Cosmic Exploration Upgrade Scaling

[Silren]

I don't know what they thought when they designed these fates. Running back and forth for 40 minutes is not really peak gameplay.
Personally I'd rather let it fail 3 times in a row, than waste another 40 minutes of my live while desperately trying not to fall asleep.

Old school mmorpg and low effort business strategy, you have to sub after all so the rest is not important, you can always take a break no? Still better doing it after subbing, so the devs are happy. Seriously more than a decade and we still have this boring FATE system in every damn content.

[TeaRenin]

Adding my two cents to the thread just to add to the volume lol

The upgrade FATE scaling/threshold feels incredibly bloated IMO, and it's becoming increasingly clear this is not just a problem for small worlds with low populations.
As of right now, I have only seen a single world (Cactuar) succeed at completing the stage 13 FATE ("Energization Station Construction") on their first attempt. 12 other worlds have also reached this FATE, and to my knowledge, at least 11 of them were unable to succeed on attempt #1, with many of them needing to rely on the "pity progression" from attempt #3.
Reasons for this start at the awkward timing (many of the FATEs happened at times of the day where the respective server isn't very active), but even with numbers approaching and exceeding 200 people, the FATE repeatedly got failed.

It's very disheartening to rally hundreds of people for a FATE, spend 40 (!!!) minutes on these very repetitive tasks, fail it, and have the world eat a 8+ hour penalty of not being able to do Mech Ops & Red Alerts.

The very least that should be done is to carry over the progress achieved on the previous attempt, and have the next attempt continue where we left off. In my opinion, this would be a good middle ground between SE obviously wanting these FATEs to be a big undertaking, wanting more people to be able to experience the upgrade content, and reducing frustrations for players when a FATE doesn't succeed on the first attempt.

If the FATE requirements are so high that even the majority of Aether needs a third attempt pity save now, there's a problem you can't explain away with "well, it's a small server, this is why the 3 attempt limit exists to help you".
I've made my peace* with the awkward workings of the progression bars as a clumsy way to slow us down. But for a feature that actively expects players to do something on a timer? You're punishing people for caring about doing the content lol. Especially if, as mentioned before, these failures actively put other gameplay features on pause.

It's particularly disappointing to me because I have been enjoying the other aspects of Cosmic Exploration. I like the quests, enjoyed the added challenge of getting gold ratings, and find the overall system to be an improvement from Firmament/Diadem (no inventory bloat, no crafting crystals, bless lol).
So by all means, I'm not coming at this from the perspective of someone who dislikes CE.


*"I don't like how this works, but I doubt SE will bother changing it"

[Casti_EL]

We had this on Gilgamesh yesterday - approx. 200 players (across all instances) working on the "Battery" FATE (2nd time around as first time apparently spawned in the middle of the night with very few players on so failed). After 40 minutes of slogging it out we barely hit 50-60% completion, granted some players gave up after 30 minutes when it was obvious we'd never make it but those of us who stuck it out did about 70-80 contributions each. Then had the "no RA/Mechs for you" until it popped again around 4:30am (UK time) according to a discord post I saw earlier - I ain't staying up/getting up early just for that.

At least I got enough EXP to level my miner, but to have players run a very repetitive fate for 40 minutes only to lose because we had half the numbers the devs seem to think are acceptable, then to be locked out of content for most of the day, is poor design. It should be scaled based on player counts.

I'm not overly impressed with CE so far to be honest - the Firmament was much better designed in my opinion.

[Valence]

Do you think they'll actually try and change it for the next instances of CE? The devs have literally stopped talking to us or what they want to improve in PLLs so I don't even feel confident we'll get anything at all about this.
I'd love to be proven wrong though..

[Arohk]

Do you think they'll actually try and change it for the next instances of CE? .

ctrl C + ctrl V
change color of the zone
make numbers bigger


done.

[Infindox]

I like the basis of CE but there's a lot of problems that need fixed for the next part of it, if they keep what's there.
Also, did they expect everyone to be done with the base by this coming Tuesday? This place is gonna be DEAD dead when Tuesday's patch rolls around.

[Khryseis_Astra]

I like the basis of CE but there's a lot of problems that need fixed for the next part of it, if they keep what's there.
Also, did they expect everyone to be done with the base by this coming Tuesday? This place is gonna be DEAD dead when Tuesday's patch rolls around.

I doubt even Aether will be finished by Tuesday… the pity system might help with upgrade fates, but the progress needed to even get to those stages is going to slow down majorly. I know I’ll be spending most of my time in OC, but I’ll still go to upgrade fates if I see a shout for them.

[tdisplacement]

OC may have already killed a lot of interest along with the market being flooded with gamba items! The difficulty of clearing the FATES themselves I guess is the icing on the cake. I came here because I was wondering if the Energization Station was a FATE or not. Right now on Hyperion, we are close to that one popping, but with about 100 players last I checked, it seems unlikely we'll clear it if it pops soon. I think SE may have made to too Grindy to get done before OC. I'm pretty casual, but even I will be checking out OC when it drops.

[Asari5]

they should just change that one big fate at the end of the progress bar into 10 smaller scaled fates which spawn during progress.

wouldnt only reduce the number of people you need to do it, making 10 fates would also mean more people have the chance to do it at least once while also being able to succeed no matter when they play.

10 times the same fate wouldnt even need more work. just write a few more sentences about recharging the machines and continuing later or something like that.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

i mean.. you will have a year+ to finish the content + several more content droughts before 8.0
it probably doesnt matter is you finish it a week sooner or later

Four and a half months. That is the total time between each update for Cosmic Exploration.
It is not a year-plus, it's "finish your zone before the first, second and third planet are implemented."

This is iterative content and the scaling should have reflected that that it will evolve throughout the expansion on a four-and-a-half month basis.
Cosmic Exploration's progress should absolutely have been scaled to guarantee that every server that has people actively participating in it; regardless of population, will have the Moongate Hub completed before the first planet.