Ascension Levels

[woeful falcon]

ALs

[obtuse trout]

what's the problem we're trying to solve with this topic?

[torn roost]

Not sure.

I'm down to talk ascension cap, refinery deletion, how ORs should be biweekly...

[honest stone]

Or making Ascensions into alternate advancement points?

[woeful falcon]

Oh, I just opened an AL discussion thread because it was a tangent that was being very talked about in #1084941152534413343

Toberdam suggested an entire topic, so I just did it for'em

I have no personal strong stance but I'm always open for debate

#1084941152534413343 message (basically from this message down)

Ignoring the world burning comment

[honest stone]

https://tenor.com/view/everything-is-fine-reign-reignwilson-gif-25357687

[novel glen]

ALs seemed to have been a hot topic spoiling out. Me personally, I wish were account wide perks that you picked instead of generic 1% stat every point on a class. I guess from my train of thought if I started up the convo would be:

Are Ascension Levels in a good spot? Are they accessible enough? And if not, what do?

[woeful falcon]

One thing people need to realise is that these are just discussion threads. They hold no real sway over the direction the game is going to take, and is merely a place for people to voice their opinions by stating what they feel about things.
It's okay to disagree. You don't have to make other people agree with you.

[honest stone]

Personally I'd rather see Ascensions be customizable character improvements rather than a broad power sweep, though having 'some' that just broad power sweeps are fine too.

[novel glen]

Same. It would be an excellent way to progress as a character, and might be the arguable post-250 content that could be provided. Plus if they were reworked into something like the customization stuff that Strahd mentioned, new classes wouldn't quite be so difficult to swap to. Especially if more regular (not celestial) classes are created

[honest stone]

There are many RPG's that have good systems that come to mind. One that I am more familiar with is Elder Scrolls Online Champion Point system

[prime depot]

Soft capping AL at a reasonable amount (50?) would encourage people do use/ascend different classes.

But I got to be controversial so... I'd argue for 100% return on mats for a while in order for high ascension players to adjust

[honest stone]

Soft capping? So what is the soft part of the cap?

[prime depot]

Less gains?

[obtuse trout]

isnt AL50 the point where costs skyrocket?
or that's not a thing anymore?

[honest stone]

So sort of a diminishing returns thing, at what rate?

[prime depot]

Per Al after a certain lv

[torn roost]

Not a thing @obtuse trout

It was tested out in a beta like over a year ago

[honest stone]

Al is linear isn't it Fux?

[torn roost]

I was pretty happy with it, when it was like 7 of us >50AL

Now there's... A lot more.

[torn roost]

Yeah. Overall costs are expo but per level linear increase

The main concerns with super ascension are:

• pvp becomes very AL dominated
• pve stops being a threat/interesting

And minorly:

• no point playing other classes.

The quote that I remember was UA saying he couldn't remember the last time he died in pve. I was/am feeling the same way.

Towers at very high floors still pose some threat and challenge at 63ascensions 😅 but if I went all-in on beo and was like 80-90 there instead of having GS, who knows.

[honest stone]

Personally I am fine with pve no longer being a threat. I don't equate threat level with interesting

Threat in Orna usually just equates to more tedium for me.

Like back in the day when it would take me 4-6 tries on A Morri with an hour break between each try. There was nothing about that that made it more interesting

[woeful falcon]

Things that could / should be noted:

Odie briefly discussed the idea of softcapping ALs with diminishing stat returns, and even talked about having conversations with the highly ascended players at the time, but it seems like the idea was scrapped

and

People suggest the possibility of content that does not take ALs into account, to bring challenge back into highly ascended people without punishing new players

Regarding the second point, I can't say I'm all too fond of it, since it'd feel weird to dump a lot of time and effort into something that would not have any effect in gameplay at all (in a specific piece of content)

[novel glen]

I don't like the second point either tbh

[woeful falcon]

Can't attribute it to any specific person, since I've seen that suggestion being thrown around every once in a while

[prime depot]

Weren't those talks pre-towers? Because when there was nothing better to do I too would be against nerfing AL (and my al is low).

[velvet wraith]

I think there are plenty of ways to make ascensions less dominant while still rewarding having them.

Towers could have been built such that every 10 floors reduces the overall effectiveness of them by X%. More ascensions is still more of a buff, but not quite to the level of brute forcing everything

[prime depot]

Why would you reduce al effectiveness in towers of all places?

Towers is hard enough compared to other gameplay. Why would we want to be weaker for towers

[velvet wraith]

Because having new endgame content be a cakewalk 2 days into release is unappealing to me

[prime depot]

Then switch to a low AL class?

Also, you do realize the point in towers isn't to do 1 till lv 50

You'll have to do 100's to unlock all the stuff

[velvet wraith]

Nah. "Play a class with no ascensions" isn't a solution to the current ascension implementation, no matter how often people throw that idea around.

You're also missing the point. My idea wouldn't work in current towers, but they could have been balanced in such a way that ascensions weren't the best way to progress through them, that's all

[prime depot]

And I think you miss the point that while towers should be challenging they should also be able to be completed in a reasonable time and multiple times because you need a lot of shards

[woeful falcon]

It isn't the first time I hear the "Limit yourself if you want a challenge" argument, and while I can see your point of view, it just isn't exactly as fun when you know you are doing something sub-optimally on purpose. It feels good to try your hardest and still be challenged

That being said, some people can definitely just enjoy the self limiting life

cough @smoky shard ahem

[smoky shard]

I'm right here

[prime depot]

That was not my point...

[woeful falcon]

What'd you mean by that then?

[velvet wraith]

And none of this has to do with how ascensions could have been handled.

The exact same thing could be in place, balanced around reducing the effectiveness of ALs so that the best way to progress in towers is to run towers. Not farm more ascensions

[prime depot]

It was in response to asking for AL to be less effective in towers specifically

Since towers is harder content ypu shouldn't decrease AL effectiveness in the harder content. I could see the aegument for pvp (although I disagree)

The only way towers should be made significantly harder is if they are much faster to run. Having both hard and grindy is not fun.

[velvet wraith]

That's the whole point. Harder content doesn't have to be linked to ALs. And doing so only harms new players while rendering the challenge obsolete for long time players.

I'm not crazy enough to suggest content that ignores them entirely, but reducing their effectiveness in places as a mechanic of that content is a good medium that still rewards having 50 scensions without having to balance around those with 50 ascensions

[prime depot]

Honest question

If you want more challenge should you really devotw the resources to ascend a single class

I think the game as a whole should be balanced around 0 AL

AL is an "op" mechanic. Only reason to buy AL is so that you can feel stronger. I like it.

[woeful falcon]

Not ascending does also take a lot of the game away from the game. When you're maxed out on items, or nearly there, and are max level, what do you play for?

Gear isn't needed, and if not ascending, materials aren't needed

[velvet wraith]

and thats a perfectly valid opinion to have. I disagree with it, but thats fine

[woeful falcon]

Orns, Gold and Experience aren't needed

[prime depot]

I agree with what ypu are saying

[woeful falcon]

If you enter a state like that, you basically just hibernate from orna until the next event comes, until eventually you don't come back even with new events

[prime depot]

But if you really want a challenge you should not ascend too much

[woeful falcon]

I know a couple of people who stopped playing like that

[velvet wraith]

the same thing happens with the current AL system too when people get the same mat block 3 or 4 times in a row

[prime depot]

I can't be the only person who grinds AL because I want to complete things faster, can I?

[velvet wraith]

I didn't play at all between November and February because I refused to farm solarite again* and there wasn't anything else to farm at the time

[woeful falcon]

Completely true, won't discredit that. But in those scenarios, you're at the very least given a goal - get the material blocking you.
It doesn't feel great, but it feels better than being aimless, at least in my opinion

[velvet wraith]

oh for sure

[woeful falcon]

Currently fogstone blocked

[novel glen]

I gotta build more refineries but lazy. Currently having fun raiding again lol.

But touching on that play something else argument, nah. Because now I'm out of my preference in a game I want to enjoy and feel that the issue is more than a me issue, so I speak up.

[woeful falcon]

Oh yeah, that's also a good point. People usually ascend the class that they like to play. And playing a non ascended class for added challenge also means playing the classes you like least

[night kernel]

I see 2 problems with AL. First, you are locked into a class, if you want to switch you can't. Second, random materials make it very very hard when you're unlucky and have to use rare materials (and sometime same of such materials in a row).

Also infinite linear progression is just to much of an advantage for older player / party farmer. I get that they need to have an advantage for playing the game more, but 50% more stats...isn't it too much ? It also make the game too easy for them.
One solution could be to have some activities where your AL don't count or are caped. An other solution could be to make the progression logarithmic

[prime depot]

My point is being distorted for no reason. I never said you should play another class you don't like.

My point is AL only purpose is getting stronger. And it is hard to farm. Casual players deserve being able to play the game with 0 AL.

What I can't understand is people that farm AL in a hardcore faction and also complain about the game being too easy

The game imo should be balanced for Zero AL. A zero AL player of any class should be able to kill arisen morigan with good demonforged ornate gear

[woeful falcon]

I do understand your point, I really do. What I mean to say is that once you've completed all there is to complete, ascension farming is all there is left to do, so you're obviously going to get some ALs

[prime depot]

But, if you want to get faster / stronger you farm AL levels

[woeful falcon]

And I agree with this.

[prime depot]

And I also think AL should have diminuishing returns to prevent extreme overpoweredness

But I assume that if you farm for AL is because you have both the time for doing it (because it's time consuming) AND THE DESIRE TO GET STRONGER

[night kernel]

increasing costs is somewhat diminishing return, but it has gone too far for some of the most dedicated player.

[prime depot]

So once you are lv 250, unlocked all classes, got your ornate best geat. Should you not be able to get stronger than baseline content?

[woeful falcon]

Absolutely.

But then the game also feels too easy

There's nothing stronger to tackle

[prime depot]

But the whole point of getting high AL is to make the game easier.

There are no extra builds or skills or anything

There is no way to make the game balanced for both 0 AL casual player and 100 AL hardcore player.

[woeful falcon]

That's the challenge ain it.

[prime depot]

That doesn't involve locking the "casual" player out of content

[night kernel]

unless we get a tier 11, the game is not build to support infinite growth

[woeful falcon]

To be honest, Endless is a place that manages to be balanced for AL0 casual and 100AL hardcore

[prime depot]

Sure. Because it's endless.

[woeful falcon]

gives enough rewards to the unascended, gives more rewards to the ascended. But the unascended don't need that many rewards, while the ascended do, to ascend

[prime depot]

But do you want to have raids design around 50AL?

[woeful falcon]

Nope

However, we could learn more from the Endless design. the snapshotting aside, I think it's a neat thing

We do have Endless Raids, somewhat

it's called Other Realms

[prime depot]

Or towers that must be runned 4-5 times till floor 50 until you unlock a celestial

[woeful falcon]

even lowbies can get good rewards from OR

but ascended people get even more, since they can max out all the raids

[prime depot]

OR is a normal raid with 10 times hp and lower cooldown

AL make you faster at raids and dungeons and towers

And I really see no point in farming AL to then struggle at doing any of these activities

[woeful falcon]

The raids having 10 times more hp means they don't instantly die to high AL players, so they can actually fight back for once, which is nice

[prime depot]

And again. I do support soft caps for AL to prevent extreme cases and encourage multiclassing

But I do so aknowledging that AL is not needed and people that dedicate time to AL do so because they want power

[woeful falcon]

My point isn't that people are farming ALs because they want to get stronger, and then get tired that they are too strong. It's that farming ALs, at some point, is the only content left pursuing, so people are ascending just because it's the only thing left to do

Obviously most people do ascend because they want to get stronger

[prime depot]

Disagree. No one farms 2500 rare mats with alts because they have bothing better to do with their lifes

They do it to get stronger

[woeful falcon]

But still, I'd like to see more endless-esque pieces of content where both low ALs and high ALs can be challenged and be rewarded equally

[woeful falcon]

It's not because "they have nothing better to do with their lives". It's because they like orna and want to keep playing orna.

[prime depot]

But you can play orna 30min a day

Why bother hardcore play to get AL

Or you can start a new char

[night kernel]

it's not because it's the only thing to do that it's a good thing to do.

[prime depot]

Do you farn AL out of boredom?

Why not ascend a different class instead of your main

[woeful falcon]

I play orna at most 1hr per day. Sometimes I use that hour to run towers. When there are no towers and when I don't feel like doing towers, I farm whatever material I am currently AL locked out of. Currently that is fogstone.

[woeful falcon]

I don't like other classes :p

[woeful falcon]

Well yeah, that's what I meant. Nothing's stopping you from just doing pvp, but that doesn't really accomplish anything.

[prime depot]

Fair enough. I'd wager most people farm AL for their main class because they want power. But I could be wrong

[woeful falcon]

You're probably right

I won't pretend to know everyone's point of views

[prime depot]

And to reiterate. I think AL could be nerfed/balanced. But please don't balance tier 10 gameplay around high (>20AL) because most tier 10 player won't even make it to 10 AL (at least that's my experience in kingdoms and wars)

[torn roost]

I would say the game's hardest challenges should be balanced around ~10 AL.
That would be things like: 50F Tower, 400F/final endless achievement, 100% amorri WRB.

Most new players in T10 are able to build an altar of ascension, and the first few ascension levels are relatively free.
Even casual players should have some goals to work toward, and those are definitely achievable just with small amounts of daily play.

The easier challenges, sure, no expectation of ALs.
That would be things like: non-hard hordes of all existing dungeons up to VoG, hard boss, 100-200F endless, most other raids/hitting OR caps with many attempts.

[prime depot]

Sure 10 AL doesn't bother me. But do consider that is class locking some reasonable commit players

Not to mention locking casual t10 players that don't bother reaching lv 250

[woeful falcon]

You don't need to be 250 to ascend

Most people reach AL10 well before reaching 250 I think

[prime depot]

Which is acceptable for me. But maybe not for the majority of the player base. But only NF has the needed data

[torn roost]

I've fought a lot of people in wars that are like... L238, ascension4 ... L242, ascension 6. That kind of thing.

[prime depot]

Hmm.. once again I think you are missinterpreting me.

Balanced for lv 250 with 0AL or equivalent

Is my opinion

A lv 250 0al player is probably similar to a lv 240 10AL player

[torn roost]

I guess I disagree that "majority of the playerbase" and "game's hardest challenges" are something that go together.
I would be shocked if people nowadays were making it to 250 without being able to get 10ALs worth of mats/orns -- unless they're getting leeched straight to the top.

[prime depot]

Again 10Al is reasonable to me except for the class locking aspect

The real question (which we don't know) is how many t10 players are lv250 and how many are AL10.

And also for NF's sake. Who plays the game and what's the player retention.

If people are quiting after reaching lv 250 then the game does need to get harder (or increase the lv cap).

[elfin gyro]

Well if you use orn gear while lvling ull have a billion+ of orns by the time you hit 250 personally im lvl 249 with 2.4 billion orns left and i have 1 class al 32 another al 21 and then 3,1 so yeah easily possible to reach al 10 just use boost gear

Granted i did lvl for most of the time before the mimic heads existed so i used a lost helmet which doesnt boost xp

[real ivy]

Personally how I've always felt about ALs is that they're useless. I understand that once ya start grinding them out they're the go to for stat upgrading. However I think, and yes I know no one here will agree, AL was a mistake.

Currently I have at least 5 ALs in each class and yeah, I can see the difference 5% makes to my health attack etc.

I say this was a mistake because I see that this was originally a rss dump and people that grind the crap out of this game religiously have made it a personal goal to shoot for the moon. This not only split the pvp up even further but you can clearly see the difference in someone who plays the game religiously vs casual.

A lvl 230 heretic with no AL is extremely different from a 229 heretic with 10 ALs. Honestly at the time of the release of this feature I hated it. Now I accept it as the only way to be relevant.

I know another teir after and another and another and another would be tedious at best due to the fact that each teir has new enemies (mobs bosses and raids), new weapons, new items.

So what's my point? Without ALs the game would die at this point. Let's be real. No way to git gud after hitting 250. But ALs was not a good solution to give life to the game. Casual players would never be able to catch up to anyone (let alone most casual players don't go for only 200% gear but that's another rant).

This is why I'm thankful for the celestial classes. This new breath of life and different roads to experience. An uncharted coarse for all players to discover. Regardless of being a casual or grinding player.

[unborn pebble]

Casual players cant catch up to hardcore players? Seems fair imo

[prisma pollen]

1. Ascensions are ok if classes are more balanced (my own pov) but it’s not and heavily skewed to aoe classes due to endgame gameplay
2. Ascensions are locked in, and due to point 1 above I’d love to see it be less of a lock in via a) annual or longer term moves, b) pay price (in game currency OR real money I don’t care but in game is likely more palatable) to transfer, c) pay price (same as above) to apply ascension from one class to another.
3. Agree there’s crap all else to do at end game other than ascensions and towers isn’t proving interesting enough to be a “perpetual grind” but more of a smash and grab. Would love more engaging perpetual grind for endgame that’s meaningful
4. The process of ascending is absolutely hot garbage. Walking refineries back to OT, making alts in each tier, farming alt coli, refreshing shop for herbs are all almost insulting ways to play an rpg these days. People do it (me included) because it’s the most efficient way to progress but wow are these work arounds that I bet was NOT by design but they end up being mainstream. I’d find it hard to believe a meeting at NFHQ with someone going “I got it guys.. let’s make these players walk 800m in a diff direction so they build this structure and then manually move it back x 10, and THAT is the economic engine that drives endgame progress!”

[primal swallow]

Maybe we could have a high AL cap (maybe 100? Or even 200?), but splittable to every character? Maybe also make the costs a bit higher to compensate ascending 6 classes x 1.
That way you could play anything you want without worrying about being weak, and it'd prove to be a good challenge for the player.

Also, when you simply are tired of X class, you can immediately start playing with Y, thus continue farming for that. But the cap is also a way to not make it the only endgame content, but a plus.

I definitely agree we should have a real endgame. Towers are ok-ish, you do them, unlock your items/classes desired, and start farming for quality adornments... But there could be more. However, I want to see this new dungeon content that is coming before making any endgame suggestions.

[sudden agate]

To piggy back off this somewhat, I wonder if the game's simply finding itself in a bad/awkward spot with its overall design and may need a more serious overhaul, or at least a change in direction.

NF has done a good job making this game remain interesting after existing for so long. But a few of the ways it's done so have been what I'd consider a mis-step. AL was made to be a time and material sink for end game players, and that's all well and good. But it's surprising the negative effects that come from it either weren't predicted, or weren't more closely considered before implementing it.

But to step away from AL for a moment, I sometimes question if the core design of these additions/changes are playing to the wrong crowd. I understand that NF wants their highest level and most dedicated players to have something to do, and for players working their way up there to have something to look forward to. But at some point, there's gotta be an end to things. There has to be a point where the content well runs dry, and you just gotta accept that and move on. NF can't achieve infinite growth with Orna, cause that's simply not feasible, and as such, it's not feasible to always be able to keep your most invested players going indefinitely with new content.

I remember being told before reaching T10 that I could look forward to the "real game" starting... and by then I'd already spent plenty of time in it, so it felt crazy to consider that all of it was just buildup to when the "real game" started. That falls into long running MMO territory where all the rest of the game doesn't matter, only the end game stuff does. Hell, games like WoW let you pay money to skip most of the game they built just to get to the part that "matters" to the more hardcore playerbase, which only stands to make newer/more casual players feel like they're wasting their time.

Even further to this, your most hardcore and dedicated players will crank through your new content very quickly. As such, they're gonna groan that there's nothing to do... even though many no-life the game and blitz through it all super fast, never slowing down to actually take their time and relax with it. Then there's gonna be pressure for more content for these people, cause they need things to do. Meanwhile, everyone else is taking it slower and finding that while, sure, there could be more added and that'd be great... at least they're still progressing.

If that all seems irrelevant, consider carefully about how repeated large scale updates, primarily focused for the T9/T10/"T11" players, will turn out. NF did a good job revamping the story and quest content, but it still feels like the low/mid game is kinda wanting in stuff catered to it, to make it feel special, besides a few bosses/raids. They did good with the new Formor event having content for earlier game players, and that's a step in the direction. But if end-game catered updates continue to be the focus, then I worry it'll have similar problems as MMOs that have been around for way, way too long. And even worse... I worry that if stuff like ALs don't get fixed for one reason or another, like if NF finds it perfectly fine and sees no reason to change it cause it's working as intended, or they don't want to upset their most dedicated players and doesn't want to consider the repercussions it'd have on the rest of the playerbase... then you'll potentially wind up doing more harm than good by leaving it alone and applying bandaid fixes elsewhere.

It's a very difficult balance to make when you're creating content for a game played by so many people, with so many cogs turning and opinions being heard. I don't envy them at all, it sounds brutal. I just hope they're keeping this sort of stuff in mind while going forward.
There's a reason I've stuck around for so long... cause the game was fun for quite a long time. But sometimes I wish there was more reason to go back to before I became T10, cause if this is where the "real game" was supposed to be... Sure, I like the fancy new content made for it. But I wouldn't exactly call it as fun as when I was more fresh faced with the game, working my way up slowly from T1 to T9. Or at least, it was a little more enjoyable when the game wasn't as big of a slog. I could make an alt and do it all again, but... I know that time is better spent just playing my T10 character, cause it'd be a waste otherwise when I could be progressing my end game main. And that's kinda too bad.

Anyways, thank you for joining me for my TED talk. I promise I did not intend for it to be this long of a post

[runic nimbus]

i think a hard cap on each class asc would end the arms race of ascension and force players to explore other classes a bit once you maxed out. on the same hand how do you nerf the hard working players that are 50+?

as a realm i can’t explore other classes because my class is sacrifice every stat for higher dmg and it doesnt scale very well. it’s hard to keep up with other high ascension deities because of shitty dmg penetration. so it’s an arms race 🤷‍♂️

[unborn pebble]

you probably dont, those high AL people will not have anything to do if its capped, thus might quit 🤷‍♂️
there's no content that can be done endlessly with a sense of progression other than ALs atm imo

[honest stone]

If we don't want to radically change how ascensions work, I think the easy answer here is not capping them but instead implementing some sort of diminishing return system on the stat adjustment themselves and not just increasing cost. Right now ascensions scale so that each one is more powerful than the last (albeit slightly). Sure it's going to feel a bit rough if your character power gets knocked back down some. But it's not going to feel as bad as getting X number of ascensions just yoinked away.

Though as previously mentioned, I am more in favor of a rework where Ascensions become more of a character customization option.

[obtuse trout]

what do you mean with

each one is more powerful than the last
?

[honest stone]

Each one multiplies on the total Stat, compounding on the last ascension.
For instance with 5000 attack your 1st Ascension only gives you a bonus of 50. But by the time you get to Ascension 9, your 10th will give you a bonus of 54.68 (not sure if the game rounds)

Anyway 4 stat points doesn't seem like lot but figure this out over 100 ascensions. Your 5000 attack just blossomed into 13524 attack. From 99-100 you gain 134 attack.

(edit): Ok apparently I am crazy. I coulda swore on my last realm ascension that I got my attack stat boosted by 1.01. Fake news!

[torn roost]

Ascension is 1.01x not 1.01^x

[prisma pollen]

@woeful falcon can i get this pinned if i got 8 thumbs up 🙂 i feel like it's a legit summary (albeit from one person's POV) of points

[woeful falcon]

Your name is yellow, sorry

[prisma pollen]

rip

[woeful falcon]

Been a bit busy these past few days, haven't been able to keep up with things, but by all means ping me if yall want anything pinned

[smoky shard]

I also browse through quite often, if John isn't online, I usually am

[shell echo]

I got stuck in Asc 8 due to cursed ortanite, passed that after spamming morrigans, only for my next asc to require me to gather another 635 cursed ortanites... I was thinking of quitting just then... but naahh...

[woeful falcon]

Ascensions aren't mandatory. If you have an annoying block, you can just.. ignore ascensing, and do other things.
That's what I do anyway

Currently fogstone blocked - I just do towers for shards, and sometimes get fogstone, or do chaos portals for the event and sometimes a lesser sluagh spawns

[night kernel]

I wouldn't say that a 40% buff to your stats isn't mandatory.

[woeful falcon]

When content can be done without them, it isn't mandatory

[night kernel]

coincidentally, the last big content released is made way easier with ascensions.

I'd like to see a tower hard mode that deactivate your ascension.

[prisma pollen]

Nothing is mandatory in this game then

[woeful falcon]

If you can finish a tower at level 200 with a tier 1 class, no gear, no pets and no skills, then yeah, nothing is mandatory :p

[prisma pollen]

Finishing a tower isn’t mandatory

😇

just go do something else

[woeful falcon]

I think you overlooked the [if content can be done] part of my sentence

Tower is content

[prisma pollen]

Killing 1 mob and getting shards technically is doing towers

[woeful falcon]

Now I feel like you're just being contrarian for the sake of it

[prisma pollen]

Back on topic of asc tho, don’t mind the grind it’s just some mats are so annoying and requires workarounds

And I disagree that “don’t do ascensions” is ok justification for really bad material design used in ascensions

That’s me being the contrarian because I legit think current system sucks

The workarounds are ridiculous lol

And also at some point you can’t ignore ascensions… there’s literally nothing else to do to tangibly improve your character

[woeful falcon]

That's a fair point

[prisma pollen]

So that loop of 1% stats from ascension is the best thing you can do > oh I suppose you should walk 20 refineries back to OT is horrendous

[woeful falcon]

I can ignore ascensions because I can do other things to improve my character

but if I ever ran out of those, then yeah, it'd have to be an ascension grindfest, and I get what you mean

[prisma pollen]

Yeah I can’t help but be the stupid hamster on a poorly designed hamster wheel blows

Don’t mind being a hamster mind you

It is a grind based game

Just wish the wheel was better

“We’re all willing hamsters, the wheel sucks, we want a better wheel” just about sums up ascensions imo

[night kernel]

what if ascensions were not 1% all but you chose which stat you want points in ? could make more rpg decisions about you character.

[woeful falcon]

That wouldn't solve the problem at hand which is the material issue

[prisma pollen]

Wheel still sucks, and everyone would choose atk or mag

Because defenses can be solved by gear thresholds, offenses scale infinitely

And also there’s the dynamic that once you do enough damage in a turn based game where you go first you don’t need defenses

[woeful falcon]

I wonder which would be easiest: Making the hard to get materials easier to get; or assigning a value to each material depending on how complicated it is to get, and then requesting an amount of material based on that value

[night kernel]

well then if you do enough damage, and you have enough defense, then just stop the game

[woeful falcon]

This point is what makes me wish Foresight had an impact in non-horde fights

[prisma pollen]

But it’s soothing to kill a lot of shit smoothly

[night kernel]

it has in tower, it's all fun and game until immortal lords starts killing before you play

[prisma pollen]

This is why people play games like Diablo or why crap like dynasty warriors as a genre even exists lol

[woeful falcon]

So you build defenses or foresight against the immortals (or dodge them, like most people do)

well, foresight is a bit of an impossibility

since immortal lords are the kings of foresight

wish there was more inbetween

[prisma pollen]

I think changing mats to something that’s farmable for the tier is a good step

[night kernel]

true, even double tower foresight buff don't change anything

[prisma pollen]

Another idea is making the ascension mat requirements fixed

[woeful falcon]

it does for summoners

[prisma pollen]

So you know what you’re getting into

[woeful falcon]

but summoners have twice the base FS

[night kernel]

yes random mats is not good at all, like some people can increase ascension smoothly while the others just get rare materials every ranks ? why is that even a thing.

[woeful falcon]

There's another argument to be made though.
Should ascensions really be easier? Even with the hurdles of ascending, a good chunk of people are above AL40, some more dedicated people are above AL60, and some insane people are above AL100, all the while the game was designed for AL0 or AL10 or something among those lines

I understand that the material block is a frustrating mechanic to be rammed into

but we're also reaching levels of player power that weren't intended

[prisma pollen]

Separately cap it

[woeful falcon]

the original intent of ascensions was to just dump your materials, since lategame players had no usage for such a high amount of materials

[prisma pollen]

But frustrating wheel isn’t the answer to uncapped ascensions

[night kernel]

Maybe future content could ignore AL

[woeful falcon]

I can agree to that

Content ignoring AL is weird too, because at that point it feels pointless

why dump materials and hundreds of millions of orns for literally nothing

[prisma pollen]

Tbh if I know what I know now I’d ignore ascensions altogether

[night kernel]

"some" content, not all.

[prisma pollen]

And just never got on the hamster wheel

[night kernel]

Like seasonal content.

[prisma pollen]

Like John said you can do all content without ascensions

[woeful falcon]

It's not too late to refund ascensions

[prisma pollen]

But then again there is nothing else to do

So yeah idk

[woeful falcon]

That really is the thing

[prisma pollen]

Do as in work towards

Towers isn’t it

[woeful falcon]

Ascension is a tool, not content.

[prisma pollen]

No matter how “long term end game” is hyped to be

[woeful falcon]

but when you're out of content

Ascension "becomes" the content

which leads to frustration

[prisma pollen]

At least not yet

And yeah exactly

The gameplay revolves around getting that ascension

What you farm, why you farm etc

It’s for that 1% stats

It becomes the game tbh

[night kernel]

AL was created as a solution for endgame, just brought more problems imo

[prisma pollen]

The uncapped thing it seriously mind boggling

It’s like you wouldn’t uncap levels…

But that’s what ascensions are lol

[night kernel]

I'd like to know what Odie thinks about what AL have become.

[prisma pollen]

Max level 250, no jk it’s actually infinity

Anyone looking at this as an rpg is gonna be like wut

Blizzard is like shit why didn’t we think of that for wow

World first: level 9000

[woeful falcon]

pretty sure diablo has that with paragon levels or whatever they're called

[prisma pollen]

Yeah in d4 I think they capped it

[night kernel]

They did in diablo 3 with parangon but some important stats are capped.

[woeful falcon]

And odie did say he had no expectations of people ascending this rapidly, and was intending on adding a cap

but somewhere along the lines the idea was dropped

[prisma pollen]

Side comment: player tenacity always seem to surprise the studio tbh

How hard people can grind for stuff like joc

How people can rip through towers

How many ascensions

[woeful falcon]

it goes both ways

[prisma pollen]

I haven’t seen the opposite of like players going ahhhh crap this is too hard let’s settle in for the long haul

[woeful falcon]

because at the same time, they're also surprised as to how come players can't kill a single night spawning monster per quest during an entire month

(halloween event)

[prisma pollen]

Haha I’d just reply with skill issue

But that’s why I’m not community manager

[night kernel]

ahah watch the cost I put it, people will never be able to... WTF AL100 !

[woeful falcon]

Basically yeah

I think it was going to be a softcap

like after AL50, it became 0.1% stat per AL or something

[prisma pollen]

Legit that’s ok

[woeful falcon]

so at AL170 you'd get +62% stats

[prisma pollen]

It gives people a big giant warning sign

Hey go ascend another class

I’d like like right ok thx

Then your world first achievement is 50 Al across all classes

[night kernel]

maybe a softer cap, because 0.1% looks like hard cap to me

[prisma pollen]

[woeful falcon]

The idea was dropped for... some reason. I don't remember why

but if you care to throw it into #💡│suggestions maybe you could revitalise the idea

[night kernel]

don't want to be shot by those AL100 nerds

[woeful falcon]

If you care about that, the "anonymous" posting does exist

Plus the AL100+ population is much smaller than the EveryoneElse population

[night kernel]

what if AL50 was the hard cap but ascending another class gives every class 0.1%

[prisma pollen]

I actually just want to know if ascensions is on the radar for something they wanna address or if it’s just yeah may not be perfect but don’t wanna touch it territory

Dev Q&A when

[woeful falcon]

that'll probably only be information you can get if:

A) odie comes down to the post and answer it

B) Dev Q&A

[prisma pollen]

Wait is there dev Q&A

[woeful falcon]

Irregularly but it does happen

[prisma pollen]

How to get in on that

[woeful falcon]

though I think the next one is odieless

[woeful falcon]

🅱️atreon

[prisma pollen]

What level

[woeful falcon]

not sure off the top of my head

though patreon is only necessary for participating in it

reading it is public

[night kernel]

omg pay to win ?

[prisma pollen]

Level 1 apparently

Sick

[prisma pollen]

Pay to be annoying reporter at courthouse steps

But hey that is the role of the press in society, ask the tough questions

[odd coral]

IMO, this is the problem of the game, late in the game nothing better else to do but ascension.

Towers were a step in the right direction, but towers are only good for shards, and shards are only used for side upgrades, so soon or later we got back to the only real progress for endgame, ascensions.

Now with towers the problem is they have to much "waste" time meaning towers become boring after you get what you need, no needed to unlock nothing else because is useless for your needs, no skills from the others classes, meaning no desire to spend 30+minutes for something I don't need, I rather prefer spent those 30+ minutes farming mats for ascensions levels.

[short crag]

Towers are great, but they are not "alternative" content to ascensions. realistically Towers incentivise ascensions even more, both by 1) being difficult thus higher stats are wanted/needed, and 2) directly providing materials for ascensions

when ToO was first teased/talked about i'd assumed it would be separate to ascensions, or provide a different focus. Towers are a gameplay focus in the same way that dungeons are (/were) a gameplay focus, with Ascensions layered on top

[novel glen]

I was hoping for celestial passives or something that you could add on to your current class. Like amities but cranked up. Instead it's just more things to do to help ascend with but as an HoA softport instead. Orna really needs to take a look at other MMOs and see what else is out there to add to an endgame. Otherwise we get people who quit the game because of mat locked on the same materials over and over and that's the only form of tangible progress in the long run.

[sudden agate]

Is it bad that sometimes I feel like this population not only seems louder, but gets catered to more than the EveryoneElse population? Might not be true, but, it's how it sometimes feels.
Like, every time a nerf or change to the game that'd be good for the overall health of Orna comes up there's swaths of dedicated people here on Discord going "NOOOOO DON'T RUIN THIS FOR MEEEE" and then nothing happens

[torn roost]

that does unfortunately happen sometimes.

[woeful falcon]

That's why we need official NF polls for gamestate things

[novel glen]

Yup

[woeful falcon]

because with polls, one voice is one vote, no matter how loud it is

[torn roost]

I'm still in the camp of "change whatever needs to be changed, I'll manage".
It's how I felt about capping ascensions at 50, back when the idea was first floated.

[sudden agate]

Even with polls to gather opinions, at some point you gotta tell your most dedicated to figure out a way to deal with change

And if they don't wanna play any more because of a change, I question if either the change was a good one, or if the dedicated just are angry they don't have things their way/lose their power fantasy and don't wanna stick around if they can't have it

[prisma pollen]

psh lemme introduce you to my auto voting bot you innocent child

[sudden agate]

Or people's 70 alternative accounts

[prisma pollen]

1 vote per alt ❤️

jk, 1 vote per refinery

[sudden agate]

There's ways to fudge poll numbers, which is why I hold onto the opinion that sometimes change that's for the good of the game needs to happen even if some people don't like it. You can't please everyone, but, the health of the game should be strongly considered

[woeful falcon]

So long as we don't make the votes anonymous, I'm sure we'd find a way to distinguish real votes from alts

but I get the concern

It's not a perfect system

[short crag]

the "best" way would be to host polls in-game so the studio has character data associated with each vote and they can filter as they see fit

there are clever ways to filter/select character data that almost certainly guarantees the demographic they want

obviously won't be perfect, but surely better than anonymised discord/gforms polls if integrity is desired

[short crag]

but yeah, this is generally true *when talking about game balance

[sudden agate]

To bring my complaints back to the actual topic of ALs, I think ALs were a decent idea in concept, but were a bad idea overall, simply because they were built with the intention to create an endgame that goes as far as the player wants. When you have a game with PvP content, you cannot create a system that lets the player gain strength in an unlimited manner as long as they stay dedicated to it.
People will go crazy with a system if it has no limits, that's just how some people play these games. And if it's a system you give players access to at the start of T10 like they have, your future T10 content has to consider many, MANY different power levels because of it, which is a nightmare to balance

[sudden agate]

Yup. To say it differently... If the only thing keeping a player in a game is an OP class, skill, or the way something it set up, and removing/nerfing it is enough to make them leave...
Let them

Cause that makes it clear they were holding on to one thing that let them feel almighty and doesn't want that to be removed, lest they have to try something else, or play on a similar level as everyone else

Now, if the change in question was so massive that the outcry was across all manner of players across the level tiers, classes, and ways they play... then yeah, sure, it's maybe time to reconsider. But if "We're gonna nerf X skill" is enough for a dozen people to say "you do this and I'm done"... see ya, dude

Change has to happen eventually. It will not please everyone, that is a given. However, what's more important... the risk of upsetting a few of the people that already have this power in their hands, and then doing nothing about it? Or make a change that not only improves the health of the game for the players in that area now and require the current ones to adapt, but also for future players that will get to that level in time?

[You have tuned into Blep's 2nd edition Ted Talk. Thank you for joining us]

[velvet wraith]

infinite scaling aside, I just wish ascensions had been designed around engaging with other on tier content, rather than mats/orns/gold alone

• Collect trophies from worthy adversaries in the coliseum (clear coliseums , and worthy implies they are your tier)
• Expand your area of influence and fight back the fallen (explore/control X number of areas)
• There are rumors of dangerous foes hidden deep in the depths (reach X floor in endless)

There is an entire game that has been ignored, and the only current endgame loop is refineries and alt dungeons with the occasional orn farming thrown in. makes me sad

[sudden agate]

Perhaps sometime this year the dev team can dedicate a few months to some balancing, new content like that, and just refining the game to a more polished shine... rather than spending dev time trying to make new event content. We have a ton of monthly/yearly even content. Might be time to fine tune what else is there, ya know?

[frozen coral]

I came up an option to be able to halve the costs needed for an AL, but in return the effectiveness of the ascensions is halved itself. So instead of 1%, you get .5%.
This would allow to partially bypass a little bit of the grind needed when you get raid only materials or something. By no means a fix, just a band-aid

[short crag]

personally i don't know why raid mats were kept for ascensions. it's not really a fun process once it starts requiring thousands. puts a lot of strain on experimenting with raid items, and it's a mediocre experience to get any of the lower tier raids

[frozen coral]

Not to mention some kingdoms straight up don't allow you to hit lower raids and you need a whole permission process. Tho I believe it's not that hard to explain you've been solarite blocked for the 4th time in a row

[torn roost]

raidmats are needed so that players can experience the joy of:

• running a bunch of alts in an alt kingdom
• leaving your main kingdom for days at a time just to come right back
• mass murdering low tier raid bosses that never stand a chance and can't fight back

👍

[novel glen]

Costs should be rebalanced.

Instead of like 1000-1200 per material it should be:
2000 super common material, like hides and stuff
1000 uncommon material, like red drac or herbs
500 boss
200 raid

Obviously exaggerated lower costs but kind of aiming to make a point

[short crag]

yep, i agree

i'd argued hard for that early on in the ascensions system

1. rebalance the rarity of every material. raid mats should be legendary/ornate/whatever (high) and dragonite/ortanite probably should be pretty low since they're common.
2. ascension requirements continue to scale mats, but attack a multiplier based on the material rarity. something like mythril (let's say common) could easily take 10x+ as much as a raid mat (let's say ornate)
3. bonus: tune refinery output for each mat rarity with much more impact. allow ornates to spit out idk 50 "points" each, and materials are picked and distributed based on those "points". raid mat input could be 50pts, but raid mat output could be 25pts, 50pts, 75pts for example

[novel glen]

One of the more common reasons I see people quitting is because of absurd mat locks, cort multiple times in a row, feeling pressured into making alts to farm one of the herbs not sold in shops and thus refraining from making use of alchemists, etc

The RNG nature of it and just how punishing it could be at times is brutal

[short crag]

raid mats are just not fun ascension things lol

[novel glen]

Raids are not fun.

[torn roost]

at least cortanite is on-tier, which is more than I can say for most of the raid materials.

[novel glen]

Mhm

[short crag]

sure, that's another can of worms, but requiring hundreds of kills from raids per ascension exacerbates raid burnout to such a severe degree

[novel glen]

Got matlocked by ancient stone today. Either boss t3 gauntlets or horde t7 gauntlets. Oh boy

[short crag]

raid mats shouldn't be included in ascensions, and all materials should have clear, targettable sources

making material rarity matter would have made things interesting. you could keep some materials rare, and others super common and ascensions could use the rarity system to properly determine costs/effort relative per material

[novel glen]

Yeeeee

[night kernel]

rarity of materials is irrelevant when ortanite is legendary and pure draconite is superior (unless your not speaking of the game rarity but the actual rarity of the material)

[novel glen]

We're talkin' actual rarity

[velvet wraith]

I think I've seen this idea floating around somewhere, but how would folks feel about allowing tower shards to substitute for ascensions materials? Would obviously need to be something like a 20:1 ratio (or more) per material, but I'd much prefer running 40 towers than 200 Morrigan's right now

[short crag]

like mentioned rarities would have to be appropriate

[gentle plume]

Maybe, instead of totaly replace the material grinding, leave the possibility to use shard tower instead ? It would allow player to skip one or two very painful material, and pressure less the choice of upgrading gear for testing purpose, as we have discuss in #1090518457872810024

[night kernel]

maybe you could let people chose, like you need a certain number material points. Each material give some points increasing with rarity. Now you dump materials you don't really need to get to the right number of points.

and to balance that you make it so refund don't give materials back but only the orns.

[gentle plume]

And the "material points" ? Or at least 50% ? Since we would make reversing ascension more cheaper

[night kernel]

it's virtually cheaper if you can use useless materials

[gentle plume]

Yeah, I mean, refound orns + 50% of materials points spend

[prisma pollen]

tbh any "laddering" the game can provide between currencies and mats would be greatly welcomed. maybe even the mid tower floor is a shop where you can buy rare mats with tower shards / puzzle keys

[unborn pebble]

with this, it would nullify the use of refineries imo..

[woeful falcon]

People would still use refineries for rare materials for upgrading gear that uses them

and making refineries less useful is one of the big things we do need lol

Refineries are by far the most boring least interactive piece of Orna

they're not even intended to be spammed

if they were, you'd be able to build more than one per territory.

[unborn pebble]

not that i disagree, but we could just change how refineries work altogether with that topic going on

[night kernel]

no need if you remove the only reason they exist. If you make too strong refineries it would be too easy to DF items

[unborn pebble]

fair point

[night kernel]

it would also remove the unfairness of random materials asked, some people get frustrated when rare materials are asked multiple times in a row

and also to prevent from skyrocketing AL, you can make some thresholds above which you can't use basic materials anymore, only rare stuff

[prisma pollen]

why would "too easy to df" be a bad thing? just poking at that direction

[velvet wraith]

demonforging items isn't hard as it is, the only time it is "hard" is if you need to demonforge something that is also an ascension block

[prisma pollen]

yeah i feel like the "hard" part should always be obtaining the item

[gentle plume]

Stockpiles of materials have to be useful in someways (it is not ironical x) )

[spring sleet]

i posted a sugestion in this line. make all mats be on one of five diferent categories ( the same as qualities) and each ascension level ask for X of each level and you can chose wich one to spend in each category

[subtle summit]

As someone who just got their Altar yesterday (Thank you towers achievements) I feel justified in sharing my 2 cents.

I feel that kingdom raid mats should be left out of ALs, as they affect more than just you as a player. Orna should not require having a seperate kingdom just so that you can get through a material block. Why do I say required? Because if you don't use a seperate kingdom at higher ALs, other players will be affected by how gutted kingdom orns will become. Ideally, ALs should be farmable without requiring other players. Nothing in orna requires other players to complete or do without being a form of cooperation. Even horde gauntlets have become available for solo play. It seems to me that ALs using raid mats just go against the grain NF has put in the game so far.

[woeful falcon]

I feel like ascensions should return to their original purpose - a material sink. Because as it stands, it's doing a poor job at that. It's a clogged sink. People get locked on this or that material (which was correctly siphoned away) but then still have over 100k of every other material.

Pretty sure it was mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but a removal of the specific material requirements and the addition of a MUCH larger, yet nonspecific material quantity, would be healthier in terms of:
Burnout, Alting, Refineries, and actual sinking the hundreds of thousands of excess materials

That being said - AL rebalancing should also get looked at, because such a change would skyrocket current ascension levels, and those have increase player power enough as is

[torn roost]

the last time I was asked "what to do about ascensions" I said this:

(Feb 23rd 2023)
#👋│general message

soft cap at 50, with hockeystick requirements afterward. massive investment gets you to like... 55.
refund the orns/mats above 50, give them a statue decoration that they can put down somewhere and a cool title.

destroy all refineries. just remove them.
horde should nerf item drop rate just as it nerfs exp/orn/gold. somehow +luck escaped this.

then lean into the highest floors of towers expecting something like AL40-50. have the hardest raids also expect this, with the caveat that you can whittle raids down. tune gauntlets for AL0 where AL50 is just ease of play (as it is now).

... something like that.

and still stand by that as a way forward.

||but then Odie said that would just make people mad, so odds of that happening are zero 🤷‍♂️||

[velvet wraith]

any change to ascensions at this point will just make people mad. I'm of they opinion they can get over it for the sake of a better game

[torn roost]

A sample of the times I've been highly critical (or even sarcastic) about refineries:

Mar 20 2023: #1087472012076781649 message
Mar 12 2023: #🍂│late-game-⭐10 message
Feb 11 2023: #🍂│late-game-⭐10 message
Feb 07 2023: #👋│general message
Nov 09 2022: #🍂│late-game-⭐10 message
Aug 30 2022: #👋│general message
May 13 2022: #🍂│late-game-⭐10 message
Apr 04 2022: #👋│general message
Feb 08 2022: #👋│general message
Dec 28 2021: #🍂│late-game-⭐10 message
Dec 04 2021: #👋│general message

It's hard to imagine it changing, but it does need to change, yes even after literal years. Every day it doesn't it just gets worse.

The ascension mechanics (as in, what people do to ascend -- refineries being one majorly egregious part of the loop of mass aoe killing for materials and then feeding refineries) are bad. Even in a world where ascension itself is unchanged, meaning no cap, no pve/pvp changes, the mechanics can be improved at least.

I hate this feeling like the feature was just abandoned after introduction, years ago. Volumes have been written on it, and the major changes we've had are:

• Refunding ascensions (ugly change)
• Other Realms (good change!) -- a challenging new pve thing with mass materials as the primary reward ||and event access year-round secondarily/for low tiers||
• Towers end-of-floor (good change!) -- a challenging new pve thing with materials as a secondary reward ||and celestial classes/weapons primarily||

From the H1 Balance blog post, I see:

Improve the one-shot meta in PvP areas that matter most (Kingdom wars), without affecting ability to farm the Arena
... which to me reads partially like ascensions either being taken out of Wars or minimized in some way. Perhaps it's a different change, but my money is on ALs being affected for "important"/"skillful" pvp.

Horde mode is kinda-ascension-kinda-not. Certainly it matters for people aoe farming for keys and materials (to a lesser extent than alts, but for people that don't want to alt), but it's also something that people can do pre-ascension for increased risk and reward in dungeons.

[woeful falcon]

Heh, I very much specifically remember that

Must say, the Dangy and Odie responses to that were absolutely based though lmao

[night kernel]

if you nerf horde drop rate on top of exp/orn/gold, it will just be useless. Why would you fight 4 monsters if not for more loot ? it will just make it even harder for new players, and people who already horded so many mats will not be affected. it also nerf massively solo player as luck items are usually not very powerful and you will most likely be required to play multi with WV and all.

[torn roost]

Why would you fight 4 monsters if not for more loot ?
Would you fight 4 monsters for 4x loot?
What about 3x loot?
What about 2x loot?
What about 1.5x loot?

note that multi-enemy exp/orns/gold are already reduced from a flat sum. that's the "nerf" I'm talking about.
i.e. kill 4 things that normally reward 10k orns solo, you don't get 40k orns.

[night kernel]

I know that, but horde is still the way to get materials

[torn roost]

it still would be at 1.5x, right?

[woeful falcon]

Note: solo horde does not nerf any of that

Only party horde

By which I mean the gold/exp/orns

[night kernel]

you sure ? I don't feel like I get 60k orns when I kill 3 fallen realms while I do get 20k when I kill 1. Could it be "less" nerfed ?

[woeful falcon]

Huh. Maybe it got renerfed? Last time I did horde I did get basically the same

[night kernel]

I should check again, but it didn't looked like a montain of orns

[woeful falcon]

Last time I did horde was a while back. GS isn't fantastic at it

Anyway, we're diverging too much from the topic

[night kernel]

do you think some classes are more dependent on ascension ?

[woeful falcon]

Not knowledgeable enough on other classes

But both GS and Gilga scale quadratically (?) with ALs

So uhm. Those?

[spring sleet]

the sensation, myself included, that all people i talk is that hard boss and horde boss give around the same amount of exp/orn /gold. knowing that hard give 2x rewards, this almost saying ( didn't analiced) that the rewards are lowered

[torn lark]

I’m going to add my piece here even though I’ve discussed it plenty in different channels…
I truthfully believe we should be able to have a “second chance” (pun intended) with all the mechanics and nerfs/ups that have been changing the classes we have been ascending… this would make it fair for people that regret their decisions and don’t have the time (because you know, orna is not a job it’s a game to take pleasure not pain), to continuously grind and grind and grind over and over to enjoy their progression.
Also, the randomness of mats for each player and class to me was definitely a wrong decision to start with. It makes it completely unfair towards some players rather than others. While we can argue this would “maybe” even out on a long run, take 2 people with the exact same amount of mats can stop at AL8 and the other 12 for example. That’s a big diff. If we continue with the same system, streamlining for each AL the type of mats would make it easier for people to plan ahead and not quit the game. Imagine being stuck on cursed ortanite and greater souls 3 times in a row and be an “average time” player with only 2h of playtime per day. That will take you a long time while somebody else might just overshoot you because “he is lucky”.
I am definitely in favour of a rework of AL with point system to distribute as mentioned above or those kind of mechanics that makes it a bit more smart.
All classes are not equal in ascension and some would definitely favour some stats or perks over others.

[honest stone]

I'm stiill hoping for something more customizable, like Elder Scrolls Online 's Champion Point system. No need to cap ascensions, just (hard or soft) cap how much you can put in any one category and give tons and tons of options.

[sudden agate]

I got into this sort of thing in the last rant I made in this thread, and I think the one before it. I sometimes get the vibe that changes that would be good for the health of the game aren't made cause it would upset some people, and systems are built, shaped, and put into place all around trying to mitigate the problem NF could just... fix

And unfortunately there hasn't been much indication to encourage me that this isn't the case. It's a little disheartening

[sudden agate]

I'm not sure about a point distribution system, but, I do agree with pretty much everything else here. The flat bonus to your stats per AL avoids the problem of some people speccing into 1-2 stats and overpowering everyone else cause of it. The one-shot meta already exists... could you imagine if someone high level put their stats into attack/magic, or defense/resistance? Nothing NF could do would balance that out

[torn lark]

Really my only request is to make it fair for people to grant them a once in a lifetime respec for free as things have changed so much and make the ascension streamlined so everybody is equal. I mean that’s REALLY not much to ask. It’s already difficult for normal people to grind for them so don’t make it even more unfair with random mats were people will get stuck and suffer because “rng lol”. Everything is already rng on rng we don’t need more rng …

[odd coral]

I think removing ascensions for pvp(kingdom wars) is not a good idea, cause some classes need that AL, to be/have a fair chance vs other classes.

[torn roost]

ALs definitely can't be used to balance class-class pvp, since you have to assume your opponents are getting as many ALs as you are.

[novel glen]

Kingdom ALs

Everyone = your kingdom AL in pvp

Max AL 50, ggez

[odd coral]

I know but in the other hand, level by level, gear by gear, some classes have a better stats, better skills/spell,etc,etc, so is not fair either. So removing Al, is even more unfair.

[sudden agate]

I disagree. It’s already unfair as is due to people being put against others with insane Ascension levels. If classes are imbalanced, they need to be balanced, not have AL in place as a bandage solution. The fix needs to be made from the ground up, not the other way around

[short crag]

classes should be balanced, then. ascensions are not, and never have been, a proper solution to game imbalance.

[odd coral]

@sudden agate
I know is unfair how it is right now, but because the game doesn't have the # of players to support a more balanced kingdom wars, so they have to mach a low level vs a high ascension player.

Regardless of classes not being balanced either way.

@short crag
I agree, but I am not in charge of changing that, I really hope odie take a closer look in that, but until then, how other way we have to balance that?

[short crag]

"we" have no way to balance it =)

the only ones who do are the studio, the same people who would do balance changes. it would be odd to suggest that they implement ascensions changes as some off-hand way to better class balance

[small hatch]

My biggest gripe with the game in general is rng on top of rng.

I think the guilds are a great step in the right direction as they at least let us decide which mats we want to buy. But I think there are a lot of rng problems.

[muted frigate]

I'm pretty happy but I do think that the anguish guild has devalued AL. Now all that's needed is boss horde for ascencion so the mats you need are largely irrelevant, so you don't have to search out specific mobs to grind. Its also compounding the horde boss spam that was already prevalent in the LB

[torn lark]

My comment aged like fine wine… we’ve got Heart of Change since then. Yeah rng on rng is bad. At least now we can pay to respec

[simple scarab]

So we need account wide ascension levels that use guild currency you say?

Celestial levels?

[eager gulch]

I actually like rng on rng, without it there is less dopamine

The grind with the chance of getting something beautiful is far better than the chore just to get something done

[sand gazelle]

This was core to orna years ago but the community emphasis has shifted and it isnt the same 😔

[quasi maple]

Think this was pitched already but getting a full circle of exp at 250 should result in ALs for all classes

[sand gazelle]

Disagree. Especially with how easy it is to get exp at 250

[night kernel]

I would agree if the RNG was getting something else than others (in term of weapons for example). But the RNG on AL materials feels too unfair and unpredictable for a system that important. Especially with the very high cost of levels. That feels like unnecessary randomness to me.

[eager gulch]

Yes, the randomness in mats feels unfair, some people get the easy mats others the rare mats.
What if you could melt the mats into a currency and use that currency for the AL. Rare mats give more of that currency than common mats.

Adding such a layer always feels like bloat but it, imo, solves a layer of rng unfairness

Maybe a cauge that fills when you sacrifice the materials at the altar instead of converting it to a currency

[echo ivy]

It hasn't changed, from my point of view. Everyone love farm to have the chance of getting something exceptional. We just need to avoid destroying what we've hard-earned (Damona shield, celestial adornment) and just avoid releasing items that don't work (Set of Torment). Today, T11 players are putting T6 adornments in T10 godforge gear. Nothing makes sense anymore for some time, and it's not about a change in the players' mindset, I disagree.

[night kernel]

I already discussed it and it had mixed feedback for some reasons. I think it add fairness to it and also give a real usage to low rarity materials which are only fuel to huge refineries facilities (which I always considered a bit cheaty considering how you build them).

[eager gulch]

Maybe even give orns also the same treatment, the player has a choice how much orns or mats he/she sacrifices but I guess that's hard to balance

I hate the refineries

[night kernel]

my theory is that the people against those changes are those who already own many refineries and don't want to lose that advantage. Which is understandable.

[eager gulch]

I can't imagine that it's fun to cycle through all the refineries :p but everybody has its own fun :p

[muted frigate]

Doesn't the proofs already cover this?

[woeful falcon]

Proofs let you redeem for the material you want, whereas people would rather have the ability to use materials interchangeably for ascensions

[muted frigate]

Ah

[woeful falcon]

I don't think that's a bad idea per se, but it'd have to be done with a massive ascension overhaul, as well as a global ascension reversal

Since the level requirements would have to change

Furthermore, ascension levels would have to ask for WAY more material-equivalent

[muted frigate]

Yeah

[woeful falcon]

Since people would be able to ascend with literally any material

[muted frigate]

I liked the system before proofs really. Collecting mats. Now I don't bother and just collect proofs

[woeful falcon]

Lastly, that'd devalue guilds quite a bit.

Guilds would be used to buy the exact same material every time - whichever material costs least and gives the most Ascension Points™️

Which would probably be something like pure draconite or something

Superior t1 material

[night kernel]

You can alleviate this issue by making materials less impactful the more you use it, until you use another material. Or force people to use a set of normal and a set of rare materials.
But for me the main issue is not having to farm specific materials (like cort) but more the fact that it's not fixed across players / classes.

[woeful falcon]

Part of the issue is that item rarity isn't actually equivalent to how rare it is. Cort being superior makes it as rare as lyonite or runestone. Ortanite is legendary, yet is super common

[night kernel]

that's where you could use personal "market prizes" approach. if you use too much ortanite, it will end up counting as nothing while your rates on cort would be glorious.

But like I said that's not the worst part of AL progression for me.

[runic cairn]

And the Market would be a problem as well, as you can just buy the armor/weapons and dismantle them and ascent with that stuff

[sand gazelle]

The sentiment that is literally being talked about right above your message here was not around 4 years ago.

So yes things have changed in a big way. People have always had goofy gearing options. But the community sentiment has shifted from, that is a cool idea odie. To what you are saying here. Maybe I just dont need to feel competitive in this game anymore and I am the odd one out. Just food for thought

[zealous saffron]

I love the idea of specializing in one class, and that specialization have meaning.

Currently, ascension levels don't really add any meaning to my favorite class. It just makes my main beefier, and makes content easier. Nothing special about it at all.

I'd love to see ascension tied to your character, not a class, and give you skill points to distribute within a VERY SIMPLE skill tree.

Some of the nodes could give you access to unique and powerful skills, similar to specialization, some could give you unique stat boosts similar to augments. Something to make your build MEANINGFUL.

I think this type of system would introduce a great deal more build diversity, and make some very cool and underutilized items viable, due to not being so dependent on your gear for character power.

[robust bay]

"Im down to kill the game completely and turn an infinite grind into the average mobile game"

[woeful falcon]

That's some fine necroposting

[robust bay]

Yeah i think adding to the 1% stats, a skill point system would also be fun!

[robust bay]

But why would i want an end of power on the class i love and basically be encouraged to play on a class i dont care :(

[robust bay]

Taking a system ment for infinite grind and making it finite doesnt sound healthy. I think the main selling point of orna for players who are that advanced is that you can always get stronger, better, more versatile - removing it or making the system finite or obsolete in more content then it already is removes the appeal and would completely kill the game for me.

[robust bay]

Last message was 17 hours ago o.O

Oh i just noticed how old the message was xD

The thing is, Orna is a competitive game, ment to reward those who put in the effort - and the people who dislike an infinite power system are mostly those who dont want to invest the effort.

I think ascensions should have more crisp to it with more flexibility then just "1% faster content, yey!", but the infinite, not capped or pseudocapped aspect of it is what keeps me playing for years now.

Nobody is forced to do territorys, and the rewards arent worth it at all right now - kingdoms now even get a chance to say no to PvP. And you can basically turn Finesse into a slow and steady PvE experience.

You can 100% avoid PvP and still enjoy the vast majority of the game - i say let those compete who earned it and let casuals fight against casuals!

Thats also why i love the idea of the new territory wars.

[robust bay]

I do love the idea but i would still keep it class specific.

[cunning sparrow]

I think an easy fix to smooth ascension material woes without undoing the systems people have already invested in is to have no back to back material requirements

if you needed cortanite for AL 30, you won't need it for 31. 32 is free game

I don't know if AL material selection is true random, pseudorandom, or something else, but I do think its a bummer that whatever system is currently used can result in getting bottlenecked on the same mat multiple times in a row

[novel glen]

Buy ALs with exp once 250, so 250 is worth something

[cunning sparrow]

It seems like major changes to AL are contentious, so just a band aid to prevent the worst scenarios is maybe best.

[crisp oak]

Seeded random, your requirements are fixed per class

[cunning sparrow]

based on player ID?

[crisp oak]

presumably

[cunning sparrow]

I think the system is ok if with a little more smoothing. Player X shouldnt be stuck with a bunch of sequential cursed ortanite when Player Y isn't

[cunning sparrow]

Ok, but the max AL you can buy is 1/10 of your Endless record

[novel glen]

Nah. Not everyone endlesses equally

[cunning sparrow]

I was being incredibly facetious, I thought you were as well

[novel glen]

Yis

I was gonna follow it up with it should be 1/5 but too slow

[cunning sparrow]

you seem to have mistyped 1/20th

[novel glen]

1k floors per al mat skip

[cunning sparrow]

we can make it more cutthroat

you can challenge someone to an endless delve. whoever goes further steals an AL from the loser

(people would ascend all their alts immediately)

[robust bay]

Maybe a different system for that would be cool!
If it becomes a guild, cant wait to buy a shrine for 10 trillion XP xD

[woeful falcon]

Did make a suggestion about that earlier today
Wasn't particularly well received, but I'm not too surprised

[cunning sparrow]

It is nice to finish something, especially a long something. I imagine there is a feeling of triumph taking off all that exp+ gear

[sudden agate]

I wish it wasn't such a hot bed topic, cause that means that changes have to come around AL rather than towards it, and nothing ever changes or improves with the system itself

[sudden agate]

Neither am I, and at this point I'm more annoyed than disappointed that that's the result

[woeful falcon]

I'm not disappointed, not all ideas are winners. I just like to spitball things every now and then

[woeful falcon]

I don't entirely disagree with you - having an end goal is nice, and reaching it feels good.
Though I've found myself wanting to wear exp gear again, and I end up boosting other people to 250 via exp share just out of that desire to gain exp

[sudden agate]

I just wonder how much longer we're going to be having this AL debate before a real, true to form change comes for the system. Maybe that'll never happen. Maybe the devs think the system is perfect as can be and equally don't want to upset people that have dumped days of their lives into it. And so instead of changing the system, they build entire mechanics around the current system in order to bandaid fix its flaws

It's been said before that any change to the game isn't going to make everyone happy. But we've been having debates about ALs for, what... 2... 3 years now? Somewhere around that range. Are we going to keep debating it until 6, 8, 10 years of Orna?

[woeful falcon]

Oh, this debate isn't exactly the determining factor for ascensions

Ascension rework is already in the works for NF

[sudden agate]

That so? That's nice to hear in that case

[woeful falcon]

It was the next balance thing in their scope after the big patch that tried balancing classes in pvp and such

[sudden agate]

Ahhh, my bad

[woeful falcon]

the patch that made Blood Pact be capped in PvP, and Ultima have its own scaling

While the Grand Debate over how people have felt about ascensions has occurred here, ultimately it's NF's decision over which course to take

And that's one we'll only be able to know once it comes

That being said, don't expect it to be soon - other content needs to be pushed out, as new content is still a priority over ascensions; and furthermore the whole ascension issue is not an easy problem to solve. Give them time.

[sudden agate]

Mmh, I'm in no real rush of my own or anything. I just have my feelings on the matter is all

[robust bay]

both of your suggestion are great because they take useless/unrewarding parts of the game and give them a chance to be more then novelty!

[robust bay]

the trailer for october already confirmed that "Ascensions 2.0" will be tackled until end of next year.
I do hope its an improvement - or an addition - a cap would basically Thanos Snap the Patreons

[sudden agate]

will be tackled until end of next year.
As is... won't be tackled until the end of next year, or won't be tackled before the end of this year? Wording's a bit off

[robust bay]

Watch the october trailer, its on the Northren Forge Youtube Channel. Its a great trailer :)

[sudden agate]

?

Oh, not until end of next year. Buh. Well, at least it's coming, and that's nice to hear

[unborn pebble]

An AL hardcap would be devastating 🙃

[autumn pebble]

It's free real estate

[night kernel]

You can't link AL to endless as classes perform very differently in endless.

[cunning sparrow]

I could say that classes perform very differently in high anguish horde boss dungeons, but that would be moot, I made that suggestion in jest.

[cunning sparrow]

God gamer alert, god gamer alert

[summer mortar]

Perhaps a mode that disables AL via checkbox that provides increased rewards like orns, gold, and other currencies. To a factor where Ang50 isn't obsolete.

This doesnt apply to pvp like wars and territory. More so dungeons, towers, raids, mobs, etc..

[robust bay]

A hardcap would basically thanos snap the high playerbase & destroy patreon revenue, its not an option

[robust bay]

An option that makes you "trade" X ascension levels for Y% more gold, orns, exp, shards, luck, etc, so your ascension level is useful in stuff like Horde

[unborn pebble]

i personally see this similar to just playing with anguish levels ngl

[lean hazel]

should asc levels also give some other useful stuff like for specific classes you will get skill slots? or how about something like a sprite for reaching x asc level

[unborn pebble]

sprite would be neat 😄

[robust bay]

sounds like a free excuse to make ppl buy more heart of change to collect them all

i like it :D

[loud dust]

Lose the sprite if AL isn't the level it is, if it works with patreon guess there's a way

[robust bay]

good point!
But that also will make people reconsider their classes if they REALLY want that skin

[honest stone]

#💡│suggestions message Just an idea I put up for discussion, mixed reviews so far!

[woeful falcon]

Personally I'm almost at the point where I'd welcome almost any and all ascension changes, be it from how to ascend, to what ascending actually does

[honest stone]

Same John, same!

[night kernel]

to this day, I still don't understand why such a crucial aspect of the game is so random and can f people so easy by asking them very rare materials in a row while asking bones and dirt to other players.

[muted frigate]

Kinda. But proofs have equalled it out. Now it doesnt matter what material it is. just amount of proofs required

[quartz slate]

some mats are still worth more proofs than others though

[muted frigate]

Yeah.

[quartz slate]

it equals out the difficulty in getting certain materials, but being unlucky in mat requirements multiple times in a row still sucks

[muted frigate]

Definitely

I prefer the material only way tbh. Much more exciting. Much more satisfying when youve finally managed to farm 6k wolf blood

[woeful falcon]

Because, at its core, and its purpose in design, Ascension is optional, and all content is doable without ascending.
The only place where I'd argue against that is PvP in territory control and kingdom wars, where enemy ascension does matter.

[honest stone]

Try doing Gilga Towers without ascension

😄

[autumn pebble]

An f50 t11 tower would be an experience for any non ascended class I think

[honest stone]

Honestly, I feel like T11 towers are a big jump in difficulty over t10 with no substantial increase in reward to offset the difficulty jump

[woeful falcon]

you can scratch that substantial off

[honest stone]

I've tried doing them in non SS/CS builds and even with 50+ ascension they are still quite dangerous. The saving grace for me is how CS/SS scales with asc and gear

[crude otter]

Just hit 250 couple days ago, luckily I already have 25 Als but still the difficulty is way more of a jump than I expected

[woeful falcon]

I've only died in tower twice - once on release, and once while trying out CS on summoner

I definitely prefer the safe approach

never died when I decided to press WoO turn one

scratch that - thrice. I underestimated an immortal lord's foresight once.

[novel glen]

Tbh, by technicality you are correct and I don't really disagree with that.

But real talk some classes need AL more than others. Especially in some forms of content. Also if all content is doable without ascending, wonder when the AL0 Ang50 montages are coming out. On top of that, some forms of content's enjoyability is based on your own ability to clear it. AL is optional in the sense of if you're not doing it, you're sabotaging yourself regardless of the intention/reasons of not doing so.

It's not the same kind of optional as picking and choosing the guilds you want to focus on.

[velvet wraith]

AL is also the only true endgame grind/content we have right now, and it'd be nice to have a more equal experience across the playerbase. Those of us that get stuck in Cort hell every 2 levels have a much different experience than those who dont.

And before somebody comes and argues guilds are the endgame, ask yourself this: what are you farming guild proofs for? Cause the answer is mats for ascensions

[autumn pebble]

I farmed 2k proofs in blades for a sprite pack and I regret nothing

For the most part tower shards/anguish proofs are used primarily for mats, or mnemonics (to get mats)

[velvet wraith]

Sprite packs the temporary exception 😛

Otherwise though, everything leads back to ascensions. As diverse as guilds are, all of their roads lead to Rome Ascension

Can my ascension feedback be that AL 2.0 gets prioritized over everything else?

Whatever form it may be

[muted frigate]

Only dying 3x is insane

[night kernel]

Like Hellmo said, the game isn't even the same with or without ascensions. Having your stats pumped so much (AL100 is double stats, that's crazy high. Especially with how defense and ward work) just completely change the way you can play the game.

[cunning sparrow]

I’d really like to see more specific end game mat sinks, especially if it comes with a way to make trades. Too bad the marketplace as a name is already taken.

Lemme spend 20k stone to make a giant golem that flings rocks during kingdom wars, or 5k wolfs blood for a crazy hex.

Or cort, realm/Avalon ore to craft strong armor that reduces raid damage ultimates

Some specific play your way goals rather than 1%

[woeful falcon]

Anguish is.. its own thing tbh. It was created as an antithesis to ascension, so it makes sense that they go hand in hand. That being said, anguish mostly functions to fuel the ascension machine anyway. People farm it for the materials to ascend, and they get the bonus orns to spend on ascending. If ascension wasn't a thing to begin with, neither the mats nor the orns would be needed

Not defending ascensions here, mind you

[loud dust]

Extra exp post-250 could contribute in lowering mats needed for ascension or something o.o what's the point in getting exp at 250 if it isn't to boost people (which is nice :p but still)

[woeful falcon]

I would like if post-250 exp counted for something, but people weren't very receptive to the idea when I last suggested it

That being said, I do understand that some people like the feeling of liberation from the tomes

[loud dust]

Yeah i guess, they should make a x4 pot and make everyone 250 faster :v (jk)

Is there any like teaser on what is AL 2.0 about?

[smoky shard]

not that I've heard

[night kernel]

Not really a teaser but when I said that cross classes AL wouldn't be a thing because of HoC, Odie responded that I should not make such assumption. That could be nothing, or an hint.

[small hatch]

I really agree with this sentiment. Im at the stage now where my game play revolves almost entirely around farming mats for ascensions. It seems the only time I deviate from that is when Im farming gear during events.

[misty vector]

I'd like to see some type of hybrid system. I think taking materials and all that is fine to an extent, but I'd love to see it have other gameplay elements involved that would reduce the cost if certain activity goals are met. You could incorporate activities/guilds already in the game like doing dungeons, towers, raids, PVP, monuments, fishing, walking, etc. Something that's different than building 2000 refineries or spamming horde dungeons.

[torn roost]

Refineries are their own problem. They should have either not been added, or removed or nerfed 3, 2, 1 years ago. Or now.

---

I like that ascension can be achieved by a number of means -- spamming horde dungeons is not as efficient for mats as running towers, and mid anguish hordes can end up being much more time efficient than ang50 hordes. For mats technically fishing or travelers is the easiest, in that you can do it at any level/any time. Deep dungeons are decent for orns and shrines (for more orns) as is amity hunting both with easy gear/level requirements, and endless is the king of orns but requires a lot of dedication.

There's various risk/reward tradeoffs amongst activities, and also different levels of player fatigue involved for each activity.

---

The original vision for ascension, afaict, was that material requirements would force you to do different activities (raids for their mats, different dungeon types for different mats) and then orns were a generic resource that you got by doing ~anything.

Refineries killed the meaning of materials, and then orns were 10x'd overnight one day and the rest is history. I do feel like these new guilds have a chance to return ascension meaning a little bit. At the moment they represent a huge influx of materials that stack with refineries, though, so people are ascending like crazy now.

The biggest problem afaict is that pve is simply not set up to handle players with 2x stats or more alongside all the other player power we've been steadily receiving for years.

[peak kestrel]

from my perspective, refineries are very hard to build, i cant imagine people building 100+ and going back and forth just to drag all those to their OT/home.

i feel like the advantages that it gives is pretty justified for the dedication that it takes to build a lot of them. (not to mention there's a lot of menu-ing needed to fill all those refineries)

and without refineries, where would our extra mats go to? isn't the refinery feature created in the first place to combat this issue?

[torn roost]

the advantages that it gives is pretty justified for the dedication that it takes to build a lot of them
hard disagree. it's very easy to build lots of them, and the rewards are insanely high for the small amount of effort required. the bigger effort is refilling them for months or years -- but the rewards are too much for that alone.

without refineries, where would our extra mats go to?
nowhere? the same place your gold goes when it hits 1 trillion. or the same place your old gf'd items go after you no longer use them.

[autumn pebble]

Refineries are tedious and boring, but they're not hard to build and make use of. And in terms of material gains they're unmatched. Acquiring the materials to sustain them is also not hard at all thanks to the existence of the grand market.

[peak kestrel]

then i guess that applies to hardcore playerbase grinders? (people on this discord)

me and my friends could not and would never spend the effort to build lots of them 🤷‍♂️

[torn roost]

This is a topic about ascension levels, which are pretty much solely the hardcore playerbase grinders (people on this discord). Yes.

[peak kestrel]

i definitely agree on the material gains though! ive spent time calculating how much i could get with X amount of refineries

[peak kestrel]

imo it still doesnt justify to remove them just because we are looking at it from hardcore player's perspective.

its not like ascension arent allowed for all the casual playerbase .

[torn roost]

You do not need (mass) refineries to ascend 10 times.

[peak kestrel]

your run of the mill / casual players wont be building tons of refineries (at least thats where i am at)

[autumn pebble]

HoA has a limit on refineries and there's still AL100's there or people close to it

[torn roost]

Fine, you've convinced me.
Global refinery limit of... 1? 2? 🤷‍♂️
Destroy all the rest.

[autumn pebble]

The main issue with them is that you're playing the UI instead of the game

[peak kestrel]

thats interesting, how much/many are they limited to?

[autumn pebble]

5 iirc

[peak kestrel]

we can always solve the menu-ing if NF decides to do something with that

though, they wont because they've said it in the past about it iirc

[autumn pebble]

My stance isn't as heavy as fuximus' on them, but I still would prefer if there was only one, OT bound refinery with a higher limit of materials and amount of materials processed per hour

No tedium of dragging refineries back home/changing OT to teleport them with you, accessible equally

[woeful falcon]

One OT refinery that grows in speed and capacity based on the amount of territories explored

(Not necessarily at the same rate of +1 refinery's worth of speed and capacity per explored territory)

[autumn pebble]

2000 mats per hour would be totally fine wdym

[woeful falcon]

+12 capacity +1 material per hour per explored territory? Less, even?

Accidentally shoves 36k cortanite into refinery

[torn roost]

Or just one OT refinery, or none.

I'm still waiting to hear the compelling argument for why refineries (resource fungibility) is a good thing for the game in any way.
If the problem is that it's too hard to ascend, then reduce ascension requirements and delete refineries.
If the problem is that people end up with too many spare mats, then create a resource sink that doesn't create all other resources and delete refineries.
If the problem is that we need more local GPS minigames like shepherding refineries, then add something like that and delete refineries.

[peak kestrel]

if i were to speak selfishly: as someone with only 18 refineries (idk if that's a lot or not) i would be fine if they decided to cap/change the amount of refinery allowed per player, if and only if i can get a refund on the hours and gas i wasted to drive, build, and drag those refineries back with me :)

[woeful falcon]

I'd be more than fine with none.
That was just a napkin idea to remove the annoyance of menuing, and of having to carry refineries home, while keeping the gist of more refining per area you've been to

[torn roost]

I've heard people say that they actually like the herding part. The only downside of deleting refineries afaict is that it does remove that (albeit short-lived, one-time) GPS minigame.

[peak kestrel]

this could be an interesting mechanic along with the conquerors guild(?) that's about to come out later on

[woeful falcon]

But yes, having ascension costs redesigned (as well as ascension itself redesigned), combined with guilds in general, and suddenly refineries can afford to just. go.

A new resource sink would be nice, though not sure what/where/how

[autumn pebble]

Reinforcing an items quality by 1% by spending its demonforge cost worth of materials

[torn roost]

I would hate to wait even more year(s) for the clear and obvious change to happen. Putting refineries behind an entire ascension redesign is nonsensical.

[woeful falcon]

I half agree.
It doesn't need to wait for an ascension redesign, it's true.
But that's the best time to apply such a change to avoid a general public outrage.
When "everything" is "reset" from a big ascension redesign, people being on equal footing for once.
If they're removed without an ascension redesign, then the people with tons of refineries are annoyed for having lost them and having their progress halted, while those without refineries are annoyed by not being able to "exploit" the same thing that others had, being "forever" behind those that already had the opportunity to "exploit" it

[eager gulch]

Shouldn't there be a separate topic for refineries, I know it's pretty closely related with the ascending but some people might not be aware that the discussion is in this topic

[torn roost]

This thread is 9 months old.

The first ascension rework attempt was two years ago. It was abandoned due to unspecified/private reasons, at a time when there were 7 people at or above A50.
The second ascension rework attempt of sorts was a month after this thread was started. It was abandoned due to survey vote.
This year we've received HoC (a complete non-solution) as well as massive amounts of materials from all the new guilds and grand market.

HoA is proof positive that a lack of refineries do not halt progress, their existence only greatly accelerates ascension progress. We just received a massive acceleration in the form of guilds. Ergo, delete refineries.

Legacy concerns are an unsatisfying argument when this topic has existed for literal years. It was a problem years ago, and a year ago, and also right now, and it'll be a problem tomorrow too. A mistake was made once upon a time but it doesn't need to be a forever mistake.

[torn roost]

They're somewhat separable, but not really.

Refineries have to do with the mechanics of ascension -- the way in which we ascend.
Ascension's effect on pve and pvp (having giant stats) is the other big topic.
I guess "ascension 2.0" also now fits in this thread, though we've gotten no details on it and it'll be its own /dev/null thread some day I'm sure.

[woeful falcon]

I don't disagree with you, but in the end it's not really up to us as to when they want to approach the situation

[torn roost]

You suggested when they should do it.
I'm suggesting an alternative: ASAP.

[woeful falcon]

Fair, fair

[peak kestrel]

NF has tried reworking ALs multiple times, and from what we've seen, it's not working out.

Taking into account that NF isn't a big company/studio, I believe at this point it's probably better for them (and for the majority of the casual player base) to spend their dev time and resources on working and "perfecting" other features and mechanics first rather than ALs and/or refineries.

And again, I believe that re-working ALs affects more of the hardcore / late / end-game player base more (which is a minority) than it affects the casuals (majority).

[torn roost]

Better tell them to stop working on Ascensions 2.0 then. 😅 Sounds like a big ol' waste of time for those silly "daily active players that have been around for more than a few months".

Alternatively, delete refineries and let's move on. Instantly makes the gameplay loop more engaging -- imagine killing enemies and participating in guilds in order to make progress. A wild thought.

[honest stone]

Personally I have two issues with the current Ascension paradigm.

1. They are flat and uninteresting to me. 1% power gain per each one is just a raw power boost, which I get is appealing to some people, but that kind of power boost in and of itself is not always healthy for a game when it has no limits. A system which allowed more character customization over raw power boost could still be interesting to players but not be quite so destructive to the power spectrum does and has worked for other games in the past.

2. Game play is not equally rewarded in Ascending. You can't play how you want and progress evenly. You have to target specific styles of play, which are not always equally available to players and at least still currently heavily favors wayvessel use which take the GPS out of the game. Then again I think wayvessels were a terrible mistake and now that Aethric exists could easily be phased out and kingdom portals could be put in to allow areas for group play WITH your kingdom mates and give kingdoms real focus. But that's an entire other topic.

As for my personal take on refineries, since they seem to be a topic of interest, I don't like the idea of deleting them outright since many people have put a great deal of effort into them. But at the same time, the ability to build 100+ of them is not really an option for a certain percentage of the playerbase and combined with grand market grinding creates a feedback loop which is...interesting. Perhaps instead of making them just smelt down other materials make ore come from territory, exploration, legendary background drops from every single mob in the game, whatever other source NF finds interesting, guilds? Then you can smelt ore into random materials needed for item progression?

[eager gulch]

Maybe it gets fixed with the conquest guild, rework of area occupation

[torn roost]

Not sure why it needs to be delayed for a conquest guild.

put a great deal of effort into them
Compared to what, though? I put a very small amount of effort into mine and they've generated more materials for me than all my raiding combined, which I've put way more effort into (as a datapoint). Getting stuff for free isn't particularly interesting nor good for the game. It's a souped-up login bonus that primarily benefits people that have logged in the most, and is interacted with via 1-button menus.

Seriously, is there one redeeming quality about this blight on everyone's OTs? Oh yeah, and they take up a ton of OT space at a time when NF is struggling to figure out how to get all of the OT buildings into one territory -- and is actively using dev time to compress and combine things. (Most recently seen when Odie said that Monument Guild got the raiding thing added on because it would otherwise be "yet-another-guild-hall"). Or before that, the argument that grand market should be added to compress buildings.

[honest stone]

In theory, I like the ideas of refineries. Gives me something to do with the 80k wood and Mithril besides sell it to the shop. When materials became tied to ascensions though, I agree with everything you've said about them. And in the end, all I can say is I personally think it would be best for the game if something changed with them. I don't think it's my job to try and guide NF to the solution I most prefer. I just chuck out novel ideas and hope something sparks Odie's creative juices.

[night kernel]

Some say they'll stop the game of AL are reworked. But be honest a minute, if you're AL 100 you're completely addicted to the game for years so you wouldn't stop it like that. On the other hand you'll complaining about the game's difficulty ? Makes no sense to me. Game is easy because you've twice the stats you should have.

[night kernel]

Unused resources could be bought by a guild, like the proofs of avarice. Kind of a refinery, without the 50 buildings at home.

On the topic of guilds materials, I'd like to see a weekly adjustment to guild prices based the amount of trades that happened in that guild across all players. This would ensure that you don't have one guild overexploited with the others completely let down. You could also farm you guild, and wait for lower price.

[honest stone]

"Refiner's Guild" 😄

[night kernel]

Trading hall

[odd coral]

Back when ascension were hinted, I was thinking they could be done completely with in game task, defeat x# of players + x# the mobs/bosses, fish ×#, do this amount of quest, stuff like that.

And instead of just raw Stats, some skills tree, like +1 to onrs gain or +1 to attack, or +1 to hp, etc,etc.

[misty vector]

That very well could be where they're heading with the introduction of all the guilds. Instead of ascension giving you stat boosts for every in game activity maybe the boosts apply to specific guilds based on whatever level you are with them. Or maybe a hybrid of the current system and the guild system. Who knows - all speculation at this point.

[cunning sparrow]

There should be end game “grand projects” to build. I don’t think it’s particularly difficult to come up with interesting uses for each of them.

I would also add a grand market (too bad about the name) for swapping mats at a bad rate. So if you don’t want to build the grand library or the kingdom war trebuchet, ok now you can sell off your wood

[cunning sparrow]

its more work, but I'd go the extra mile and make this proverbial grandest of markets have rates decided by player action. If everybody is trading off wood, guess what wood doesnt get you much

so theres actually some decision making and differing play your way valuation

[sudden agate]

And more often than not I get the impression that these people are the ones having the highest sway in the direction and health of the game. I don't have stats to back it up, and NF could happily correct me if I'm wrong.
For players that play the game the most/have played the longest and are the most dedicated of the playerbase, they tend to be the most vocal overall. In a game with no power cap of any kind, these players amass insane amounts of stats and strength, and eventually they hit a point where the game isn't a challenge for them.
The dev team doesn't want to upset the longest running players or do anything to make them quit, so the devs both add more end game content to keep these people happy, as well as add yet more things to make getting extreme amounts of power smoother.
This further compounds as an issue because the people that got this far and benefit from the way the game is now don't want to see changes happen that could be positive for the long term health of the game but may slow down their ability to gain power, and so perfectly viable and good ideas are scrapped until something comes along that satisfies a high enough majority.
All it's doing though is shifting where the power balance sits when you do that. When you have a playerbase that is lvl 250 AL 25+ and you're steadily trying to dedicate dev time to keep it interesting for those players... these most dedicated elites are going to hit the top end of the new stuff fast. Now what? Add yet more things, and the cycle continues

Forgive if the above was a bit of a scattered mix of thoughts, I didn't want to make my post too long

It might not even be the best of thoughts, snrck

[torn roost]

these most dedicated elites are going to hit the top end of the new stuff fast. Now what? Add yet more things, and the cycle continues
This is why I'm so adamantly against (massive) progression acceleration. Power creep and player power generally, refineries for mass materials, anguish being 3x orns after the quality change was 10x orns, etc.

Players can absolutely consume content faster than NF develops it and always has been able to do so. The acceleration ultimately just robs players of their own gaming experience.

[sudden agate]

Exactly

[Edit: Big dumb rant ahead, accuracy of the current game situation may not be accurate to the opinions portrayed]

NF has gotten themselves into a cycle of their own design trying to cater to the top elite players and longest running players. Granted, with the increase in team members and additions of some of the most recent content, there's been a shift that makes the early to mid game more interesting, and that's the kind of stuff I've been wanting to see for a long time, and it's appreciated.
However, it doesn't fix the issue that your end game can only scale so high before the end game is the game and the early to mid game is just a stepping stone. A big waste of nothing.
It's the kind of issue World of Warcraft has where the end game is the only really fun and interesting stuff, and so they sell you the ability to max level so you can skip the rest. I doubt NF would actually get to the point of selling you a max level boost like that, but what they're doing by designing the game around the end game growth and experience is it's making the early to mid game superfluous by comparison. When someone tells you "Level 250 and some ascensions under your belt is when the game really gets good" then you've, frankly, done a really bad job with the rest of your game... and adding so many different kinds of progression boosters to get you to that point only adds to the issue

[Edit: This whole post below wasn't my best and can be largely ignored. I'm just being bitter]

And this kind of thing isn't a conscious choice half the time. What happens is that games get to this point by starting smaller and more humble, and as more content gets added, more systems and ideas are put into place. Not all of them are good however, but the devs get scared of removing potentially bad ideas (or ideas that have been bad for months to years) and keep shifting the game around the bad ideas in order to make the bad ideas better. But those are bandaid fixes. Sometimes it's better to just rip the bandaid off and get it over with

[torn roost]

The story of the last two years has been adding stuff into the early and middle game. I 100% disagree that they're overly catering to their "top elite players and longest running players".

If the endgame was a major focus then the Ascension system would have been reworked multiple years ago. That clearly isn't the case.
The biggest endgame development for the last year+ has been towers (T9,10,11) and then the class rebalances (primarily in the T10 classes).
All the rest has been early and middle game and then accelerating the game generally across all tiers.

[sudden agate]

Right, that's true, and I did touch upon it

I'm just kind of tired of seeing so many of these year long problems that are still being talked about even now. Refineries needed a fix a long friggin' time ago. AL needed a fix years ago (and it bothers me that some good changes I saw were veto'd, and now we have this big lump of a mess sitting on our laps and hasn't moved for a long time)

And I also have a bit of a personal issue when so much of the upper playerbase is max level and it doesn't feel like that even means anything at this point

Maybe I'm just a bit behind in how things are with this game and aren't happy about it. I've been in a slump with this game for awhile because I'm in that annoying spot that some of the lower end gameplay doesn't excite or doesn't give me enough to feel like I'm progressing, the slick new content is too tough for me to really be able to engage with because it doesn't feel like it was built with my power level in mind, and getting to that point is a colossal slog unless I game the system in order to amass power

Anyways, I'm gonna go eat something rather than rant and further say things that I look back on and think "why did I say any of that, that was dumb"

[sacred pine]

I like this one. Will bring back the motivation to take territories again. Going T10, territory perks just feel so unrewarding.

[sudden agate]

Apparently they have a rework of territory rewards/control in the works, so hopefully that'll see an improvement

[velvet wraith]

Fwiw, there is (was) a group of long term heavily invested players that used to be vocally against the massive power creep and the current ascension system and how it operates.

Most of the group have either quit, as there hasn't been a meaningful ascension change ~ever, or they lurk and only occasionally pop out

The vocal group that is left is largely in favor of endless power creep and uncapped progression, so that is most of the opinions you see around now

[cunning sparrow]

Dragon event was actually terrible if you weren’t t10. A bunch of stronger monsters that gave crap Orns, and you weren’t at the point you could really godforge something useful. All you want is more questing weapon rolls and instead normally useful roosts are kicking your butt

[sudden agate]

Good to know the former is less of an issue, though I don't really vibe with the opinions of the latter. But thanks for the update

[velvet wraith]

If we really wanted to point out a time the feedback loop for ascensions broke and had long term consequences, it would be:

The first time Odie mentioned he was thinking about ways to adjust the system (literally just mentioned, nothing formally announced) and a bunch of people saw it and started spouting nonsense like "if ascensions change I'll quit the game" and whatnot.

That group won, and no changes were made to ascensions.

And then almost all of those players quit anyway 🙃

And now it is 2 years later and everybody is closing in on ascension 100 or higher, and the problem has bloated well beyond what it was originally

[unborn pebble]

i guess we've entered the era of normalized ALs

[sudden agate]

And that's probably the point of time in my mind that I'm still stuck on in general (and also speaks to the problems I was mentioning earlier)

[muted frigate]

This is how it's always been

[odd coral]

Nothing against you just to point out a few things.

We need to see and understand the whole picture not only what we want to see, they are a company who need to keep all players (casuals, hardcore and what not) engaged with the game. And if they (hardcores or casuals are the ones spending more into the game where you think they are going to put more attention?
Who is going to keep the game afloat if casuals/middle players are not putting money into that?

So now a honest question what exactly is wrong with Al?
On what way shape or form is affecting the casuals players?

[night kernel]

one example, tower building. There's no way a casual without tremendous amount of orns will not get discouraged by the price of building a tower.
That's only an example and I'm too lazy to write more but you get the idea. The power gap between both group is too great for NF to do content that work for both "almost" the same way.

[odd coral]

No, honestly I don't see your point, a casual is going to be a casual no matter what, towers are in the wild too, but if they are casuals they don't care/want to go look for that.

[night kernel]

Not at all. It's not because you play the game more casually that you've no idea what in the game, it just means you don't spend 10h a day in the game hard farming 100 of dungeons per day.

[odd coral]

Ok?

And what wrong with that?

[night kernel]

you just don't want to lose your power, that's understandable. But that doesn't mean it's a good thing for the game itself.

[odd coral]

Neither, putting brakes into the game, to keep casuals happy, so.🤷

[cunning sparrow]

I think discussion about this sort of thing loses a lot of nuance when people try and use no lifers and casuals as a dichotomy. It’s obviously a spectrum

[muted frigate]

And cheaters

[sudden agate]

In my mild rant yesterday, this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about.

This further compounds as an issue because the people that got this far and benefit from the way the game is now don't want to see changes happen that could be positive for the long term health of the game but may slow down their ability to gain power, and so perfectly viable and good ideas are scrapped until something comes along that satisfies a high enough majority.
What happens is that games get to this point by starting smaller and more humble, and as more content gets added, more systems and ideas are put into place. Not all of them are good however, but the devs get scared of removing potentially bad ideas (or ideas that have been bad for months to years) and keep shifting the game around the bad ideas in order to make the bad ideas better. But those are bandaid fixes. Sometimes it's better to just rip the bandaid off and get it over with

[odd coral]

That's how business are, and remember in the end, this is business for they, is not longer a hobby, so they need to make his time profitable too.

[night kernel]

IMO it's not even the amount of AL that's the problem. For me, random materials and being locked on 1 class is much more of a problem

[odd coral]

And I agree on being locked to one class.

[cunning sparrow]

Don’t forget boring

1% woo

[night kernel]

even tho I think we've too much access to materials leading to ridiculous power. But that's more personnal pref

1% is boring until you've 200 of them

[cunning sparrow]

Effective but still boring

[sudden agate]

Forgive me, but that’s a bit of a non-argument. When someone brings out the “well that’s just businesses” argument it doesn’t confront (and sometimes outright dismisses) any of the points brought forward and continues the direction of “things shouldn’t change”

[cunning sparrow]

Those railroads are much more profitable now, shame about all the derailments. It’s good business!

[night kernel]

AL should have been on gear. with a limit so hardcore could max upgrade all items while casual could be more focused.

[sudden agate]

I should further note that if “things shouldn’t change” is the intended argument trying to be made… just say that outright, rather than hide the justification of it behind the game devs and their studio that might not be operating purely for profit like implied

[muted frigate]

AL was fine but anguish has made it pretty easy now

[velvet wraith]

I have no idea where the idea that AL changes are needed to keep "casuals" happy comes from, but it is nonsense.

The AL system need changes so that those of us who want to engage with it have a reason to beyond the 113th 1% boost, so that there is an even playing field instead of an RNG fiesta on mat rolls, and so that content can be challenging again.

Anguish guild was launched with the intent of being "challenging" and within 2 months it was invalidated by ALs and other power creep.

[honest stone]

Personally I think Anguish reward levels could use tamed down a bit. But that's a design call and well above my paygrade.

[muted frigate]

Probably. There's people with anguish guild levels nearly at 300..they must have so many proofs

[sudden agate]

Speaking of… if I put back my anguish level down a step, do I get the proof back? If not, how do I get more without anguish active?

[honest stone]

In the end though I'm not sure how huge a deal it is outside of like 200 players. But it does create a feedback loop which sort of invalidates the increasing cost aspect of Ascensions

[honest stone]

It doesn't cost you to rais and lower each time, only to unlock the next level

[sudden agate]

Oh sweet, that’s good

[sudden agate]

I have no idea where the idea that AL changes are needed to keep "casuals" happy comes from, but it is nonsense.

In case you were wanting an answer to this question, it probably came from a place of “the casuals are so far below the hardcores. How much harm am I really doing to them by having absurd amounts of power?”
Just a guess, however

[odd coral]

No, I agree AL has to change, but I am not asking to completely remove. Just because I don't want/can put the time effort to do it.

[sudden agate]

Well, luckily for you I don't think outright removal was on the table

[odd coral]

Either way, still not understanding what wrong with AL, easier now? Is easier for everyone, not good for the game? Hmmm. I mean the devs are making that way so.🤷

[torn roost]

Is easier for everyone, not good for the game?
Correct. Free things aren't a universal good.

[odd coral]

Free? I would say time, but ok.

[torn roost]

The "game" part of the game is struggling to overcome challenges.
If NF wanted to, they could have new characters start at L250, or start with a bunch of ascensions.

Doing in a week what used to take a year is the "free things" I'm talking about.

[sudden agate]

AL's have had a several year long history of troubles in the game, so being able to speed run them and having a larger amount of the playerbase be high AL only exemplifies the issue

[odd coral]

I agree on the last part, but if the company is doing this way, they must have a reason for that.

[sudden agate]

I also touched upon this earlier in the quote of my own post, but let me reiterate.
Sometimes devs don't remove bad features out of games right away and spend more time trying to work around them in order to satisfy both the people that heavily benefit from the bad feature and don't want it changed/removed, as well as players just trying to get a leg up.
It was also mentioned earlier on that there were several attempts to change the AL system but all of them fell through for one reason or another (like being veto'd by other players). This isn't a matter of the devs sitting on ALs as they currently are just because. It's been a real problem and they've been putting in a lot of effort trying to fix it

[odd coral]

Which IMO is a bad thing because in the end is worse the more you let something go before you change, they are hinting with ascension 2.0 for some time now, which imo that should be done long time ago.

[sudden agate]

I think that's something a number of people have been saying and agreeing to, yeah

[stray pollen]

Going to stop by for one comment - if it helps your debate, then i'm happy to provide. otherwise, i'm not sure this needs toooo much discussion at this time. these points have been made quite a bit for a while by endgame players.

several attempts to change the AL system

This is a bit of an inaccuracy. The studio has yet to share what Ascension 2.0 really looks like, nor has really made any previous concrete attempts to change anything. We've shared a couple ideas for feedback in the past, only to see a bit of doom spiraling, so have chosen not to do too much more of that.

There was one proposal of an AL limit of 50 in early 2022, which did not meet player/studio goals in the end.

We do have Ascension 2.0 planned, in a way that addresses all the common feedback about ascension (see: this thread). However, most of our playerbase is not ascended, so we will still see the final Guild and some other priorities come first. This isn't a business decision, it's just prioritization

[sudden agate]

Ah, I had considered proposed ideas for AL system changes as an "attempt" but you're right, that is a bit inaccurate to its actual scope. My mistake

I do look forward to hearing what 2.0 has in store whenver you guys are ready to drop some news about it

[torn roost]

I had covered the history fairly well here, I thought.

I considered the survey ask to be a second attempt (though softened, never implemented or in beta).
Ascension 2.0 could be very interesting. It's unclear to me why improving Ascension 1.0 is/was off the table in lieu of a 2.0.

[sudden agate]

Guess I'm not the only one who considered these proposed changes as attempts.
And that is a good question... Maybe there's just too much going on with the current system that starting clean is simply a better way to handle it?

[cunning sparrow]

What were/are studio goals? Either shapes debate helpfully I think.

[peak kestrel]

i assume that starting clean implies a full reset on ALs?

[sudden agate]

Not sure, depends on what NF has in store for us

[peak kestrel]

well, resetting would be madness and probably will make most of the high ALs players quit ngl

[sudden agate]

I'd be pretty disappointed if losing ALs is enough to make someone quit the game. But I guess if that's what makes it fun for someone...

But you've got an entire game here. Surely enjoyment shouldn't hinge on just one aspect? Not to mention it being probably the most hotly debated aspect in the game's history

Then again, I don't have a ton of ALs and I'm not even lvl 250 so I don't 100% know what the game experience is like that far in

[cunning sparrow]

They already have an in game way to refund ascension materials. Given that its an AL rework, not deletion, im sure there will be a use for all those

it wont be millions of mats just deleted

[wind cairn]

👁️👁️

[sudden agate]

I'm not certain if it's the loss of materials that'd be the breaking point for people... and it might be more the loss of power and the sense that people wasted their time

[torn roost]

Have you asked a lot of high ascension players their thoughts on the ascension system?
Or is this just speculation?

I don't really know what "starting clean" means here, in this hypothetical.

[wind cairn]

I mean, the game is all about grinding, setting a limit on a thing that didn't have one before seems not so intuitive I think

[sudden agate]

I mean taking the current AL in its entirety out and starting again

At most maybe keep the ALs or the materials required to get to that point, otherwise a clean slate

[torn roost]

I personally wouldn't mind, but I'm sure some would. Ascension 1.0 and the lack of attention to it for the last while has definitely been a source of disappointment for me for this game. Who knows how Ascension 2.0 will work, though.

I remember a conversation in general where a bunch of high ascended players (myself included) were talking about a one-time ascension reset. Refund everyone to asc0, change the ascension system in some fundamental way, and then go ahead with it again. Many/most were in favor of such a thing assuming it was actually one-time and actually improved the endgame gameplay loop in some way.

[torn roost]

I was 250 before ascensions existed. Hard capped, no progression. It was fine for me, personally, since I could focus on optimizing existing pve without just overpowering it; could focus on gear microoptimization (the last few percents on ornates); could focus on territory more; could focus on beating my own endless records and so on.

And with guilds now, I would happily just lean into setting records on a guild leaderboard. 🤷‍♂️

Ascensions and the "infinite stats" are the aberration. Similarly, how do you feel about soft-caps? What if it just started taking insanely high resources after a certain point? You can still make progress but not in a way that distorts all of existing pvp/pve.

[sudden agate]

It really does surprise me that were wasn't a cap of any kind. I don't know what the thinking was there. If it was "the dedicated players won't grind for materials to get that strong" then hoooooooooooooboy that's not how that works at all with these kinds of games

[stray pollen]

The survey we ran did show us that the majority of players were less interested in grinding the mats if there was a cap

[sudden agate]

Was this survey fairly early on in Ascension's life?

[stray pollen]

mid2022 iirc

[sudden agate]

Hrm... Then I'd argue it'd have been a good thing for it

Then again, my opinion is based on information I don't have that NF has on the back end

[cunning sparrow]

That seems reasonably intuitive to me. Why grind hard for something you will hit the cap on eventually.

[sudden agate]

But by then Ascension had been hotly debated for awhile, some AL 50's existed and were growing if I recall correctly... and it didn't seem like there was going to be a dramatic shift in how ALs worked coming down the pipeline. I'm not sure how I feel/felt about leaving it as is

But, that being the result of the survey does speak volumes

[sudden agate]

Because in a game that has PvP aspects and content that can only go so high up in challenge, a cap does need to exist in some degree in order to keep a semblance of balance for both PvP and PvE. When you allow for infinite potential it can create problems

[slender pumice]

After refineries, the best mat sources are towers and mnemonics by a very large margin followed in the distance by anguish. The only reason anguish is as big as it is it's that because of refineries, you only have blocks to overcome having a huge baseline mat production for all mats daily (from refinement). Without that, anguish does close to nothing, when every AL is many thousands of scarce mats you simply can't AL with anguish alone in any reasonable timeframe. So you have to do towers or mnemonics, in MASS (anguish would then be fine to buy those 30+++ mnemonics per day). And both have no bearing with WV.

[cunning sparrow]

Don't think I came down one way or the other on what you're describing. I pointed out that it is logical for fewer players to grind out ascension mats if there is an end point

[sudden agate]

In hindsight, you're right, I think I mis-read a bit

I was answering the question at the end, buuuut yeah

[runic nimbus]

let’s be transparent and altruistic here.

i think some of these 1 year accounts with 130+ ascensions (more then they have) are troubling them. if you look at their boss/monster kills cd dungeon count it’s that of somebody who got carried to 250 through xp leeching. it’s assumed these guys did it through refineries but that the most tedious thing in the world to do. if you have 200 refineries in your ot you fill x2 a day? you’re insane…nobody in their right mind can handle that. they gotta be doing it some other way

you will get the pleasure of running into these lads in towers.

[torn roost]

This thread is 9 months old and predates recent screenshots by a huge margin.
This topic has been brought up, on and off, for about two solid years.

In Jan2022 I wrote:

The most important addition from an endgame perspective was the Altar of Ascension and the related Refinery building from mid-late 2020, now risen to extreme prominence. It's been talked about a lot, but nothing has changed on the ascension front since initial introduction 8 months ago. Very many endgame players have worked out that creating and spamming refineries is the key to ascension, and very many endgame players have opted out of the system instead. What could have been a key endgame content loop of sending people off on directed quests for various materials is instead a content loop of menuing on a 12-hour timer, as well as a building minigame of walking refineries back home one at a time from the hinterlands where they were originally constructed.

I feel that refineries should get the kibosh as soon as possible. Making a building menu the best source of endgame progress instead of defeating enemies, exploring the world, and other engaging activities should be a cause for concern for retention. As the refineries are made less efficient, those engaging activities should be made more efficient to match to keep the overall progression rate similar to where it is now.

... and it's just as accurate and relevant today as it was then.

[sudden agate]

Making a building menu the best source of endgame progress instead of defeating enemies, exploring the world, and other engaging activities should be a cause for concern for retention.

Thankfully the new guilds seem to be helping with this part specifically

[torn roost]

Absolutely they are. I think guilds shops are a fantastic change -- and refineries should be deleted ASAP. 🙂

Notably this part:

As the refineries are made less efficient, those engaging activities should be made more efficient to match
we're getting the latter but not the former.

[sudden agate]

and very many endgame players have opted out of the system instead

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I still only have 1 refinery and I refuse to engage in the refinery "meta"

I may not be end game, but 1 refinery was the intended, and it's what I use

[runic nimbus]

i hate refs too lol but it helps me not have to kill polly 200x to ascend. again lay the axe to the root of the tree

menuing isn’t fun. i’ve gone months without filling mine. but how do these 1yr 130+asc guys sit there for 4hrs a day filling refs? makes you wonder doesn’t it?

[wind nest]

I find the quest rewards from Inns/Town hall are very lacking. If they give the same amount of materials like tower per (higher) floor or memory hunt per segment, I would gladly check them out and clear them all. The quest too should be similar to kingdom quests where you have to kill a certain amount of monsters/bosses. Also reduce the cooldown of the quests update to every 3 days or so. Currently they can last as long as 10 days.

[velvet wraith]

Because it doesn't take 4 hours. I only have 57(?) And it takes max 5 minutes twice a day to load them all.

Refineries are super low effort, but also super low time commitment, which is why they are so AL effective

[sudden agate]

Quest rewards were half decent till T10 D= They definitely could use a tweak

[runic nimbus]

if they worked so good, you should be approaching 130 soon too right?

[velvet wraith]

If I bothered to fill them every day I would be 😛

[honest stone]

Yes because 2 million Orns per floor and 20 proofs per dungeon absolutely doesn't make ascension easier.

Mind you there aren't many who can hit those numbers right now, but the snowball keeps building

[slender pumice]

orn farming is more efficient through endless, and mat farming with towers

[honest stone]

You can't sit and farm Towers for 10 hours

you can with Anguish

[slender pumice]

when you build your own 50f towers that's decent enough done religiously every day

but yes after you have done all your towers you can add anguish to that, still decisvely, significantly inferior to towers

unless you have zillions of refineries then it's a different topic as specific mat blocks are your only remaining concern, which anguish fixes fairly well

[small hatch]

I think refineries are the most efficient means of gathering mats by far. The question is whether a player can scale that into absolute numbers of mats.

Ive got maybe 55 refineries which I usually run twice a day. Id say I average 80 Cort per day, so Im easily clearing 2k a month (not to mention all the other mats.) So not bad for 10 minutes of gameplay a day. Over time it builds up and generally means when I get mat blocked I dont have to start from 0. So on the whole it forms an important part of my diversified mat farming portfolio.

Towers are great as well as you kind of double dip - the mat rewards each floor are great and the shards help you target mats you need.

On the whole I love the ascension system as an end game player. It gives me something to focus on and allows me to continue to progress. I think the fact that the returns diminish was the right way to keep it in check (although I acknowledge that the rate at which returns diminish has changed a lot with guilds / anguish etc.)

Im looking forward to seeing whats next in store but Im also happy with the structure at the moment.

[odd coral]

Orn farming, time wise hard boss, key wise yes endless.
Mat farming, hands down to mnemonic hunts, nothing better.

[slender pumice]

ye since pets buffing memories exist, memories are more mats than towers (but it's closer than you make it, also because it's easier to farm towers when watching a tv show or couple of floors when you have a few min break, than it is to do mnemonics), yet being capped you usually spend them all well before having consumed all your available game time. But my main point is that anguish is only as big as it is because of refineries. Proof is that in HoA anguish is far less relevant than in orna (as we have capped refineries). Otherwise towers would be main, and towers have a shop as well for unblocks, and then you have to burn all your mnemonics, anguish comes after that if at all. Now even fishing is competitive with anguish tbh, in terms of mnemonics you can buy per time invested

[slender pumice]

returns diminish even outside of mat cost increasing, because going from al 0 to al 1 is +1%, from al 100 to al 101 is +0.5%!

[small hatch]

I wasnt aware of that, thanks for letting me know! Ive been aiming at getting RS to AL 100, so that kind of works out for me 😁

[slender pumice]

Structure is fine in HoA, refineries in orna are terrible tbh (too easy to get too many mats with too little time investment, and it's not even actually playing the game). In HoA you farm towers, mnemonics, anguish, and blocks are stuff like 7-8-9k scalestones or whatever, and it means farming baseline mats as per above and waiting for it in the tower shop and spending 300-400-500k shards on it every time, that's doable with every grinding a couple of times per month but it requires a lot of effort. If anything the only bad thing about AL is the RNG around mat requirements, for ex i have been pretty lucky in my ALs which is why i am at 95, if i had been asked rore or cort more often i could be at 80 or 85

[slender pumice]

ye basically every AL is 1% of original stats (+ gear), so if your ex-AL stat is 4000 att (say, with gear), 1 AL is +40 at any point. So the first one makes you 1% better (4040 instead of 4000), the 101st one makes you 0.5% better (8040 vs 8000)

[odd coral]

Nope, not even close for mat farming.
Easier to farm towers hmmmm, yeah if you hunting firts, or spend a looooooot of orns+ shards building yours firts.

[runic nimbus]

endless x towers, when? 👌

[simple scarab]

But if they wanted to do that speed, I'd be ok with that!!!

[woeful falcon]

I wouldn't lol

[autumn pebble]

Just a casual 240 refineries worth in a single building for me

[robust bay]

I disagree. Also a good chunk of the philosophy behind ascensions were a mat dump for excess mats.

We got no free rerolls.

So, i think refineries are a great idea and system. It makes a very painful process way less painful.

I enjoy that my excess is good for something.

[autumn pebble]

Being able to do something with excess is nice. Being able to ascend basically entirely on refined excess (and that also being the fastest way to do it) is a different matter entirely

[robust bay]

I think the mat philosophy is good but we also jeed another way to ascend. One with mats (and rerolls) and one that rewards active playing and not just doing the same thing, over and over and over again, im Asc 67 and 95% of my mats are farmen with raids & refineries...

Again, for a mat dump, it started wrong from day 1. So, maybe a rework which keeps the infinity of ascension, would be great!

[robust bay]

I agree to that! I think Refineries are fine as they are. They serve more purpose then just ascensions.

Ascensions is the system that needs a makeover

[cunning sparrow]

I don’t think menuing through refineries for rng output is great. Imagine a world where all materials have different endgame sinks, and players can trade the mats they don’t want for others, with the rate based on what others are trading

Maybe you don’t want 10k silk to make the ultimate fishing line of ultimate destiny but someone will

[night gyro]

What purpose do refineries serve aside from ascension? Lols

Cause I'm drawing many blanks trying to answer that question

[gentle plume]

Well I may be wrong but I thought that all the guilds bringing ways to obtain mats was the solution to let players do the content they love and still be able to gather mats

[sudden agate]

But that’d only be relevant to people like me who stick to 1 refinery. For people who have dozens upon dozens it’s just extra means of gaining more materials. Whether having more than 1 refinery was intended or not it does need to be adjusted

[robust bay]

Getting annoying to farm mats to upgrade equipment

[robust bay]

If the rates werent unfeasable, yes.
But the prices for anything higher then T3 mats are a joke, especially cort and realm ore.
If the intention of the guilds were to make the mat grind more gameplay-focussed and not idle, they failed completely with the effort-reward ratio and the price of high tier / high rarity mats.

[odd coral]

Some better than others on doing that, but yeah that's the point.
Some guilds are really good for mats farming on one way or other, some others are just doing something you like.

[odd coral]

Al are end game content A.K.A grinding a lot, so with that on mind I think prices are good the way they are.

[robust bay]

i am a hardcore player in about any game that lets me grind it and suits my preferences - and i think from warframe to FF14, i've seen a lot.
I know that diminishing returns are a factor and im great we have to those.

But, i cant say that grinding materials is a fun task in any way when you feel like you make barely any progress, and the grind already is tedious, yet the moment i saw the price for cort and realm ore, i feel disappointed.
I think grinding a lot is good - but also you should see progress and a reward for your effort, those kind of rates are as much discouraging then getting cort twice in a row.

Ascensions were, by design, a mat dump, but by not having a reroll option for a level, it feels unrewarding and dissatisfying.
I think asking for effort to archieve something is amazing and important for a healthy game - but that ratio is not healthy ^^"

[odd coral]

I understand your point and I agree to some extent, prices at some guilds are just much, agree, however the grind for mats right now is just to easy-going

Also I know a thing or two about been Cort locked.

And that's was just after one other Cort locked. So🤷

[wind cairn]

I think they should put an option to change 1/2 materials required for ascension so you don't get mat block, you pay some ornns and change an material/materials in required ascension

Makes it more grindy and less tedious.

Got an cursed ortanite? Change to a random material and pay 1kk-60kk depending on ascension level

Boom, problem solved

[unborn pebble]

im all for it, but that would just make ascensions easier than it already is no?

[muted frigate]

Definitely

[spring sleet]

or instead of changing materials, divide all mats in 4-5-6 diferent tiers and ask the AL for specific number of every tier ( for example 5000 T1 mats, 4000 t2, 3000 T3 2000 T4 and 1000 T5, your choice which mat you use in each category but you can only select mats of that tier for the cost)

[wind cairn]

Definitely would make it easier, but why not? Makes the grind "easier"
But you would still go farming ornns + another mat.

[wind cairn]

Cool idea too

I think it would be harder to implement but still a great one

Actually maybe not

[unborn pebble]

Becaue of ascension and power level bloat

ALs are not meant to be easy

[fading folio]

I don't think there needs to be any bad luck protection or reroll mechanic with ascension. The guilds offer plenty of ways to hard grind materials. It has already been made significantly easier to ascend than when Kraids were your only reliable option for things like Cort and realm ore.

[wind cairn]

Why not? Makes the game easier, less grindy and is just a upgrade, why not add something that would make the game more fun, less boring on grinding mats and is one of the main reasons i see people quit? I stopped playing cuz a mat block from cursed ortanite, came back and am playing again and loving how they made it easier to grind, making the game less frustrating helps to maintain the player base, helps the game to grow and experienced players to continue playing, if ascension levels aren't meant to be easy then why I have almost 20 when I'm lvl 238 ?

I think I can get lvl 250 with more than 30 ASC levels, they're not that hard. They were back then, but now way more easier than before, and that's okay, now you have to grind for celestial classes, ASC levels, set etc, making it easier would mean people going 200+ ascensions or more and not stopping at 100 because style points + they were burned the hell out of the game

Also, no one would start using those mat rerolls until ascension 20/30, they would only help people who were more experienced and would it make less frustrating.
Power scaling just goes up as time goes, 3/4 years ago the celestial classes wouldn't even be considered into the game, but now it's a neat upgrade and makes the game way more fun, same goes for new events and etc.

[sudden agate]

Why not?
Because with the power imbalances ALs create already it doesn't need to be any easier than it already is

making it easier would mean people going 200+ ascensions or more and not stopping at 100 because style points + they were burned the hell out of the game
I'd consider that a good thing cause at that point maybe the player should slow down a little and maybe do something else in the game, but that's only how I feel on that

Also, no one would start using those mat rerolls until ascension 20/30
It should never be assumed that nobody would use a system in place either at all or up until a certain point. If a game has a wide enough playerbase, it will happen outside of the expected parameters

[muted frigate]

we've already made it much easier once, it doesn't need to be any easier.

[fading folio]

Powercreep is a natural part of an MMO, but generally its a symptom of the game putting in new rewarding grinds. Celestials powercreeped the game yes, but they brought with them new weapons, augments, and classes to grind out for end game players. I don't think because powercreep is inevitable that we should powercreep for powercreeps sake.

and Powercreep needs to strike a balance between new rewarding options, and not invalidating the time spent by players. I'm using hyperbole, but if it took someone 3 years to grind 100 ascension levels and we added systems that makes it possible to grind 200 in a year, then I think a lot of older players would feel like they lost a lot of their time.

I think Celestials/towers are a great system, but I know there were a lot of people who felt that ~200% quality weapons that they spent months grinding were invalidated by weapons you could get in a week

I also think people just tend to focus on the materials that they are stuck at. OVer a long enough timeframe the materials you roll should even out, sure theres going to be unlucky people, but we tend not to think about the ascension we blasted through in a day becasue it was asking for steel and bones.

[fading folio]

I really dont see how people getting 200 ascensions regularly is a thing worth encouraging. Basically all lategame content is completely invalidated before even 100 ascension levels. There are a lot of people who can clear 50 Anguish easily, and clear all of arisen waygate in 15 minutes using the current system. Unless there is some very hard aspirational ingame content that people are locked out of, I don't see any real reason to make it easier.

[torn roost]

I think there's two arguments there.

Making it possible to farm 10x faster (or more) in a matter of a year is bad for old players who feel like their efforts were wasted.
Making it possible to farm so incredibly fast in general is bad for all players because it trivializes the game too much. (No multi-year aspirational goals.)

[velvet wraith]

There are also plenty of ways to reduce frustration with getting x material y times in a row without making the system easier.

The argument also exists that for some players the current system is already arbitrarily easier because they don't roll the annoying mats (cort, realm ore) with any frequency. Imagine how much easier ascension would be if RNG said you only get Cort once every 30 levels

[fading folio]

I think guilds are already a somewhat elegant solution to this.

[velvet wraith]

Not at all

If every mat was equally expensive, maybe.

But getting Cort or realm ore blocked repeatedly takes waaaaay more proofs than mandrake for example

[wind cairn]

Yeah, try to farm 10k cursed orta in kingdom lols

Getting kicked from the kingdom next day 😰😰

[torn roost]

The expectation/insistence that 10k cort be attainable or doable in any short amount of time is the oddity.
I miss when asc50 was considered an extreme, multi-year goal, and below there the biggest stacks you'll see are in the single digit thousands.

[velvet wraith]

While I agree with that sentiment, it also holds true that when it was a multi year goal, that goal was not at all equal across the playerbase.

Smaller samples distort the issue even further

[torn roost]

Sure, material variance was never considered for a fix despite being the day1 feedback. The only NF comment on it was that it would come out in the wash, iirc. (I'd find the quote, but it's in deleted #debate).

[fading folio]

You'll have to take my word for it, but I did have back to back cort over the summer in high 60s/low70s ascension range. I farmed it with Morrigan, Anguish and Travelers guild. Its okay that it took me over a month, I had a few easy ones in the meantime. It all tends to average out.

It would be even easier now with the additional sources of proofs added.

[muted frigate]

Tbh I preferred it before anguish. I find little satisfaction in grinding enough proofs for ascending. Because irrelevant of what comes next I'll just be grinding the same thing

[autumn pebble]

One thing with ascension grind is that you're basically not even target farming mats, just filling up refineries and gathering proofs

It's the same loop over and over

[fading folio]

I definitely enjoy the variance in activites that ascending generally prescribes, but can see the issue where some materials are awful to grind. Something like Ancient stone pre-guilds was awful and almost necessitated alt play. The other guilds can also provide some varied gameplay, though I get they may not be as efficient in all cases.

[muted frigate]

Na. Getting enough ancient stone was hard. But the satisfaction when u done it was so good

[wind cairn]

I still think that making ascension levels less frustrating might help with the playerbase and new players finding it less frustrating, would be a win win situation, the anguish is there for end game material and everything involved, why not make it easier so someone could do idk 100 anguish levels runs consistently. Things tend to get easier and that's okay, makes the game open for new players, new playstyles and less people quit because of getting bored/frustrated
If you don't want power creep, why play an GRINDING MMO? Like doesn't make sense, would be more rewarding to players that grind the hell out of the game without getting burned out

[fading folio]

I don't mind powercreep, I just think powercreep for powercreeps sake is not a good thing. I could also say, if you dont want to grind, why play a grinding MMO? Its a fairly reductive statement.

[wind cairn]

I would say even more doubling down like adding a market to the game, making it so players could actually trade between themselves and etc, because an MMO is about that, most people don't want to spend 4 months to get to tier t10 alone, it's a social game, and making it so the experience you have playing it is a solo one, doesn't fit the MMO title lol

[muted frigate]

You should have seen Orna back in the day. Grinding world mobs with no affinity candle because affinity candles didn't exist. And I don't think dungeons did either

[autumn pebble]

it's not an MMO though?

[wind cairn]

Making so you could sell mats, gear, amidities, idk everything, why not? Would only make the game more enjoyable

[fading folio]

You're using your own subjective idea of what you enjoy. Community sentiment in this game has been pretty strongly against trading and the like.

[wind cairn]

Isn't you also using your subjective idea of what ascension should be like?

They made easier and we'll didn't see anyone dying from that lol

[torn roost]

The community/player demographic has been wildly shifting toward couch MMO over the last several years. ||For better or worse.||

[torn roost]

Lots and lots of players have quit because the game got easier and boring.

It's not "free".

[wind cairn]

I came back just because it got easier :))

[torn roost]

Yeah, it's really all about what kind of players NF wants/what kind of difficulty they want. They want everyone of course, but at the end of the day it's mutually exclusive decisions.

[wind cairn]

And trying to make 3 of my friends that stopped playing come back, because the game is more enjoyable, so many ways to farm, get mats and new classes

[fading folio]

Has there been a rise in people suggesting trading? I always see it shot down as an idea.

[wind cairn]

True.

[muted frigate]

Wasn't there someone with 200Als with Less than 100k boss kills? The game is nuts now

[velvet wraith]

The power of refineries and endless

[torn roost]

I've seen it come up a few times recently. It used to come up all the time when the game was still forming, pressing Odie to officially say "no not doing that". Trading takes tons of dev time, changes the tenor of the game (makes it even more "competitive pve"), introduces the risk of corruption/duping, etc etc.

For a while it's been a non-topic, but not forever. Odie had floated a soft trading which never made it into Orna and went into HoA instead. Really splitting on Orna/HoA seems like it should be best for these kinds of things and yet people keep showing up wanting Orna to be the easy-mode thing. 😅

[fading folio]

I think the game has become more enjoyable but I don't think its because you level up faster, I think its because there is a lot of new content.

[torn roost]

re: refineries,

The best time to remove them was like 2.5 years ago shortly after ascension when people realized what was going to happen.
The second best time to remove them was a few months ago, with the introduction of guilds/guild shops.
The third best time to remove them is right now today. 🙂

[muted frigate]

Too late now. Damage is done

[fading folio]

100% agree, or provide a consistent, equalized refinery. I cant speak to dev intent, but it seems to me like we were intended to walk to refinerys as a gps task which is why we could build one, and only one in every area. The moving 'exploit' just seems like an odd thing that became accepted so it was never remedied.

Its frustrating that one of the most efficient ways to get mats is low stakes, menuing.

I'd argue boring content but maybe some people really enjoy loading and unloading their refineries.

[torn roost]

The damage has not yet been done to the up and coming players who are starting now.

[woeful falcon]

gets stabbed
"Should I go to the doctor? eeeh, too late, damage is already done"

[muted frigate]

It would just create a big difference between new and old players

If you removed

Hence AL 200 with less than 100k boss kills

[torn roost]

The alternative of doing nothing is worse. A year ago I was told that removing refineries was "too late" -- would've been fine then. And now.

[muted frigate]

Yeah I guess so

[wind cairn]

Yeah orna isn't easy but why you thinking that making a thing easier is bad? The game still hard and requires a LOT of grinding, and that's fine, but making a game a solo experience on a MMO game is just nonsensical really, "but orna isn't an MMO tho" kingdoms, partying, and the lots, and lots of people that go out to make alts, make wayvessels for sharing and the community that hunts amidities, making it so people could actually make interactions between each other other than just doing dungeons/raids together would be a huge up to the game, is about making an online game a party experience instead of a solo one.
Would be actually good to players to trade items at least in dungeons/partying together/same dungeon, like why not?

[muted frigate]

I don't seem them being removed anytime soon

[velvet wraith]

I'd recommend making a new thread about trading if it is really something you want to see added

[wind cairn]

• fuxi, I don't think being like "well if you don't like orna just go play hoa, because it's easier" gonna make really a difference, being not welcoming to new players just gonna make orna a more and more niche game lol

[torn roost]

being not welcoming to new players just gonna make orna a more and more niche game
Telling old players to go fuck themselves (pardon my french) also doesn't exactly help longevity.

Plus if you can look ahead a little, if you observe a pattern of throwing the core playerbase under the bus just know that it'll happen to you next. 😅

[velvet wraith]

Regarding Orna being challenging:

If players use everything at their disposal (like ascensions) there isn't much left that could be considered "hard"

Anything left that is hard requires intentionally self sabatoging character power. Like using a HoC to remove all ascensions and then trying anguish 50

[cunning sparrow]

I think it’s good to separate what’s good for the game and what’s good for the players. The Venn diagram is tight but still two different circles.

Orna would probably be a better game if refineries and AL were wiped clean, but the player base would not be better off.

[torn roost]

I don't see the distinction. Can you elaborate a bit?

[wind cairn]

Telling old players "we'll that's just the way things are and you're going to die like that" isn't helping too, by your logic we shouldnt have made anything in the game because "well, too many things to take care and we will take too much time for doing that"

[cunning sparrow]

So, Orna becomes a better game because anyone who picks up the game from that new day 0 onward will have a better experience. It’s a tighter, stronger experience. But old players were already invested in the old way, so they’re worse off even if this new Orna is the better designed game. I’ll think of another example if that helps

[torn roost]

Old players would spend the minute they would have spent refilling a refinery clearing a few dungeon floors.

The only people really bad off would be those that joined expecting (easy) difficulty and being surprised -- just like how people joined expecting (harder) difficulty and are equally shocked at how much easier it's gotten.

[cunning sparrow]

I think it’s possible you missed that I mentioned deleting ALs. I don’t think all the old players would get back to happily dungeoning

[wind cairn]

They already went out and made you "old players" to farm celestial classes, weapons and more, well you're still playing, but bitching (sorry about my portuguese) about it doesn't make a difference, if you don't want changes go play Diablo 1 forever, the elder scrolls 1/2, you choose, being conservative about the game isn't great for the game+ community, it's okay to grow out of things, when I was 16 yeah I would happily grind my ass off playing orna, now im not so happy about doing that, you don't live 50 years planting the same seeds.

[torn roost]

I wouldn't mind, because I was playing the game before ascensions existed. (And was happily dungeoning at 250 with no ascension system in place.)
It's easy to say others would mind, but it's a silly discussion if we're just assuming what people are gonna do left and right. 😅

"Well, NF can't do X because people could Y and others could Z..." 🤷‍♂️

I accept that NF has pretty clearly shown through their actions (not so much in words) what they want. Removing ALs isn't gonna happen, and removing refineries (for as much as they should be) isn't either.

[muted frigate]

the great reset of 2024

[wind cairn]

NF going wild and making everyone cry in 2024

[cunning sparrow]

I would agree, tho I think we can say it’s not an assumption. People have gotten heated about the suggestion of AL deletion.

I think another good Orna adjacent example is any game that tries to balance pve and pvp inevitably harms the other. There will always be some mechanic that is 100% chef’s kiss in one of them, but subpar in another. Just the price you pay trying to appeal to more people.

Keeping refiners and AL are like that

Worse game, better for X players

[muted frigate]

The mjolnir feeling

[fading folio]

Again. I love powercreep like this. New exciting grinds are a great reason to allow power creep. I don't see any good reason to create power creep just to make things easier in what is already an easy system.

[wise anchor]

I think AL is in a great spot, it's in line with the grind your face off for slow power increases. It's the theme that makes the game so rewarding and I don't think AL needs any changes

[night kernel]

The problem is not the grind you go through, but the place of an infinite scaling mechanism inside a game like that. Considering we're locked at T10, it produced to much of a power gap between no AL and high AL, which make it very hard/impossible to balance the game for both.
Games with infinite scaling are very rare for a reason, it's not a good idea.

[small hatch]

I personally dont have much of an issue with ascensions because the vast majority of content is PvE. If players want to climb the AL ladder it mostly impacts how they interact with their own sandbox version of Orna.

The one area where I think this isnt true is area control. But, for one reason or another, I dont feel like that's a content area most players aspire to (probably because there is currently very little reward in it.) And if it did become an issue I think it could resolved by allowing one player per tier control an area.

[simple scarab]

I'm ok with getting AL mats through guilds. But I'd like guilds to ALWAYs offer all the mats for sale and maybe set it so I get X amount of mats for one currency. And do it so that all the proofs of a given guild can be traded for that material, granted at an appropriate exchange rate for that proof.
What I struggle with now is seeing the mat I need for sale in a guild and just plain not having time to farm that needed currency on that day. 😦 Sometimes the issue is that I need more of a specific proof than I have so I can't get ANY of the mat I need.
Clicking through all the guilds every day to find what guild is selling what mat just feels like a different form of refinery clicking. 😦

[unborn pebble]

a suggestion has been made for this

which in theory, would offer all available mats at anytime you want at the cost of proofs of it's respective guild

[simple scarab]

Meh, I don't want to spend my proofs to reroll. Let that be the new gold sink. I've heard of end game players sitting at the gold cap. Lets give them something to sink that gold into!

[torn roost]

not having time to farm that needed currency on that day
I don't think that's the intended use of the guild shops. You're supposed to just do the activity because you like the activity and store up proofs, and then can blow them all when something shows up you want to purchase.

Anyway I don't care that much about rerolling guild shops. Either rerolling with proofs or gold is fine -- I personally would do neither and just be patient until the mat I care about shows up. Ultimately the bottleneck is still actually farming proofs, not pressing the refresh button.

[scenic yarrow]

either gold or proof reroll is fine imo

[iron grail]

Not 🙂

[slender pumice]

If you can know your block in advance you can plan farming. Say it's December 18 and I have enough proofs in my guild IF my mat block appears. If it does maybe I discover that my next block is Avalon ore so when balin comes I can summon even if I don't need it's items. Or it's scalestone so I hit all those beast dens/dragon roost which I would otherwise not care much about because of time issues. The sooner you know what your future block is the more optimal your farming can be. Just waiting stockpiling proofs/shard is decent, but sub optimal

[torn roost]

If you can know your block in advance
Well, you can't. Unless you mean to say that that's something about ascension that should change, though it seems unrelated to rerolling shops.

Stockpiling proofs is always going to be the way forward because proofs are just materials eventually.
If you ascend and realize you need avalon ore, you can clear Balins and still have proofs for the ascension after that one.