43 replies to this topic

[Onyzer]

Edit: On community wish we added the Star Fragment to the box.

 

Thank you!

[Apocryphos]

Wow group of persons managed to get the mercenary system removed after inadvertently locking out the lesser/larger guilds from castle for 4 weeks in a row! clap clap 1 Guild carrying through mercenary system and winning at such a high rate despite it being RNG. Color me impressed. Complaining on the forums for a guild’s shortcoming can go a long way in getting what you want. This sure takes the cake in how anti-competitive Dragon Saga can be.

The requirements for participating looks great so no need to worry about guild hoppers. Only things that need removal now are the island system and the missions. Looking forward to the removal of the pvp aspect in EW. Starting 2018 strong!! More ways to hinder group of persons schenanigens! Woo!

Jokes aside, the only method in locking enemy guilds out of castle is to defend a dragon that dies under a minute for 20 minutes or have 3 separate characters in 3 separate guilds and win all three times... lawl

Sounds expensive….. Three times more expensive than what the mercenary system was! Yay more time to chase! Core drops under 30 seconds, 33% isn't going to help at all. The core and dragon need way more hp! Not 33%, more like 3333%. Especially when blitz tactics work, like after getting 100pts the rest of the guild enters. I’ve seen core and dragon drop under 10/30 seconds respectively.

Edited by Apocryphos, 11 January 2018 - 12:31 AM.

[VioletCat]

Thank you for the patch and I hope the restrictions will result in people sticking with one guild in the long run even though at first there might be less people being able to participate in EW. I agree with the others who said the core HP will probably still be very little.

 

Not allowing spawn camping in EW to me sounds like saying running with flags in BSQ is against the rules. Sure, it might make the fight annoying/boring but I think it's a flaw of the mode itself. So that would mean banning a viable strategy that many guilds already use. If it's done then how would it be enforced? But if there's a way to get rid of it that ensures it will make the fights better then I'm not against it.

 

To Apocryphos, personally I consider it fairer this way and not anti-competitive. The main problems were two: 1. people avoiding the 3 weeks waiting after you win; 2. two or more guilds (thanks to the mercenary system) fighting against one guild which results in questionable matches (something along the lines of 5-15 vs 20-25 from what I've seen). And even if the first point is hard to prevent in the case of people with many characters, no one will be complaining about the second one anymore. How many members each guild has in the fight will only depend on them.

 

My bad if I'm repeating things that have been said many times, tried to explain why in my opinion the Emporia changes are rather positive. They might make it more boring for some who are already bored of the normal guild vs guild matches that are decided by RNG missions. But I'm not certain that's the majority of the community.

[Apocryphos]

Those arent problems, they're mistakes.The bigger, higher level guilds should have more members, period. They have the larger guild capacity, choosing to participate in a tournament without appropriate attendees or opening mercenaries themselves while assuming they're against smaller guilds without mercenaries, is the guilds fault for underestimating.

This 3 week cool down after winning is some magical number pulled out of nowhere. It’s simply the time it takes to retake the 2* castle IF the guild loses it, which is pretty much guaranteed when the dragon is that weak. This “3 week wait” was bypassed by effectively winning an RNG match ie. mercenary, every week for other guilds.

Emporia will remain anti-competitive until winners aren’t forced to forfeit castle due to weak dragons, and when the fight isn't decided by poking missions.

PS: As it currently stands, the bigger guilds are just holding hands and singing kumbaya taking turns with castle while bullying smaller, lesser guilds because who cares about those guys.

Edited by Apocryphos, 11 January 2018 - 05:51 PM.

[Kristof3195]

I love the changes keep up the work. 

Gotta say Apocryphos ur arguments are valid except eh. The castle for enchanting and soulcrafting is anyways a pile of unlucky garbage so who needs it?

[VioletCat]

Okay, I know Emporia isn't the fairest game mode to begin with. I meant this change in particular doesn't make it more anti-competitive from my point of view at least.

They're not mistakes because no guild currently is able to get enough members to outnumber the mercenaries if most of them choose to help a single guild. Unless one of the big guilds decided to merc for another big guild which isn't likely to happen every week.

Weird to call 3 weeks a number pulled out of nowhere when it happened to be that way most of the time for the winning guild.

And yes, what's so special about that castle that every small guild needs to have it? Emporia is just a guild against another guild fight without significant rewards for the winners. What makes it worth it for me is that it's a way to work together with your guild even if in just a few fights once a week. And the mercenary system somehow discouraged people from working on their guild and encouraged them to rely on other ways to win.

I'm sorry since this discussion's place probably isn't in patch notes :/ So I'll be stopping here.

Edited by VioletCat, 12 January 2018 - 01:10 AM.

[Apocryphos]

VioletCat you and I clearly have very different view points I'm just glad you are passing them as opinions and not as facts.

In a sane world "removing" a system that helps smaller guilds compete vs larger guilds, is anti competitive there are no buts. The guilds that were carried were more likely to lose without the mercs, that much is true, but they gambled with the mercenary system and won. If that's not a perfect example of the mercenary system working, then label me blind. The changes regarding requirements to participate are perfectly fine, that'll stop the big guilds from sharing their players with each other.

Yes the castle isn't very attractive to specific group of persons, but to the big guild it's more of a symbol of prestige, while for the group of persons carrying smaller guilds it could be a display of dominance, an act of charity, or a statement along the lines of "get rekt".
But all in all the big guilds would've won eventually it is all rng in the end. They just weren't lucky the last couple of weeks.

My agenda is to make the mode more competitive, more PvP based, and more hp/defense for the core and dragons.
Not the sorry joke it's been for several years where three big guilds passing the castle around. The pattern is mainly disrupted by the group of persons.

[testg]

What I get from this is that if enough people pretend to be nice and complain in group then even anything can be changed regardless of unfairness to the smaller player. Despite 3+ years of thinking of possible solution about evade, block, and wasted soulcraft space for these stat there have been no changes. But a few weeks out of being beaten in ew is enough to make fast changes.

Priorities.

[Yuumikitsu]

Can the arguement about "Salty big guilds making this patch go through" thing go away? The players that wanted this to get removed wanted it because if others can get away with joining all guilds that use mercenary every single Emporia war it would be unfair for the "Winners" because they get punished with not being able to go for 3 weeks (Or more but the dragons have no HP so they die instantly). If the mercenary system would still be a thing after the recent usage of it that was displayed and discouraged a lot of players, (I know it has been used this way before as well but it was only recently it was starting to get used every single week, where it was much more noticable) then Emporia would eventually change into guilds with a single member from the actual guild and 24 players being merc and if they lost they would go over to another guild the next fight and just play whenever they can even if you couldn't do that if you were a part of the actual guild participating. In my opinion that's not the essence of what the gamemode is trying to be like, or at least not what many wants it to be like. They even made the requirement for the guild participation level to 3 so clearly it's trying to aim at more experienced guilds and not letting "Smaller guilds" have the same or higher chance of winning than the guilds with more players and higher guild level because of the mercenary system.

 

Getting hung up on the "fact" that the change was made this fast because of high ranked guilds complaining all the time doesn't contribute to anything, and instead just makes the arguements sound like it's coming from anger instead of a creative and well thought out point of view.

 

I think that we should further discuss the changes after they have been experienced and go from there to find solutions for each and everyones problem with it.

[Popcorn]

What I get from this is that if enough people pretend to be nice and complain in group then even anything can be changed regardless of unfairness to the smaller player. Despite 3+ years of thinking of possible solution about evade, block, and wasted soulcraft space for these stat there have been no changes. But a few weeks out of being beaten in ew is enough to make fast changes.

Priorities.

 

The problem of guilds manipulating the outcome is nothing new. It was an ongoing problem not only since weeks or months but since years. Guilds have been disbanded for manipulating the outcome using different approaches. 

 

Yes, priorities. PvP has seen too less changes in the last years and that's why priorities had to be set. For some people there are priorities here and for some there are priorities there. We can't do everything at once and we decided that these changes now had priority after observing the constant drama and manipulation approaches and sadly actual success for a long time now. 

 

There is no need for me to defend our team's decisions on that, not now and not in the future.

[Vossel]

To be honest the Mercenary thing was not bad, nor did it gurantee the victory for the guilds that were merced by a specific group of player, i've been in fights where we were able to compete against those mercs and even win against them in couple of minutes, even my last encounter with them was around a 3-4 on my side vs ~12 on the other side and it was a 90-100 point lose for my guild.

The Mercenaries werent the problem, in my opinion the complaining people just couldnt handle the enemy mercs or were lacking people with the know how to go against their playstyle of Emporia, sure they had a good amount of good geared player, but they werent unbeatable, the thing was, if they lost one fight with a merc they were just able to merc for another one that won.
if things would have been changed so you have to decide for 1 Guild you merc the entire tournament for and cant join any other guild to merc (counts for any character on the account if you merced once), would lower their impact on the tournament.

But yeah Mercenaries got removed and we need to have a look how much of an impact this is and how it will change the Emporia war.

[testg]

The problem of guilds manipulating the outcome is nothing new. It was an ongoing problem not only since weeks or months but since years. Guilds have been disbanded for manipulating the outcome using different approaches.

Yes, priorities. PvP has seen too less changes in the last years and that's why priorities had to be set. For some people there are priorities here and for some there are priorities there. We can't do everything at once and we decided that these changes now had priority after observing the constant drama and manipulation approaches and sadly actual success for a long time now.

There is no need for me to defend our team's decisions on that, not now and not in the future.

I meant to say 4+ years.

[Popcorn]

I meant to say 4+ years.

 

Aim/Evade and Block and what to do with them is already on our list. Still it's not planned out how to re-implement, rework or replace them. We need to be very careful with doing those changes rashly because the risk is high that with just "a snip of the fingers" the whole game becomes more unbalanced.

[Precrush]

Can the arguement about "Salty big guilds making this patch go through" thing go away? 

I mean it is true. The faulty argument is that that'd be somehow a bad thing. Who makes or supports a suggestion hardly matters,  their reasoning is what's important..

Edited by Precrush, 13 January 2018 - 01:26 AM.

[Yuumikitsu]

I mean it is true. The faulty argument is that that'd be somehow a bad thing. Who makes or supports a suggestion hardly matters,  their reasoning is what's important..

 

I just meant that the arguement is being used in a negative manner to throw dirt on the ones discussing for and about the changes that went through this patch. I wont deny that the reason this patch got through was because of the attention it was given the last couple weeks. But the people using it as an arguement could come with more information rather than just a negative comment, an insult in an attempt to bring awareness to different issues that should outweigh the pros of this patch (which I fully support since I'm open about it but starting it off with an insult or calling others "salty" wont help anyone to win an arguement) or to just simply provoke others.

 

I already stated my opinions earlier so I think that further discussion about the changes in the way it's being talked about now should be brought up after it's been experienced. (I think that everyone could voice thier opinions and solutions but before it's been experienced it will most likely not make a change).

[Apocryphos]

What's there to experience? The 33% more hp for the core? That's a joke. The 20vs8 matches when a lv3 guild faces a lv6 guild? Or the 15 second hop time, where it's faster to die since it's 5 seconds to respawn. The fact that players aren't jumping between guilds? Or the classic 3 guild cycle where 3 big guilds take turns with castle effectively never facing each other.

But with the removal of the mercenary system will there be any regulations on participating members or will we be seeing 40 vs 5, heehee I used an extreme scenario like them, or is it fine for large guilds to keep there edge. Will dragon be buffed so it's possible to defend maybe 100x more hp and 10 minutes instead of 20. Will the mode ever lean towards a kill for points system rather than random missions? I'll post these and more in the q&a.

[Coolsam]

What's there to experience? The 33% more hp for the core? That's a joke. The 20vs8 matches when a lv3 guild faces a lv6 guild? Or the 15 second hop time, where it's faster to die since it's 5 seconds to respawn. The fact that players aren't jumping between guilds? Or the classic 3 guild cycle where 3 big guilds take turns with castle effectively never facing each other.

But with the removal of the mercenary system will there be any regulations on participating members or will we be seeing 40 vs 5, heehee I used an extreme scenario like them, or is it fine for large guilds to keep there edge. Will dragon be buffed so it's possible to defend maybe 100x more hp and 10 minutes instead of 20. Will the mode ever lean towards a kill for points system rather than random missions? I'll post these and more in the q&a.

I believe the answer to that; Time Will Tell.

After all, this is their first major patch at Emporia adjustments and a series of changes seem like the least difficult of adjustments for the team. I know it's been years now of development rights but given WarpPortal's scenario, this may signal a future series of patches to Emporia based on given feedback and observations.

For instance; Yes +33% core hp isn't much but it is a stat adjustment that can be given future alterations. This can extend to dragons also and even give them damage buffs or new status they can afflict on players.

I'll take this update as a sign of future improvements. Yes it doesn't fix the main problems. But absolutely nothing that needs fixing in this game is gonna be an overnight work load anyways.

[testg]

Aim/Evade and Block and what to do with them is already on our list. Still it's not planned out how to re-implement, rework or replace them. We need to be very careful with doing those changes rashly because the risk is high that with just "a snip of the fingers" the whole game becomes more unbalanced.

With all those years in the making I suppose I can expect the result to be grand for those issue. To stay on topic of emporia can you consider possible to buff the Stats of Defense dragons for 1* 2* guild? Higher attack, higher defense and higher health.

50x for 1* guild
80x for 2* guild

Right now even a undergear summoner with solo with +20 wep can destroy these dragon in a short duration.

Also buff core hp from 33% and consider boosting to 25x with higher defense and ele resistance if possible, not then just much much higher hp. This will balance out RNG. I don’t think a guild vs guild fight should end in seconds if the RNG is good and the core hp is so low like it is right now.

Also, island hop increase from 5 to 15 second is good. But respawn time of 5 second with this change does not fit. Maybe 5 second respawn and 15 second duration stay on the mini island to allow for buffing instead of the 1-3 second it is now.

[easykill1215]

Feedback ​after experiencing these changes in the previous EW:

 

15 seconds cooldown for island teleporting is really longer than needed, 10 seconds (double amount of the old one) will fit perfectly. Swapping island was always a part of the game/strategies. The only problem with it was the low cooldown which allowed people to swap island quickly without getting punished/killed. But now the problem is the too long cooldown. While most of the guilds are doing the safe strategy "spawn camp", even the most tanky player in the game will die if they change to any enemy's island and step on the camp, no matter if that team is strong or not because 15 seconds is just too long for being hit by 5-10+ people. 10 seconds are enough for the real good teams to kill someone ​that lands on their camp. And it also allows the player to have chance to run away if that team is not good enough. Not that "If you change to our area you will die for sure".

 

33% boost for core HP wasn't enough. But instead of giving the core more HP to survive, why don't we give it some debuffs/abilities so the battle between defender and attacker becomes more interesting?

Some ideas like this:

The red core will have a permanent aura that burns 10% of any nearby enemy's HP every 5s (consider if 10% is too big) and stun any nearby enemy for 2s every 6s if they're in the area of effect.

The blue core will have a permanent aura that reduces 50% of any nearby enemy's attack speed and movement speed (consider if 50% is too much) and freezes any nearby enemy for 3s every 10s if they're in the area of effect.

The area of effect should be big enough to affect both ranged and melee players.

Edit: or giving both core the same debuff for fairness

 

This will make the battle much more interesting and give the defender more chance to defend the core 

Edited by easykill1215, 16 January 2018 - 09:16 AM.