The Train is Back!

[Nixxe]

Am I the only one thinking this whole thing is just deliberated? We talked about how SE is clueless about what the players want when Pagos came out, than just a week later they released a small fix (that doesn't really do anything) with a forewarned promise that they will "continuously monitor thing and adjust things as need week by week", and now here we are. I've been playing this game long enough and continuously enough that I think I kinda have a suspicious that they definitely know what they're doing. For years now, SE has always been trying to look for a way to pace and throttle the contents so that the "grind" gap (not skill gap) between the hardcore and casual. Basically, they don't want the hardcore gets too far ahead too quickly, and the casual case follow close enough behind. Thinking about this situation:

- The early release have a gigantic speed bum, but the hardcore grinded through it anyway, and hit max level in a week or two.
- Now that the hardcore had reached the end, it's time for the more casual to catch up.

Looking at this upcoming change, it's fairly obvious who gonna benefit the most (the people who haven't got max level) and who benefit the least (the one who already capped). Remember the whole shenanigan about crafting at the beginning of HW? It was done for the exact same reason: to slow the hardcore down so the casual can have time to catch up. But that was so poorly thought out and kinda blatantly in your face, so they do it a bit more subtle now. But I seriously doubt they're making these changes due to the players protest. The "nefting schedule" was probably already set in place before the content roll out. They get a bit of flak at the beginning but face it, they know the hardcore will just grit their teeth and grind through it anway, which they did no matter how much they complain, and now SE can also so earn some obligatory "THEY LISTEN TO US" cheers from the player base.

I guess it's possible, but if that was their goal, there are better ways to do it that players will be more receptive to. The easiest way is to design the system around diminishing returns. For instance, if instead of the challenge log we had somewhat less rewarding dailies and then after that you could go chain mobs, you'd still have players go hard in the paint to do it all day 1, week 1, or whatever, but players who don't like the look of grinding mobs could take it slower and focus on maximizing the efficiency of the time they're in there by only doing the dailies. In designing this way and giving the players this information you empower them to choose what's right for them based on their own needs and tastes while also preventing too great of a disparity between hardcore players and more casual players.

On the other hand, if you present the players with a single situation as-is, you may know you intend to change it a week or two down the road, but the players don't. All they see is a final state and they react accordingly in terms of both feelings and behavior. When they then make the decisions that are right for them in that situation, quite possibly by doing things they don't enjoy, but feel are critical to accomplishing what they want out of this game, only for you to implement planned changes down the road, they feel like they've been taken for a ride and that their investment in the game was undermined. It will only engender bitterness and resentment if done that way. Players may celebrate the hotfixes, but they will ultimately see it as stupid SE coming to their senses, rather than having trust that the developer is competent and has their interests in mind.

Even if I have to chain for the relic lights, the level experience is the worst part cause there isn't a level sync system in place. If train really is back that would at least help low level people to catch up exp wise.

I don't know about anyone else, but I only finished light grinding just before I finished leveling to 35. The relic weapon lined up really nicely with hitting 35 via chaining.

Anyway, I did most of a Pagos. Here is what spawned in a fresh instance:
ash dragon 20 min
snow queen 35 min
asag 37 min
glavoid 50 min
anapos 76 min
surahbi 80 min
king igloo 118
hakutaku 136

Times indicate how long into the duty it spawned. People tried to start a train, but it quickly died. The NMs spawn more frequently, but don't seem to be as predictable, and I think a steady spawn still depends on people chaining in different areas. There's also the fact that the crystals require 30 and 32 in the north, which means that half the NMs are pretty much out of reach of lowbies. Maybe the train will get going for realsies, but I expect it will simply end up being a larger bonus to people in the instance chaining. Alternatively, I guess you could camp NMs from Icepoint if you really want.

Exp buff is great, but spawning them with a train similar to Anemos seems to be taking FOREVER, and they sometimes seem to spawn at random on the other side of the map.

They push out an update to bring trains back and make this content NOT so god awful but they can't even do that right. Can't say I'm surprised though.

Who says they wanted to bring trains back?