which I probably will since I'll be trying to do Shaper myself for the first time, which requires Guardian kills and as such will net me 2/3rds of end-game grinds (Prophecies accounted for here). But now I'll draw your attention back to the start of this reply: " There needs to be a subset of challenges, aka four challenges for the push to 40/40, that are intentionally geared towards the hardcore player who really wants that extra thing to do and that prestige of having done the thing. In other words, 40/40 is meant to be quite a bit less reasonable than 36/40. It is not intended for casual players to be able to complete, but rather crosses the threshold into the serious / hardcore section of the player base. And I don't think there's anything ridiculous about that. Jesus man, do you stream? I have never seen another dude 1) so knowledgable and 2) so willing to answer every damn forum post except for maybe that summoner guy lmao. I'd be curious to listen to you on twitch	Posted by broseidon07#1963 on Dec 21, 2016, 2:43:27 AM Quote this Post
I do not. But thank you so much for your kind words <3 =D Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018. Last edited by Serleth#4392 on Dec 21, 2016, 3:12:33 AM	Posted by Serleth#4392 on Dec 21, 2016, 3:11:33 AM Quote this Post
" Piros wrote: This is probably why the only time I group is for master rep (which I still like to do, even as its less important this league challenge-wise)... its much faster once you get all the masters in your hideout at Elreon 7 and can just do 1 super rotations... 42 master missions in a row in 45 minutes to an hour... I got bored of doing master rotations a long time ago. I don't do meta crafts so all I really need is level 7 each. Only master I'd probably rotate is Zana, now. But I'd rather just crush the dailies then keep playing. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018.	Posted by Serleth#4392 on Dec 21, 2016, 3:15:40 AM Quote this Post
Maybe if I stuck around every league I would be less inclined to do Masters as much, but so far I've only been around for 0.9-0.10... 1.1 into 1.2... 2.1 into 2.2... and now 1.2 I might of gotten my masters up to 6... 2.2 I got my masters maxed enough for the challenges and the +3 bow self-crafted... and this league its even easier... Realistically, all I need is high Zana for map mods for challenges/etc... Elreon 7 for all masters in hideout... Elreon/Vorici 6 for their daily alt -> jew -> fuse... Cata 8 etc is nice if I want to make the bow myself, and the 7s I see for removing crafts... but I generally don't fiddle with mastercrafting much... I don't want to spend more than a few alts on an item that might not sell due to a flooded market...	Posted by Piros#7740 on Dec 21, 2016, 4:15:38 AM Quote this Post
The continuing 40/40 discussion :-) Spoiler I think we both agree that, for whatever reason, GGG has decided that it's necessary to make 40/40 completion more challenging this league than in recent past leagues. What have they done to achieve this... well, they increased time commitment this league, by maybe 20-30 percent. For example, 100 Atziri kills is now 10 Uber Atziri kills. Meanwhile they've somewhat nerfed existing top tier skills (Ancestral Warchief, at least for Facebreaker, dual-totem, for example is about 10% less effective as it was last league). So challenges are roughly 20% or so more difficult... and DPS is roughly 10% or more reduced than in previous leagues. You're not going to complete 40/40 this league nearly as easily as in past leagues. What does this mean... If I played as much as I wanted to without becoming bored or feeling that I was doing a job - i.e., if I played so long as I was having fun - in past leagues I'd be 40/40 about 1/3rd through the league. At that point I'd somewhat reduce participation but would roll some experimental toons. Later on I'd participate in races. This league... grinds are just no fun. Yeah, I could just do red map, red map, after red map, after red map, and do all the breaches, taking deaths as they'll inevitably result, and by spending 6 to 8 hours a day at this, I'd eventually hit 10,000 map levels... but then what? Kill 100 Breach Lords - doubtful that I can do this solo sans buying splinters. 10 uber kills? - another grind to begin. And so forth. ============ Bottom line: GGG sees dwindling participation in the user base as leagues wane. Their solution - make league 40/40 much more time consuming. As I've previously postulated - this is a lazy, "solution" - which, ultimately will backfire. Why? Because the purpose of a game is to make it fun to play. It's not to make it tedious/time consuming/turn it into a job. If GGG wants to maintain/increase its player base as leagues age, well... it's not a viable solution to force players to repeat stale content, over and over and over again until the new league is released. And, IMO, that's the approach that GGG has taken this league. IMO, it will backfire. My metric... at this league's end, how many players will be at 40/40. Metric 2 - and in fact much more important - how many players will still be playing the game (Steam player participation is an insight into this). IMO, no better than previous leagues, and, IMO, likely somewhat less. Metric 3 - the most important - and which we will not have insight into - how much money/month is GGG earning this league as opposed to last leagues. IMO... earnings/month will decline. Why? Because they've forgotten the ultimate purpose of gaming - make gaming fun/enticing/an escape from the real world. Last edited by hankinsohl#1231 on Dec 21, 2016, 7:41:00 AM	Posted by hankinsohl#1231 on Dec 21, 2016, 7:31:09 AM Quote this Post
" DankRafft wrote: How much currency on average would I need to spend to get this build going when I don't want to play self-found only? About 1c and a few stacks of alts gets it "going" because all you need is a +2 5link bow. If by "don't want to play self-found only" you mean you don't want to find the rarity/resist gear yourself to cap everything, 15-20c is overkill, really. Even early in a league you will find dirt cheap corrupted Drillnecks and you can get all your armor for 1-2c each. Crappy armor and the worst available goldwyrms/andvarius, granted, but they'll do fine if you take Cloth and chain node and the 3 resist nodes below scion start. Then as you progress with your armor you respect out of those nodes.	Posted by chimurestaurat#7524 on Dec 21, 2016, 1:45:46 PM Quote this Post
The continuing 40/40 discussion :-) =D XD Spoiler " hankinsohl wrote: If GGG wants to maintain/increase its player base as leagues age, well... it's not a viable solution to force players to repeat stale content, over and over and over again until the new league is released. And, IMO, that's the approach that GGG has taken this league. IMO, it will backfire. My metric... at this league's end, how many players will be at 40/40. Metric 2 - and in fact much more important - how many players will still be playing the game (Steam player participation is an insight into this). IMO, no better than previous leagues, and, IMO, likely somewhat less. Metric 3 - the most important - and which we will not have insight into - how much money/month is GGG earning this league as opposed to last leagues. IMO... earnings/month will decline. I disagree on one fundamental thing here. And that's the significance of the impact which you're insinuating. The general premise of what you've said (which I've trimmed for conciseness in quoting), I agree with. Having a semi-mindless grind to 40/40 is probably going to turn some people off. And while I don't dispute it will have some measure of impact in retention and financial consequence as well, I direct you to Essence stats, which clearly show spikes in people completing 24 or 36 challenges and stopping. Only 2.29% of players who completed a challenge got 36 for the Essence portal. Assuming that first bar line is precisely 2.33% (weird?) the 40/40 mark has about 1/5th the amount, which is 0.466% of players who get 40/40. Granted, these stats were with a month remaining in the league, so the numbers are slightly higher at the end of the league, but I'm sure you can see the trend here. They've made 36/40 slightly more challenging with all the Breach challenges, but you can achieve it with only missing out on grinds, map tiers, shaper kill, and your choice of ANY of: * Encounters III (Coffers) * Sextants * Div Cards * Upgrade Breach uniques * Kill Breachlords * Identify Breach uniques * Corrupted Jewels Not bad. It's really the 37+ push that's a lot more time intensive, and when you're only going to be impacting 1% or less of your playerbase who actually goes for it... Well, you can afford to experiment a bit. Which is precisely what Carl said, they're using this league as a bit of an opportunity to see if more grindy / challengy stuff is what the veteran players who push for 40/40 want. And they'll adjust from there. This isn't necessarily a long-term challenge design plan. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018. Last edited by Serleth#4392 on Dec 21, 2016, 5:02:58 PM	Posted by Serleth#4392 on Dec 21, 2016, 5:02:16 PM Quote this Post