Another Annie Post

[opal flax]

My my what a coincidence

We already got confirmation that there will be more world events like this so hopefully with more events spread out people won't like, hyper fixate on just one

[neon ravine]

yeah but i mean, if the lobby error gets fixed which can be caused by annie or someone throwing bombs, or just me avoiding it if the regional ips worked

[haughty matrix]

uhh I dont think that will ever happen unless they make the anni mythics available elsewhere

otherwise there is no reason not to go to anni at every available spawn

[opal flax]

Fair point. Everyone wants annihilation to function like a raid but you only get the rewards once a week, but I don't know what the solution is without opening it up to alt account abuse.

Like, we could drastically reduce the drop chance for mythics so that alt abuse wouldn't be as big of a deal, but that also affects regular people (majority of players) who only use one account. I can't think of a good solution that also fits within the limitations of Minecraft Java Edition

[haughty matrix]

Fightable at any time, redeemable once a week

[neon ravine]

Since the error gets thrown as i /lobby around annie hours my motivation gets dropped

[rose oar]

Ehem my suggestion cough cough

[opal flax]

What was your suggestion again

[rose oar]

Erm lemme find it

@opal flax

Essentially a World Boss but with a localized CD (if that's even possible idk)

[opal flax]

That sounds very fun, but that still leaves it open for alt abuse, which is the core issue

[rose oar]

I suppose yea

[opal flax]

Like ultimately CT is going to prioritize long term healthiness of the game state rather than "is it fun or not"

[unborn summit]

Anni just doesnt work and i hope they leave it at just anni tbh

[fierce ferry]

why tf do cts care so much about alt abuse in the first place

like each alt cost 30 bucks

the players could still alt abuse if they wanted even in the current state

just have the alt afk in a random party on pf

[floral crest]

fr actually

[fierce ferry]

only the sweat ahh players will actually alt abuse considering its 30 bucks for each alt

[floral crest]

if i had an alt I would still barely care about it if the le rewards were even lower

[drowsy sinew]

i have 6 alts ready to go for when annie becomes abusable

[floral crest]

free 2 stacks wow

[fierce ferry]

you could still abuse them now, just send each of them into a pf party or have them join a guild and use that guild's party

[opal flax]

@compact garnet sorry for ping but can you please explain in more detail about this part? Other RPG games like WOW don't care about alt accounts, in fact they welcome them because it's more income for them, so what in particular is different with Wynncraft? Like what's the worst case scenario with alt abuse and what is CT's biggest concerns with this?

[fierce ferry]

because its not more income for them obv

its more income for minecraft not wynncraft

jokes aside i would still most defintely wish to hear the answrers to thief's questions

[opal flax]

If it's not more income for them, sure, that's one less positive for the team, but the better playability for the raid itself encourages player retention and encourages cooperation. I would 100% carry newer players through annihilation without any rewards, but as the system is now, I would NOT risk my reward on new players who don't know what they're doing

In terms of player social environment, it's a net benefit, so I'd really like to know what are the super huge downsides that we're missing

[fierce ferry]

If annie gets changed the sweats are happier because they can get more emeralds via alt abusing. The causuals will also be happier because they actually have a chance to do annie. Most causuals won't wake up in the night just for annie, which is the reason many casual players miss a lot of annies and therefore a lot of le.

[floral crest]

Accounts are much cheaper if you buy one off of those hypixel discord verification ratters

Or become one yourself 😈

[spring moon]

its unfair

[haughty matrix]

so is carrying your alt through raids but nobody does that

[drowsy sinew]

so is not having a life

[fierce ferry]

tbh i dont think most casual would care

how about we make a poll in the discord, according to what i saw and heard from players they are the one demanding the change and you guys are the one saying its unfair to the players

[spring moon]

right cause those are equivalent

[opal flax]

Is.. that it? Surely there's more to it right?

[spring moon]

arent there like, thousands of messages on this topic with reasons from CT, admins, etc

[opal flax]

The biggest one I've heard is "alt abuse" but I haven't actually seen anyone say specifically why alt abuse should be avoided like the plague

[spring moon]

it being unfair to ppl without alts is a big one but there are many other reasons this choice was made, and im sorry but the base system is almost certainly not gonna change 🤷

i appreciate your feedback and i dont think you're wrong in every way, but there just is no way to fix the issues with it without introducing more

and also a lot of the issues arising from the current system would be alleviated as more major world events are eventually added

[opal flax]

It's already currently unfair to people who aren't able to attend because the timing is so terrible. Can you give a more in depth answer rather than just "it's unfair" cause that response doesn't really explain just how bad it could be. Like, what's the worst that could happen?

I'm failing to see why it being unfair is worth the dissatisfaction from basically the entire community on attendance for Annihilation

[opal flax]

Could go more into detail about this part please?

[haughty matrix]

One of the many mysteries only knowable by being CT it seems

[spring moon]

yeah comments like this really make me want to continue engaging with yall and give reasonings for why these decisions were made

[haughty matrix]

How is my statement wrong when you say there are many more reasons and we just dont hear them

[spring moon]

your statement is wrong cause i said there are thousands of messages in this server that you can go look at if you wanted to on this topic, you dont have to be CT

[opal flax]

I would draw a comparison to Lootruns and how it's unfair because Warrior fallen/Monk and Mage arcanist have a disproportionately better time reaching higher challenges than every other class/archetype does. And it's not a slight difference either, it's actually a massive time/difficulty difference, assuming you min max each respective archetype. But I wouldn't say that Lootruns need to be "fixed" because of that

I just want to know what exactly is the Pandora's box that CT is trying to avoid here, cause I'm not fully seeing the big picture that you guys are

[proud fox]

I dont even know why you all think they need a reason
ct & devs work on the content they can just say "No because I say so" and thats valid

If they want to, they can, its their design

[spring moon]

yeah and i really wanna say that but i dont wanna be a d*ck to ppl giving feedback

[opal flax]

Idk if you noticed but I'm not demanding answers here I'm asking politely

[proud fox]

ye thats fine I'm just saying the response basically just is "its not intended and we don't want people doing it"

any response they give for "Why not" will just be given rebutal instead of acceptance

"Oh well then have a better argument"

No, CT work on content not get trained in debate theory

[opal flax]

Yes you guys are allowed to be assholes and just not give answers but I would like to think that CT wants to engage with the community and foster a healthy environment where we all feel heard and seen as opposed to thinking CT lives in another world lol

[proud fox]

👽

[spring moon]

giving 2,3,4x (+) more cache chances to people because they buy more minecraft accounts than someone who doesnt have the time to do that, or cant afford it, etc, is a huge deal and would be disastrous for many reasons. a LOT of people have alt accounts and WOULD get more (you can buy them third party for like $1 or less if you know where to look) in order to abuse annie. they would print thousands of stx of LE and many many more caches than intended and it wouldnt be possible for us to control it without slashing rates by an absurd amount, which hurts everyone. all in all it IS a big deal and its not one we're gonna allow to happen.

[proud fox]

"It won't happen"
yes it will

"It won't be that bad"
its still bad

"its a small percent!"
so is the amount of p eople who come to every possible anni already

[spring moon]

im emphasizing here because ive seen a lot people downplaying stuff like this

[haughty matrix]

NFA alts hardly exist anymore

[proud fox]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/316978886087016449/1347586115619655730/anni_meme2.mp4?ex=67cfa89e&is=67ce571e&hm=c65059bf8654a5e9c401c8316894f31b4e37b6e56fd57d01b15ade845f312845& have this while I go do the dishes

[spring moon]

like this lol

[proud fox]

"hardly"
(doesn't deny the issue at all)

[haughty matrix]

its a nonissue

doesnt mean it doesnt happen

[proud fox]

nonissue to you doesn't mean it isn't an issue for the game

[opal flax]

That's fair. Would drastically increase the price of everything if thousands of STX could be printed every week.

What if Annihilation had severely decreased amounts of money, but instead gave a higher chance of untradeable Mythics? People could engage whenever they want to, but it wouldn't destroy the economy even if you had 10 alt accounts. And I know people hated untradeable Mythics before, but that's with the CURRENT annihilation system. Think maybe people would be happier with untradeable Mythics if they knew they could engage with the content whenever they wanted to?

[proud fox]

'whenever they wanted to'
you're asking for a whole other thing now

[spring moon]

nah this is a common thing ppl are suggesting we change it to

"you can activate it anytime but only once per x time"

[opal flax]

I've been suggesting since the beginning that Annihilation functions like a raid. This is not a "new" thing

[opal flax]

From a gameplay perspective this is the most satisfying answer. From a game balance perspective... No, because of alt abuse

[spring moon]

im gonna be real this is less of a purely numbers thing like the economy reason, but i just Dont want it like this. i want annie to be an event, not like other content. ik this isnt as accessible for the player and of course the player is gonna want all the control they can get, but i dont think its the end of the world for this to be out of your control

thats more a personal feeling standpoint though as a designer, it doesnt necessarily trump all the gameplay reasons why player control is good, but like ive said before and others have said, there is more to it than that

[spring moon]

as for this, im gonna be real it is just too late to do this, so it wont happen, but ill speak hypothetically if we had done this from the start, i think it'd be kinda frustrating to have no alternate ways to get these mythics (the tm) so you could get unlucky for a long time doing annie and not get a cache and have no recourse.

[opal flax]

The problem is that the lack of accessibility is a HUGE deal. As of right now, attending or missing annihilation is the difference between having your current 3 stacks of LE saved up, or quadrupling it with a possible annihilation mythic. 10stx is not a trivial amount to someone who doesn't play 24/7, or who has 10 years worth of money saved up in their bank like me

Other regular world events work perfectly fine as is, and no one is complaining, both because they're very accessible and because the rewards are so low on their own that you aren't missing much

[opal flax]

That's valid. At least then you'd be able to actually attend more frequently, and on your own terms though. Realistically I'd rather attend annihilation 5x more frequently with 3x less rates because then I'd still be having a numerical upgrade + I'd have a fun event to do with my friends

But it would definitely be a feelsbadman moment if you just had shit luck and couldn't get an annihilation mythic for the class that you want for multiple months, and couldn't buy one either 💀

[spring moon]

im gonna respond to this since this ties in with your last message too, but ive got a leak for you: I have actually created 2 more major world events, and they're releasing tomorrow. What does this mean? Well, you're gonna have 3x the chances to do a major event and get a cache. Now you have a much better chance for a major world event to happen in a timespan you're available for

[prisma tangle]

to start i understand the arguments put forth on it and realize the situation is likely not changing but i think the addition of more major world events will just escalate the problem. This is just because I have a hunch that the people willing to buy more alts are also willing to attend every major world event they can. furthermore if there is ever a "best option" of the major world events which is almost impossible to avoid if they give different rewards, players will still complain they cant access that one and being told "well yeah but you can do this other one instead now" doesnt feel very good

it is kinda a lose lose situation though which sucks

[spring moon]

i dont really know what you mean

we're not adding 5 new mythics for every major event, they'd likely all drop a cache that could give you 1 of the current 5 annie mythics

[opal flax]

My only question is if the rewards are equivalent across the board or if they're rewards that are scaled for various levels like 50 or 70

[spring moon]

what? all levels get the same rewards from annihilation

[prisma tangle]

well like okay consider that Annihilations twin cousin happens 1.5 days after anni as a new major world event. If my assumption is right and those that are already abusing alts will opt to try to attend both vs the casuals will likely only be able to attend 1 of the two if that.

and the rewards dont have to just be the cache, maybe annihilations twin drops different more desirable ings, or a really expensive fabled or smth which i dont think is out of the realm of possibility

[opal flax]

annihilation is a lvl 100 world event, the rewards are scaled as such regardless of player level. I'm asking if the other events will also be a lvl 100 event each, or if they're going to have less rewards because they're less difficult and meant for lower level players

[spring moon]

im not rlly gonna give any information about future content like that, but ill say this sort of question isnt relevant to the point im making

[spring moon]

yeah and cache chance could maybe be lowered as more events are added if we wanted to keep annie mythic prices where they are rn, but thats something within our control as designers, how many alt accounts people use is not

[opal flax]

Biggest issue with attendance is the fact that it's unsatisfying to miss so many opportunities when each individual one is such a big deal. Not only that, but the fact that people who have a life (like me) can't afford to attend every one because of work or social responsibilities, meanwhile Discord Mod Gumball players can attend because they are chronically online. The reason it would exacerbate the issue is because now the difference between the "cans" and "can-nots" won't be 1 annihilation vs 5 it will be 3 world events attended vs 15

[prisma tangle]

wouldn't lowering cache cache chance hurt the casual more than the alt abuser though? thats sorta the crux of my point

[opal flax]

Gotcha gotcha. Unrelated to the annihilation criticisms/feedback, thank you for continuing to make amazing and enjoyable content for all the players. There's a reason that I've continued to play wynncraft since I was a kid in middle school 🔥

[prisma tangle]

but i think the anni mythic situation will even itself out eventually

[opal flax]

The biggest issue is that any changes to make annihilation better will disproportionately affect alt abusers, and any changes to make annihilation worse will disproportionately affect non alt abusers.... It's really a shitty situation to be stuck in the middle of

[prisma tangle]

it just sucks that unless you're rich already, or get lucky and drop a cache you really dont get access to anni mythics especially when for the most part theyre kinda the strongest thing you can be doing rn

[drowsy sinew]

make it desync but doable only if u have a token which you in turn get by playing for a while and actually engaging with the game

[opal flax]

The good thing is that they're not the ONLY viable method to play they're just the min max version (reso/Hana) and you have plenty of good alternatives

[drowsy sinew]

like there are solutions if u want one, there is just 0 desire to make it accessible

[opal flax]

That's a flat out lie man

[opal flax]

Ok but how would you make that decision? How much gameplay? What about people who don't have alt accounts but only want to participate in annihilation because of irl responsibilities? What about people like my gf who just generally doesn't enjoy wynncraft but loves Annihilation because they can VC with all our buddies and have a good time?

[spring moon]

yeah im in here at 11:30 PM on sunday talking about this shit for the 50th time (probably not an exaggeration) because there is 0 desire to make it accessible

[drowsy sinew]

none of those challenge that idea

[opal flax]

Ayee West Coast! But fr thank you for taking the time to respond in this chat for the past like, half hour, this close to midnight. It's not your responsibility to do so, and I'm very appreciative of you taking the effort to give clear and concise replies

[spring moon]

thank you for being one of the only people not constantly snipping at ct in all the annie discussions ive seen

[drowsy sinew]

are u talking about it to find a solution? i just read through an argument on whether an average player experience is more valueable than 0.1% abusing

[opal flax]

They do. My gf literally doesn't even play wynncraft for 15 minutes apart from Annie, and she doesn't even care about the rewards it's about the environment it fosters. How do you simultaneously make it available for regular people like her, and unavailable for people with alt accounts who can just leave their character afk for 10 mins and get more playtime than her?

[drowsy sinew]

make doing literally any content in the game give u shards, score non-afk play time, make a separate bounty thing and then have the item tradeable, literally anything can be used as proof u are playing on the account

[opal flax]

I used to be a real shitter and kinda held CT up to an unreasonable standard, but I believe a year ago ish Selvut was being snippy with people in constructive feedback and I called him out on it, and he pointed out to me that CT regularly gets harassed, threatened, or even doxxed, and that a lot of them straight up hide their identities on the discord or in-game because of it, and that he was just exhausted at that point.

It doesn't stop me from having criticisms about the game or providing feedback, but ever since then I've really made it a point to not be an asshole to the people who literally put up with all our bullshit for our benefit

[drowsy sinew]

if somebody doesnt play the game but wanna annie buy a ticket for them or whatevr

[opal flax]

@spring moon Selling annihilation tickets might actually be a viable strat ngl. Buy ten tickets for Annie for your ten alt accounts but each one is worth 40le so it's only a harm for the people who alt abuse, and doesn't affect the regular players who actually rack up enough gameplay hours to get them for free.

I actually really like this solution

Like if you're going to alt abuse, the amount of money you spend is almost the same as the amount of money you make so it's borderline pointless

[drowsy sinew]

when i said buying i meant someone else played and earned them, then listed on tm, not that an npc sells them

[opal flax]

That's what I meant

[drowsy sinew]

ok jus making sure

[opal flax]

and if you, the player, know you aren't going to be able to attend annihilation, you can sell your ticket on TM for a profit

Dude, that would actually be dope as hell. People wouldn't feel as bad about missing out on annihilation. But the tickets themselves might get super cheap. You'd have to make the benchmark for eating your ticket like, multiple hours and hours of playtime to make sure they don't get listed for 12 LE on tm

[fierce ferry]

did you read my msg at all

im not saying you are wrong but a poll on discord might give us some ideas about what the players actually want

[spring moon]

yeah but we're not gonna do a poll. everyone knows the players want more accessible annie

[fierce ferry]

maybe you should explain why changing annie might be bad in a single post instead of in a long discussion

like not everyone gonna bother read thousands of messages

but if its a few hundred words in a single post a lot of people might reconsider their choices

if it still turn out to be almost everyone wanting the change, then it just means they don't care its unfair

[spring moon]

idk what to tell you without repeating myself from literally an hour ago, the system isnt gonna change because players "dont care" about the consequences

[floral crest]

another thing is just, the plain strain it causes to the server and to the players, maybe its much less of a problem now but it still is relevant

accessibility is a thing but having 2x-3x the normal playercount attend an event that takes part in one particular time is just asking for problems in the system wynncraft has

I'm glad that disconnects are much less frequent now and annie performance has generally improved, but still, what if fruma releases and then the player count rises back into those early 2.1 numbers, or even higher

servers could be flooded and people may not be able to even queue into the lobby (100 player queue into the lobby moment)

and then the immense server lag, not being able to play with your friends in annie, and the other plethora of early 2.1 annie problems

if you say it's more of a design thing than a numbers thing, I believe these potential issues warrant a reconsideration of the design, maybe that's just me

my main concern is just that it doesn't mesh well with the wynncraft server system and performance/connection issues as well as not being able to join the server your other partymates are in

maybe numbers can be tuned so that the distribution of annies can be more uniform over the day compared to the (observed) random distribution

[compact garnet]

Games like wow don't care about alt accounts and their effects because they directly benefit from banning these players and them joining with brand new (paid) accounts. Tldr there's no incentive for them to fix this issue because they get paid.

Alt abuse ultimately affects the long term health of the economy which benefits nobody (not even us) other than the players who are exploiting that mechanic.

Certain small groups of people being able to get far more wealth than anyone else through this would cause everything that players like to buy to rise in price, but without the increase to everyone else's emerald gain which is generally how inflation works.

Damn this sounds a lot like the world right now

[opal flax]

What are your thoughts on the activity tracker solution? Where you have to be logged in with your character for a set amount of time to earn participation, and if you don't you would have to buy a "ticket" from another player? It would definitely make having a bunch of alt accounts unusable, and if you tried to, the price of admission would be basically the same as the amount of reward you'd get

[floral crest]

Many people barely play and just log in to play Annie and get their free paycheck so rip them

[outer narwhal]

Or like 40 stx if you drop a laby 💔💔💔 i need prices to go down asap

[spring moon]

yeah this ticket system would rlly piss a lot of these ppl off it also kinda just feels unintuitive imo

are you getting these "annie tickets" deposited in your bank every 3 days when you're active enough from lvl 30 onwards? can you get more than one and stack up a whole bunch during your first playthrough? or can you only get one in which case you can abuse with alts and get around that.

[compact garnet]

Yeah it feels needlessly complicated and something that would confuse people a lot

[proud fox]

also just like
go afk on 10 alts lol.

[proper mica]

I could just imagine someone afk pooling 10 alts in housing

[prisma tangle]

forget imagine its not like ppl dont afk alts for rare mobs lol

[drowsy sinew]

So .1% abusing >> accessible annie
And 'needless' complexity >> accessible annie
You cant seriously argue that there is motivation to make it accessible if a minor inconvenience is enough to veto a system that would allow accessible annie

Wynncraft is such a good game, but man does it lack polish. Whenever an update releases and has problems they take like 2 years to get fixed. Rekindled was great, but introduced a lot of waiting instead of playing, and half a year later none of it has been addressed

[drowsy sinew]

This is what ability shards are rn by the way, and its in the game

I personally would require completing content instead of just playtime/logging in for the ticket system

[drowsy sinew]

Tol rune to fight a raid = whatever ticket to fight annie

Since annie just appears and not summoned it can be some permit that 'enlists' you into the military ranks to fight against it

Like these systems are in the game already

You get runes from just doing whatever content (maybe not loot chests)

You use them to fight endgame bosses

And if you dont play, you can buy them or have someone give them to you

[steady moon]

one thing id like to say since this thread is getting revived a bit is that the renown of the "world event" style theming feels as if its being treated as paramount to the quality of the actual experiences' practical enjoyment, once the cool factor of it wears off in the first couple weeks, anni is just a raid boss you fight with a bigger party every 3 days or whenever you can manage it, its a very interesting fight that considers the ammount of players well w/ anti heal and aoes as well as attacks that divide attention but in spite of it actually being a very thoughtful and deep fight i do not enjoy it for a single second.

the only thing on my mind for the entire fight is worrying whether or not the server is going to shit itself and either crash or lag so terribly everyone dies to something unavoidable like a spell miscast putting them inside annis hitbos or just getting stuck floating in the air, and generally the insane clunkiness the lag produces makes the fight super unresponsive, unsatisfying, and as a whole just makes anni feel more like logging in for a paycheck than logging on to fight arguably the coolest boss in the game, i know its been said its not changing but if not something else really needs to be done because its hurting one of the best pieces of content the game has ever had.

[neon ravine]

oh i sent smth in the wrong chat, anyways yeah we just hope something gets sorted with annie

[opal flax]

Btw they didn't release :(

no update or changelog was posted

[spring moon]

😭

[opal flax]

I'm assuming you weren't lying just to get me happy and giddy, it's quality assurance at this point to make sure there's no bugs/errors right?

[spring moon]

yep

ive never lied in my life

[opal flax]

I'm happy that you had loving and supporting parents who provided a healthy environment for you to grow up in

[sand cape]

mfw the 2 new world events are a blue annie and a green annie

[leaden gale]

we should do that

blue annie has 999999999 water def and green has 9999999999 earth

[proper mica]

There’s just a whole spectrum of annies

[prisma tangle]

When tiamat anni with 999999999 in all defenses

[proper mica]

Use a neutral weapon

[neon ravine]

another day probs people flooding into this if they find

[haughty matrix]

someone already made a new post lol

id say they're perfectly valid to do so

[opal flax]

I wonder why this post in particular is where they all flood to and not any others

[prisma tangle]

This one hasn’t been locked yet