Verminion Penalty for Tutorial ?

I couldn't find a way to exit or withdraw, or retreat or forefit from the first tutorial match. I too was stuck on the "press the R stick and select A from above the hotbar." Believe me, if I could have quit then I would have, 100 MGP be damned.

Today I tried again and it worked. But I didn't get to read all of the information from the tutorial before I won the match and I was kicked out of the instance. There needs to be more leeway for the tutorial. The timer needs to pause when there's stuff to read on the screen.

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Originally Posted by Histoire

a completely casual "at your leisure" game shouldn't have restrictions. it's dumb and takes away from the game.

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Well, tbh, having turned the entirety of GS from "casual fun" into "mind-numbing grindfest" has already ruined it the day it was implemented, if you ask me...


That said - well, it's certainly nice to know. It's nice to know that there's a penalty at all, it's absolutely nice to know that it's a lockout until the next daily reset apprently? I mean, hey, as frustrating as it might end up being, I could understand, heck, even accept such measures. But it would have been nice to let us know in advance?? I mean, why is this not even mentioned anywhere in the patch notes? Or indeed, when queueing for a match? And it really shoots a tutorial in the foot (one that's not free at that, even though 100mgp probably won't make anyone depressed for a month at this point): one can either try to rush through it all, without actually grasping the details and understanding what's what - or try to take everything in and making sure there are no spots of confusion or unanswered questions, and risk an extremely severe lockout. Sheesh. Yeah, definitely a giant nail in LoV's coffin, imo - and definitely another giant sign that SE needs to upgrade their hardware.

How about just finishing the instance you're in instead of withdrawing? No penalty and you get in much faster...

Ideally, the servers would have the capacity to have an instance for every single player playing the game... but is that reasonable to expect?
A lockout for withdrawing should be there, but it shouldn't be as long as people are reporting. That's all.

I'm not trying to be a besserwisser or sound like a smartass. And I'm not bitter over a bad first experience, rather annoyed to see rushed work ruining a good concept. Because to my knowledge, testing of complex content before release is actually important. Not just to weed out bugs, but equally to refine the user experience. I'm guessing Verminion was rushed towards the deadline, taking a few shortcuts and ignoring user friendliness problems. People would whine if it was postponed, but I believe that's far better than getting this much complaints over a bad game design.

But hopefully it will be patched, and I'm still hyped for it. :) I just don't find it ready for release yet. At least not the tutorial, which is the only thing I've tried so far.

it's just disappointing that they spend more time thinking up ways to punish players that are just doing something for fun than they do thinking about the actual content's atmosphere as a whole. they can't push content fast enough so finding any way to gate and hinder the players without it being bad enough that they end up outright saying "ok, i've had enough of this." is their method and has been for quite a long time now..

this game's really lost sight of what's fun and what isn't. a lockout that is longer than most (all?) content in the game for this is..absurd. a few people dropping a match or being jerks isn't nearly as tragic as releasing the content as it is.

couple that with everything else ..i just don't see where the game's going atm.

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Originally Posted by NaliaBrown

I couldn't find a way to exit or withdraw, or retreat or forefit from the first tutorial match. I too was stuck on the "press the R stick and select A from above the hotbar." Believe me, if I could have quit then I would have, 100 MGP be damned.

Today I tried again and it worked. But I didn't get to read all of the information from the tutorial before I won the match and I was kicked out of the instance. There needs to be more leeway for the tutorial. The timer needs to pause when there's stuff to read on the screen.

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This is exactly what happened to me. I wonder if it's bugged? I also didn't have time to read the tutorial after I finally got it working on the second try. I know you can go look through help text but it really would have been nice to have the tutorial while you're actively playing, some people just learn better that way.

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Similar to the Duty Finder, a penalty system is in place for abandoning Lord of Verminion matches. Taking the following actions several times will restrict players from taking part in matches for a set amount of time.
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The reason that the penalty is also in place for matches against the computer, including the tutorial, is because instances are still being utilized for these matches. Removing this restriction may lead to situations where multiple instances are being utilized which in turn may not allow other players to play during peak hours. Therefore, we have placed this lockout penalty as a preventative measure.

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I think what might be more of an issue is when you are obviously losing and there is no coming back, but you can't GG out like in every other RTS. It just prolongs the inevitable. This really needs a dedicated forfeit option. One that actually lets you accept the loss and move on to the next one.

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Originally Posted by Kio

This is exactly what happened to me. I wonder if it's bugged? I also didn't have time to read the tutorial after I finally got it working on the second try. I know you can go look through help text but it really would have been nice to have the tutorial while you're actively playing, some people just learn better that way.

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Exactly. I can't imagine how difficult this must be for people who don't play this game in their native language. I read slow enough in English, the only language I know, and I'm still having trouble...

I consider myself a pretty fast reader but still I managed to finish the tutorial with only about a minute left and I really rushed through the text.

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Originally Posted by PEANUT

Thank you! I was just about to make a post about this. I keep getting kicked out of the tutorial because either I took too long to do an action or the timer went out and I lost?

Why are they treating the tutorial, which is supposed to teach you the rules of the game(mind you not everyone learns quickly), like the real game, and they make you pay MGP and give you a time limit just to learn it?


Is there something I missed?

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Yeah, I did the tutorial and ran out of time. After that I just did not bother with Verminion at all and perhaps other's too since the Verminion area was rather empty and I'm in Gilgamesh!

It's a tutorial. It should not have time limit (or increase it) and MGP cost.

i'm waiting next patch to remove this abomination (MGP cost for tutorials) and maybe after that i'm going to attempt tutorial n°2
on ragnarok, nobody is doing it : people shout to find an opponent...

This is a joke, a 24 hour lockout for withdrawing twice from NPC tutorials VS 30 minutes for actual duty content with players. Sort this NOW square.

See i always was for higher penalty's but i kinda feel bad for the people that actually go over 2 hours +

Is this a bug? or working as intended, haven't touched it myself but a 18+ Penalty seems rather harsh.

what they need to do is increase the timer on the tutorial., but honestly after 2 tries i understood what to do as a ps3 players and pretty much have won a few challenges in 1 try or 2. It takes practice.

I personally like this more then triple triad because I only have a handfull of minions and have had 0 issues playing. Where with TT you needd to get lucky with cads :/

I'm a big fan of the chocobo races, there is a big interest of participating, by making evoluting your chocobo, the more you play, the difficulty also increase.
I'm a big fan of the Triple Triad, there is a big interest by collecting cards and earning more by playing. You can find a lot of different kind of matches.
What the hell is that new game, without any interest, without any evolution, without any rewards ? Nobody want to play that, there is absolutely no evolution, collectibles or interests ... and a full day penalty ? really ?
You can't be serious.

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Similar to the Duty Finder, a penalty system is in place for abandoning Lord of Verminion matches. Taking the following actions several times will restrict players from taking part in matches for a set amount of time.

The reason that the penalty is also in place for matches against the computer, including the tutorial, is because instances are still being utilized for these matches.

That said, we're continuing to gather your thoughts and feedback to share with the dev. team and will let you know if adjustments are made in the future.

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But why is the lockout so long? Players are being locked out until daily reset. I've never been locked out since I never quit, but many have. I was also curious as to why the tutorial is broken and players are being timed while reading the explanations? Is it also a test to see how fast we can read? That last question was humor. :p I mean no disrespect.

and you wonder why it's so unpopular. Maybe because no one is able to play it even when they want to because of the lockout?

A leave should count as a loss, no matter if it's a tournament or single player. I don't really think you need to implement much more punishment than that. After all, aren't players just trying to win? Who cares if they win by someone leaving?

I feel like this was something the devs put way too much time into in order to make it needlessly complicated and have no one care about it period. (Like the often compared chocobo races)

The only time I can see this being played is in tournaments, and that's getting wins from friends who don't care when it's dead. (Which seems to be pretty often!) I can see people already going 30 wins and 0 losses... I wonder how they got that...

SE put so much into the patch notes about this game and didnt think to mention once that there are penalties for leaving games and for not bringing minions out during a game. then they went ahead and made it share instances wit dngs and made the penalty so stupid that it makes the few players that are playing not want to come back. and dont even get me started on the controls for controller why would they not use cross-hotbars like they use for everything else in the game for us. have the different commands on buttons on them.

Thanks for all the feedback in regards to Lord of Verminion. I'd like to share with you the current situation and the direction we're planning to take for adjustments.

Lord of Verminion Tournament

Of all the feedback we received in regards to the tournament, the issue regarding the calculation of how points are earned needed to be addressed the soonest. Therefore, we will be addressing this by guaranteeing 30 points for winning a match in next week's hotfix.

Normally, we would consider canceling the tournaments until this had been addressed; however, the tournament schedules are managed by the server software, and in order to change the schedule, it would require halting the tournaments for an extended period of time. For this reason, the development and operations teams have decided to prioritize the hotfix instead. Therefore, please keep in mind that the hotfix may be applied during the course of an active tournament. Please note that if the hotfix has been applied while the tournament is taking place, the winning points from before and after the hotfix may fluctuate.

Player Matching

Currently, many players are participating in a wide variety of content released in Patch 3.1. Due to this, there are times where there are less participants available for the Player Battle (RP) mode. As such, the dev. team is aware of the situation where players are being matched with other players who have exceedingly different levels of rank points. We are hoping more players will participate in Lord of Verminion in the future; however, as a permanent measure, we are considering changing the matching system from World-only, to a Data Center-wide matching system, similar to the Duty Finder. It would require some time to make this change, but we're currently considering this option.

Tutorial

The first Verminion Challenge "Stage 1: Tutorial" has the same 10 minute time limit as other challenges; however, we have received feedback from players mentioning this is too short. Therefore, we will extend the time limit on the tutorial from 10 minutes to 20 minutes. Additionally, we'll adjust the entry MGP cost to zero at the same time.

MGP Consumption During Battles

No matter which mode you participate in, players spend MGP to enter. For this reason we have received feedback where players are unable practice. In next week's hotfix, we will make adjustments to Verminion Challenge "Stage 1: Tutorial," and Player Battle (Non-RP) so it can be played without paying any MGP.

Also, we'll be reducing the amount of MGP awarded for winning a Player Battle (Non-RP) from 100 MGP to 50 MGP. Previously, players were rewarded the same amount of MGP required to participate; however, now that the MGP required to participate in this mode has been removed, players will be able to earn 50 MGP as a bonus for winning.

HUD settings for Lord of Verminion

We have received requests to make it possible to adjust the HUD settings for Lord of Verminion outside of matches. However, this requires a large amount of adjustments, and will take some time to address. We will continue looking into this, but for the time being, we would like players to use the tutorial, or Player Battle (Non-RP) which won't cost any MGP, to adjust their HUD settings.

We would like to make further adjustments based on your suggestions and feedback so make sure to post any comments you may have!

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Also, we'll be reducing the amount of MGP awarded for winning a Player Battle (Non-RP) from 100 MGP to 50 MGP.

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Don't these battles usually take about 5 minutes? So that's 10 MGP per minute. It will now take 70 solid days of grinding Lord of Verminion to earn a Fenrir mount or a Cloud Triple Triad card, up from 35 solid days. It will also take about 13 solid hours of play just to earn the ponytail hair design.

Was this a number really in need of getting nerfed? Who is the design genius who said, "but wait, we need to nerf these numbers, the reward for content is too high". Is he the same guy that is saying "we really wish this content would be more popular"?

Well, I earn 99% of my MGP via mini-cactpot, like a majority of the community, so oh well. The rest of the gold saucer could catch fire and I might not notice.

Edit:
just got 10k from one of my daily cactpot tickets, that's 17 hours of non-rated LoV. Think about that for a moment.

I agree that Verminion doesn't give much MGP, but the next sentence after the one you quoted clarified that this is actually an increase. It went from costing 100 and awarding 100, for a total of a break even, to costing 0 and awarding 50.

I'm not sure I agree or disagree with the tournament changes. If the 30 points thing is a temporary thing and the devs will still work on it then I guess that's fine, because 30 points per match isn't going to allow for a high RP player to win. Most people just trade with an alt anyway. I'm at 2k RP and while I may get 30 points per win after the hotfix, other players are getting 50 points per win because they have lower RP.

I do like the RP matches being data center wide. That would help a lot, as the pool of players on each server is too low. I hope they can work this one out.

The MGP changes don't make sense. We don't really earn any MGP at all from LoV at them moment, so changing it to 50 just sucks. It should be doubled to like 200 MGP or something.

Yes please to the Data Center-wide matching system. :)

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

Was this a number really in need of getting nerfed? Who is the design genius who said, "but wait, we need to nerf these numbers, the reward for content is too high". Is he the same guy that is saying "we really wish this content would be more popular"?

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Two things.

A) The nerf you are complaining about is a buff, considering it used to cost 100 MGP to enter and you were rewarded 100 MGP for winning. That means you either kept your MGP or lost 100 MGP by participating. Now it costs 0 to enter, and you receive 50 for winning.

B) People play this content to have fun and as something different to do. There are many other, much faster ways of earning MGP than this sort of content. If you are averse to having fun and just want to grind your life away to earn an item no one cares about you obtaining, you are capable of doing so through other means.

I heard you only start losing RP points once you hit 1000 points right? So how will people keep abusing the system when they get closer to 1000 RP points on their main?

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Originally Posted by kuma_aus

I heard you only start losing RP points once you hit 1000 points right? So how will people keep abusing the system when they get closer to 1000 RP points on their main?

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There was only me and one other person queuing in the saucer today so I ended up going ~20 games in a row against him. I won all of them and his RP never dropped further after hitting 998, so I'm guessing 1000 points being the cutoff is correct.

Regarding tournaments, I'm guessing it would indeed be hard to keep racking up 1st place finishes once you plateau out over 1000 RP. You'd lose out to completely fresh players and alts with 0 RP.

It still doesn't make it completely fair though, it just makes the RP 'floor' 1000 RP instead of 0 RP. The gap in points earned won't be as wide, but anyone with more than 1000 RP is still basically penalized for being better.

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Originally Posted by Rjain

B) People play this content to have fun and as something different to do. There are many other, much faster ways of earning MGP than this sort of content.

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The problem is that they are spending an enormous amount of time designing content for the gold saucer that doesn't provide rewards for the gold saucer. If you want to spend time developing content, and you want people to spend time playing that content, the rewards should be relative to the time invested.

2 months from now, I want you to check out the Verminion area and notice that there is no one there playing this extravagant mini-game. Then I want you to check out the mini-cactpot counter, which always has a half dozen people crowded around it. This is a design flaw.

Imagine if the entire game was designed around this concept. Once a day, you have an extremely simple mini-game with a decent chance of scoring an amount of XP, Law, and Esoterics equal to 10 hours of dungeons, raids, and fates. No one would be running the content added to the game, because a majority of the rewards are coming from a single daily lottery.

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

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I completely agree, this is one of the bigger issues. It takes like a minute to do a mini cactpot, and the expected value is 1485 MGP if you do perfect play. So if you spend 600 MGP on 3 cards, it takes less than 3 minutes and your expected return is 4455 MGP for almost 0 effort.

This is compared to LoV, where matches ranges from 5-10m, require a lot of effort, and you win like what, 500MGP?

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Originally Posted by PotatoTree

I completely agree, this is one of the bigger issues. It takes like a minute to do a mini cactpot, and the expected value is 1485 MGP if you do perfect play. So if you spend 600 MGP on 3 cards, it takes less than 3 minutes and your expected return is 4455 MGP for almost 0 effort.

This is compared to LoV, where matches ranges from 5-10m, require a lot of effort, and you win like what, 500MGP?

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I got like 30k MGP from coming 27th in the last tournament and I only did 15 matches :)

That was a pretty big return for minimum effort on my part.

I think getting even closer to 1st place was yielding people up to 80,000 - 100,000 MGP.

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

Don't these battles usually take about 5 minutes? So that's 10 MGP per minute. It will now take 70 solid days of grinding Lord of Verminion to earn a Fenrir mount or a Cloud Triple Triad card, up from 35 solid days. It will also take about 13 solid hours of play just to earn the ponytail hair design.

Was this a number really in need of getting nerfed? Who is the design genius who said, "but wait, we need to nerf these numbers, the reward for content is too high". Is he the same guy that is saying "we really wish this content would be more popular"?

Well, I earn 99% of my MGP via mini-cactpot, like a majority of the community, so oh well. The rest of the gold saucer could catch fire and I might not notice.

Edit:
just got 10k from one of my daily cactpot tickets, that's 17 hours of non-rated LoV. Think about that for a moment.

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In b4:

"Thanks for all the feedback on MGP via mini-cactpot, we'll be nerfing that as well."

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

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Gambling is always high risk, high reward. You are just as likely to lose 492 MGP doing mini cactpot as you are to win 29,400 MGP. (Getting 3x 36 rewards versus 3x 10k, minus the 600 you always spend for three rounds.)

If you want to earn MGP via LoVM you need to only worry about the tournament. It's not going to be a viable alternative to, say, grinding MGP via TT.

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Originally Posted by Dotsusama

Gambling is always high risk, high reward. You are just as likely to lose 492 MGP doing mini cactpot as you are to win 29,400 MGP. (Getting 3x 36 rewards versus 3x 10k, minus the 600 you always spend for three rounds.)

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That is not true. As I said earlier, the expected value is 1485 MGP per match with perfect play. Getting 3x36 does not have the same probability at all as 3x10k.

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Originally Posted by PotatoTree

That is not true. As I said earlier, the expected value is 1485 MGP per match with perfect play. Getting 3x36 does not have the same probability at all as 3x10k.

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You're not comparing poker to blackjack, here. You're comparing whack-a-mole to slots....

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Originally Posted by Dotsusama

You're not comparing poker to blackjack, here. You're comparing whack-a-mole to slots....

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Uh no? I'm just giving you the stats.

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Originally Posted by PotatoTree

Uh no? I'm just giving you the stats.

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But it's meaningless because it's not a direct comparison. Nothing about playing LoVM locks you out of earning money through the Mini Cactpot because you can gamble for one minute and then go play however many matches you want. You can also stop and play GATEs too, but I don't see anyone giving expected payouts of When the Wind Blows.

The MGP earnings from LoVM is the least of its problems. I guess I just don't understand why you're comparing it to Mini Cactpot.

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Originally Posted by Dotsusama

The MGP earnings from LoVM is the least of its problems. I guess I just don't understand why you're comparing it to Mini Cactpot.

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The comparison is there because if you're farming for MGP, it's much much much easier to do the mini cactpot everyday than to do LoV.

Obviously, if you need MGP right now and you can't wait, you'd do the cactpot then grind on something like TT or LoV.

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Originally Posted by PotatoTree

The comparison is there because if you're farming for MGP, it's much much much easier to do the mini cactpot everyday than to do LoV.
Obviously, if you need MGP right now and you can't wait, you'd do the cactpot then grind on something like TT or LoV.

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I couldn't possibly grind LoV for MGP. Malboro server is...well, last week during the very first tournament I sat in Chocobo Square for over 1 hour queued up for a tournament match. No one goes there, no one cares. At least Chocobo racing was thriving for a few months when it came out, but chocobo racing also didn't have to compete with Diadem farming I suppose, lol.

On topic though, I 100% approve of Data Center matching for LoV tournaments, and maybe while we're add it add that functionality to chocobo races, it's far too boring racing 7 NPCs 90% of the time

All I have to say is this; Fifth maintenance in two weeks! This "was" probably a good idea at the time of its conception in a board meeting but now it has literally become a waste of almost everyones time and money! Not only do we pay MPG to do the challenges but we also pay actually god damn money to play this game! I find it ridicules and asinine that the development team wants to waste the time we pay for yo fix a "mini-game" that will die out within the span of a month or at the most, two. This is a minor problem that has lead to a very un-needed and abysmal 5 hour maintenance window where all players cannot do anything in the game whatsoever. I'm absolutely positive someone had good intentions with this maintenance but....ITS JUST A MINI GAME!! One that will become as irrelevant as chocobo racing with the passing time.

I complained a bunch about the tournaments and while I appreciate them for trying to respond quickly, I think this is doing more harm than good. This 30 point bonus won't save high RP players, and wont save LoV in general. They shouldn't have tried to do a hotfix unless they're rolling out cross server duty finders or actual elimination style tournaments or something.

Perhaps they are bundling some secret maintenance stuff too, but if it's just for minions I think it was a bad call even though I love the minigame.

I don't think they are particularly invested in making the tournaments 100% 'fair' anyway. The saucer is ultimately just a fun diversion, so I don't think making these tournaments 100% serious is really the goal they have in mind.

I mean if they really wanted to do that, it would be a simple matter to make the 'tournaments' an actual tournament with elimination brackets, or just disregard RP completely and make every win worth the same - but really these tournaments are more like fun social events with slightly higher stakes, than actual tournament tournaments if you get what I mean. It's more like your office ping-pong tournament than the Olympics, just a casual affair and if Jake from accounting is cheating to win a bottle of wine, eh who cares.

That said I'm glad to hear they're looking into cross-server matching for LoV though, that will go a long way to keeping the scene healthy - I know it did for pet battles in WoW.