Iwagami here. Thanks for all the feedback.
I've read all of your feedback up until now.
While it will be difficult to address every single point, I'd like to respond to a couple of them with my thoughts.
Increasing the amount of "???" points
I actually looked into this myself; however, there is a high possibility that large battle condition differences would arise between the areas where the same monster is spawned, so I thought this was difficult to accomplish. For example, the below are some differences in battle conditions that could arise:
- Easier to access some ??? points over others
- ??? areas with no aggressive monsters in the vicinity
- Closer to walls
With these differences it would cause players to utilize the most advantageous spawning location. For Voidwatch, your are under the confrontation status and we worked hard to find areas that were exactly the same for each spawn point, and set up three of them. While it might be possible to say that this isn't the case, there is a chance that we use these locations for other content as well, so we'd appreciate it if you could forgive us for not being able to add additional "???" points for now. We'd like everyone to enjoy this content turn by turn.
It's tough to know if our strategy is working. Please introduce clear messages.
First, as some additional information on this content, there are no random weaknesses where the WS or magic spells change like Voidwatch for Delve to show your strategy is accurate. To give a better idea, it's probably close to the way that defense is lowered while under the effect of Dia. Of course it's not limited to certain magic like Dia only, but for example, by doing XX the damage reduction will decrease by 1% or evasion will be reduced by 10. I'd really like to give a clear example, but it would be too obvious, so please try out a variety of things. I am personally interested in what strategies everyone is using, and have been concealing myself near areas where these battles are taking place as well as reading everyone's blogs. I'm happy to see that monster strategies are gradually being figured out. I'd really be glad if you could share you information and let people know your experience with this content.
Preparations (equipment)
The Delve monsters have been arranged in different tiers of content levels.
Upper tier: Boss monster
Balance has been set so that it can be fought without using the items that bosses drop.
Middle tier: Shard IV and V NMs
Balance has been set with the idea that enhanced items from shards I-III will be used.
Lower tier: Shard I-III NMs
Balance has been set so that they can be fought without Delve equipment.
If you skip obtaining equipment from the lower tier monsters and dash right into the middle tier, it will be a really big challenge because the difference in level is so large. By prepping your fire power gradually starting on the lower tier monsters, you'll be able to do better. If you feel that even the lower tier monsters are too difficult, it would be best to gather equipment from wildskeeper reives, skirmish, salvage II, and other content. While I understand that some of you may not want to struggle to gather equipment, please understand that the challenge will be extremely hard if you don't.
After reading all of the comments up until now, I've discussed with the rest of the development team and came up with a third option. Please let us know your opinions on this.
- Option 3: Set the time limit to 20 minutes and make it so the monsters do not go hyper
It will be extremely easy to know when it's your turn to fight, but the time limit is stricter than option 2. However, the monster's behavior will be easy to understand.
(*Please note that this option was added to the OP after the fact.)
This will make it so the time is reduced by 25 minutes for those that can withstand the monster’s hyper mode, but what do you think? I believe it would be too much of a change to keep monsters from going hyper for 30 minutes, so I propose limiting it to 20 minutes. If you would like to fight for longer than 30 minutes, we would like you to fight in the fracture underground.
Thank you very much.
PS:
For those leaving feedback, it'd help out a lot if you write about the type of monster and other details when commenting on certain aspects. The situation will be a bit different depending on if you are saying you are unable to attack the Chapuli NM or if you are unable to attack the Twitherym NM, for example. The special traits for each of these NMs are very different, so I think this will make it easier for you all to discuss as well.