Making the most of multiplayer and GPS functionality

[maiden forum]

A lot of people are drawn to Orna specifically because of its GPS functionality; this is what sets it apart from other RPGs. And for a lot of regulars, people say what keeps them playing is the community.

Despite both of these things, it's pretty universally agreed that the majority of game content is both single player in nature, as well as accessed from the player's origin town (or from anywhere at all.) Most of the time, players use wayvessels to teleport to points of interest instead of walking around, and for content where this isn't possible (such as Monuments) players usually increase their view distance until they can see something, or simply wait a week until monuments reset. For multiplayer content, players mostly engage with each other to share raids and amities. Rarely if ever is multiplayer functionality used to accomplish feats that a player would struggle to accomplish on their own.

There appears to be a contradiction between Orna's biggest selling points among players and what those selling points actually offer mechanically. I've created a handful of suggestions that have mostly been downvoted in the Suggestions, so rather than proposing my own solutions, I'd like a more open-ended discussion about larger and broader changes to design philosophy that might address these discrepancies.

[analog geyser]

Increase in difficulties of new super Raid boss.

Something like, Raid that one shot you every 3 turns. Or boss that was unkillable in solo.

[celest anvil]

That could actually force a little more party raiding.

Boss will kill someone every 3 turns, so at least 2 people need revive access but the more players you have in tow, the more DPS you can pump out instead of reviving each other in a loop.

In response to the post, it seems that the biggest GPS feature is tied to PvP, yet PvP progression comes from PvE content. We're seeing the issues with that to this very day.

I'm not sure how to go about it, but keeping PvP/E in their own lanes, progression-wise, might help things?

[tidal widget]

First a question for clarification: How exactly is the current setting for partyplay in Ang2.0 (as it has changed since the introduction)? I think, currently you can join higher anguish raids (dungeons?) but you get no proofs for it, right? Some months ago it was like that iirc - and a friend and I, we try to stay the exact same agony level because of that. But as a consequence, party play, carrying etc. doesn't make much sense anymore for most people in Ang2.0.

If this is still the case, a very simple first step could be: allow people to join higher anguish content (raids, dungeons etc), but each players rewards - inclduing proofs - should at maximum be based on their max anguish level, so min(raid_anguish, player_anguish) etc.

But it would be great to have additional content where party play really makes sense.

[rancid sigil]

Personally, I don't understand the claimed desire to have, or feasibility of having, "PvP Progression" separate from "PvE Progression".
Can you provide an example of another game that separates the two?

[umbral mason]

Agreed.

Those design issues aside,
the overworld multiplayer is a bit to clunky/buggy to really use.

When I first started playing Orna I was duoing with someone,
but it would often throw us into different battles for the same enemy.
Restarting the app didn't seem to help us join the fight together.
Maybe this was/is partly a bug, but I wasn't in this server or inclined to make a bug report at the time.

And aside from that,
it would also add extra enemies which actually made ganging up on a boss harder rather than easier.
Much later into the game this shouldn't be an issue,
but especially in early levels with weak un-levelled equipment it made bosses something that we should be doing mostly solo even if the multiplayer had worked flawlessly.

[umbral mason]

If the person that initiated the raid dies the raid gets ended.
Even if other people are still alive.
So eventually the raid will just randomly end when the person starting the raid happens to be the one getting 1-shot.

[umbral mason]

You can not join higher anguish raids.
I was gonna get some free Fey Yeti raids someone was kind enough to share, but then they were Ang 7 so I couldn't fight them 🙃

When doing dungeons it automatically picks the lowest person's Melancholy.

[umbral mason]

importantly, this was also back when there was a cooldown to challenge bosses.

So we couldn't just flee and immediately try to re-do the battle

I think it was about 5 minutes between attempts?

[tidal widget]

Strange. Some months ago, it is was possible. I think only one of us was able to start the raid, but the other was able to join. But no proofs. Anyway: I think it would already help a lot for party playing if joint raids would be possible (and drops for the one without anguish requirements are on his lower anguish level).

[umbral mason]

Really, I think one of the bigger obstacle to party play for raids is efficiency/loot.

If I party with someone (especially someone weaker than me) I

1. Get less loot
2. Spend more time doing the raid

And that's on top of needing to be nearby

I expect that needing to be nearby and (1) is probably at least somewhat related to anti-botting/alting concerns,
but it does also mean that in many cases I'm mechanically better off doing a raid solo.

esp. since it also requires no scheduling with someone else

[tidal widget]

1. Loot: This is not necessarily true. I always mirrored raids - yes, mainly for fun, but it is also more efficient in terms of loot. At my current anguish level 27, both of us get all A.Morri drops (many with legendary rarity). Even w/o anguish luck bonus, superior rarity (like FSC) are (almost?) guaruanteed drops for duo raids iirc.
2. Time: In principle yes. But at least you can use some synergies with blights, or high hp summons etc. So it can be faster, but due to time lags it is often slower.

The coordination aspect is of course always a large restriction, so that many are probably rather doing duo raids with alts - which should NOT be the goal here...

[umbral mason]

I understand that mirroring raids can result in expecting to have overall more loot.

That is a specific strategy conditioned on two people having the same number of raids.

Not the simplest case of "I've got a raid. Wanna join in?"

And to be clear, I do think it's cool that there are strategies for mirroring that can reward coordnation

I just wish the default "let's do a raid together" was strictly beneficial for all involved

without having extra conditions/strategies being required

[tidal widget]

ah, i probably misunderstood your previous comment. yes, I agree with you.

or at least implementing a lower punishment

[umbral mason]

There was way too much subtext in (especially someone weaker) lol

I'm not surprised you had trouble understanding what I was trying to say

Some changes to raid that could promote party play are (IMO) things like

1. Make raids all or nothing
   = if the party wipes out, you restart from 0 damage dealt
   = makes it more likely that you have to have more people to finish a raid earlier in your Orna journey

2. As long as 1 person is alive the raid continues
   = currently if the raid initiator dies the raid is over

3. Asynchronous Raiding
   = Something between what we have currently and a kingdom raid
   = basically some way to allow people to take their turns at their own pace
   = maybe each person would have their turn, and then a raid boss turn
   = but still with the ability to interact with each other

[wheat gate]

A consistently raised community concern wherever multiplayer has been more rewarding than single player is: Alt play

Essentially building systems that are beneficial for multiple people to do need to be built in a way that it's not just objectively better to play the game yourself with two characters, than yourself solo. It's a tricky balance to strike, where's the line?

[umbral mason]

Yeah that's the real problem and part of why I haven't discussed this more

Inherently, especially for a turn-based game,
Alt play is probably always going to be more optimal than actually playing with other humans

If this was a real-time game where a single person just could not reasonably play multiple games at a time it'd be simpler

The main negative to alt play is the extra time/devices required to make/maintain an alt

[tidal widget]

I never really understood why it is so difficult to handle alts differently than 2 friends playing together. At least for the most common type of alts: several characters for the same account/email, it should be obvious for NF whether 2 alts or 2 different accounts are playing together, or am I too naive here?
Or is it rather the problem that people would start additional accounts with new alts on different devices, where the situation is indistinguishable from 2 players?

[umbral mason]

Actually detecting alts with 100% accuracy is not really possible

[tidal widget]

but only for the situation in my last sentence, right?

[umbral mason]

Multiple characters on a single email is not an issue

You can only be logged in to 1 at a time This is not true. It just has to be different characters...

[tidal widget]

Ah, ok. I don't have alts, but I have seen a lot of screenshots with many alts for the same account. But that was probably only for the 2 mentioned situations. Thanks for clarification.

[tidal widget]

But wait: i just started a new char on the same account and I am currently logged in with both characters... 🤔

[wheat gate]

Mobile games having a required email address to play kills uptake greatly, so shouldn't be a world that is aimed for.
Entertaining the scenario though, it wouldn't solve much - in games where that is a requirement, folks that want to alt just sign up with two different emails.

Then the request will be track by IP, which is infrastructure time spend that doesn't push things forward for anyone else, and suddenly folks determined play on two separate devices.

The line is always hard, I'm thinking the question should be: Is Alt play actually that bad? If it exists in pockets that don't largely impact leaderboards, is it ok? If it made the general QoL of Multiplayer better, is it ok?

[umbral mason]

When I have done this it has said "Your account is being used on another device" (or something similar) and kept me from logging in

[wheat gate]

That warning only occurs if currently logged in on another device on that character, or very recently logged in on another device with that character

[umbral mason]

oh really?

[tidal widget]

In principle, alt play is no problem for me. It is only a problem for me, if this is the reason that party playing with friends is not rewarding so that solo play is just more efficient.
I really LOVE coop gaming, and party playing in orna is in principle very nice. But ignoring coordination issues, the rewards are very low for party playing. Dungeons are so much slower that I only did it as a very fresh T10 when horde boss dungeons were too difficult alone. But that situation was a perfect example for positive incentives: I could either play non-horde alone, or party playing horde.

[umbral mason]

I guess I have probably only been logged in on my main when swapping devices then...

---

Horde does at least have more monsters per floor on average with party play which is good,
but the extra time is the main downside.

[wheat gate]

I think there are currently a lot of benefits to multiplayer that aren't clearly articulated here, to be fair. The largest one is the ability to run dungeons more than once, given it's once per person. From there it can be really beneficial for speed to coordinate on dungeon approach, you may not need to buff so much for dungeons if you have another person in the second slot who can clean up monsters easily before they attack

Perhaps there's a clarity issue on the benefits of multiplayer also

[umbral mason]

This may be more an issue with VD then?

I'd be more inclined to try to coordinate multiplayer with people to run dungeons more if I couldn't see so many without moving

I definitely went out to nab dungeons more when my VD was much lower

[tidal widget]

I think at least for endgame players, these are not really benefits. With max VD, I can see 22 dungeons. WV -> another 29. So more dungeons are not a big issue. And buffing is also no problem as 1 horde dungeon usually takes < 2 min, which I couldn't do when party playing (due to lags).

If we party play dungeons, on most floors only the first person attacks whereas the second can't even act (because the floor is already wiped out) 😅

[umbral mason]

I think this is partly an artifact of the power scaling in Orna being so powerful.

I really don't know what we can do keep this and do party play things.

For some other games, the difference between someone moderatly leveled/geared is noticable,
but nothing too crazy.

For Orna highly geared players get 10s or 100s of times stronger.
And importantly, gets to a point of basically 1-shotting many things.
Not sure what you do to promote partly play in that setting.

[umbral mason]

Is Alt play actually that bad? If it exists in pockets that don't largely impact leaderboards, is it ok? If it made the general QoL of Multiplayer better, is it ok?

To actually address this question.

I think Alt play is not an issue as long as it doesn't impact leader boards.

I think the main thing to avoid is making Alt play required for people wanting to push for better spots on a leaderboard

---

In terms of what I personally think ought be rewarded the most,
it is

1. Party play with humans
2. Alt play
3. solo play

Basically, I think the game should be "play to win" (which it does a good job of currently)

but playing with humans should be more rewarding than anything else.
If you're taking the time to socialize and play with humans optimally, that should be the most rewarding gameplay.

[maiden forum]

Running dungeons more than once helps with quantity but not novelty. As an endgame player I already have everything, having more of everything is not motivating.

But if you suddenly made content that had to be done with other players, dedicated solo players would almost certainly complain about it. Part of the power fantasy is being able to create a single character that can do anything.

I proposed an idea for a co-op guild where you just get proofs for completing content together, people hated it. Personally I don't like the proof system in general - it feels like I'm literally being bribed to engage in content that's compelling for no other reason. But I do think it's a decent way to contain certain kinds of content in a way that doesn't punish players for not engaging if they don't want to

[tidal widget]

In fact the impact on leaderboards is probably different in Orna and HoA. In HoA, you have a fixed number of dungeons - and probably as a direct consequence, there are several alts in the leaderboard. But as the game is otherwise almost identically, increasing rewards for party/alt playing could influence the leaderboard at least for one of the games...

[maiden forum]

Is HoA's leaderboard really important or something? I find the leaderboard in Orna to be very dumb. The last time I looked at the global #1 player it was someone I was more accomplished in across almost every type of gameplay except boss horde. Not much reason to take it seriously at present

[tidal widget]

1. I am not a fan. For difficult raids (which is currently for me: Ang27 A.Morri with 150M HP), it often takes several attempts.
2. Yes, definitely!!
3. Unsure. This way a fight could take veeery long, so I currently don't see how this positively impacts party playing.

[umbral mason]

(3)
I think I didn't explain it well then.

I'd think if both players could take turns independently,
it would be strictly faster than the current system where you have to wait for the rest of your party to do their turns in addition to the boss.

Basically, making it more similar to a raid in something like Pokemon Go where players can attack independantly from each other
so more people in a raid just means the raid will go faster.

Though I don't really think that kind of independent/asynchronous gamplay translates perfectly to a turn based game like Orna,
I do think it could be possible to borrow elements from that

[brisk sail]

IMO I wish raids leaned more into mechanics that would elevate party play but also still enable single player. Some possible examples:

1. Raid charges up a fire damage wipe, you must hit them 5 times of water/ice in two turns to stop it. Party play everyone could use strong hitting ice attacks, solo play would require multihit attacks, avidity etc.

2. You have to block every X turns or the attack is a kill. A tank with (an improved) provoke could be the key tanker, a party member could bring revive if no tank, a solo player would just have to lose a lot of dps.

But to the threads original point I think a riftbreak refresh would really help GPS play

[umbral mason]

I think this would basically require an overhaul of how raids work
but might be interesting.

[tidal widget]

I agree, I mean for summons or pets it is similar: they have a turn, but you can't do your move conditional on their behavior (but still the same turn). An easy implementation would be: allow to choose your action (as player 2) already when it is not yet your turn.

[umbral mason]

Yeah, being able to buffer your turn could help speed stuff up.

[tidal widget]

And it would mainly help "real" people. Alts don't have this coordination issue.

[umbral mason]

Raiding aside,

I think one of the other things that keeps me (personally) from going out as much is just not knowing where stuff is.

In the earlier parts of the game,
I felt like just moving around is fairly cool since bosses are pretty rewarding,
and there's just a lot of new stuff.

Later in the game,
I'm probably interested in looking for something specific (e.g. a Beast Den),
but there's not a good way to figure out where one is.
The best solution is to wandering aimlessly which doesn't feel great.

In principal the Explorer's Waystone exists.
However,
partly due to its random nature it's really only kinda OK for finding riftbreaks in my experience.
It has been pretty bad for finding anything else that isn't super common.

If it did not have the ability to have duplicate compass markings it might be OK,
but even using 40+ you can fail to find something as simple as a beast den due to the sheer volume (and subsequent annoyance)
of duplicates being added.

---

I think when I was looking for an underworld portal,
I used 60+ explorer's waystones without finding one.

The only real consistent way to just find one is to be a passenger in a car,
and drive around a ton (probably on a highway).
Though that can still take awhile.
And not great for how I personally want to play orna since I'd rather be bicycling or walking to do the GPS part of the game.

---

If I could see where specialty dungeons were I'd definetly be walking/bicycling to them a lot more.

There is a route I'll take after the weekly reset sometimes to scout out the area,
but I'd be willing to go much further away from my neighborhood if I knew there would be the payoff I'm looking for.

[maiden forum]

The biggest reason for this is that there's nothing worth traveling to. It's less like you're traveling from point to point and more like you're rerolling what's around you. The closest thing there is to stuff that matters is monuments, towers, high contest settlements, and riftbreaks, but only towers are compelling in their rewards and even then those rewards only matter for like early T10 players

Basically everything you encounter is in the "nice to have" category, but not "I need to chase this thing down" territory

This leads to the predictable result of no one chasing anything down. (Btw there should be a way to see where riftbreaks will be ahead of time, it takes like 10-20 minutes to get to one usually so people just ignore them because they're half over by the time you can get there)

[umbral mason]

for sure.

Even with the compass I have no idea how much time the riftbreak has left on it,
so it's very possible that I get there with like 5 minutes left (or that its already gone)

If riftbreaks could also spawn certain bosses more frequently too that'd be cool.

Like the ice one being yetis + Ithra maybe?
I spent the better part of a month trying to find a good Ithra blade when I was T9
(I was still trying to make thief work at the time)
but the best I got was Famed.

Eventually just went with Beo/Summoner to push for T10,
since they get tons of power with little effort.
And the T9 event/exotic offereings are in general lacking.

Plus there were times at earlier tiers where I'd find an ornate weapon for thief,
but beo/summoner would end up doing way more damage anyways even after upgrading to level 10 and running swash 🙃

Which is probably also a huge issue.
Beo especially gets a ton of power from just building a bunch bestiaries in your OT.
Also even the "normal" followers like Lizarr warriors were significantly out-damaging what I could do as thief at the time.

Even now (at AL 39) running BeoA with ASG in raids is better than what I can do with BeoH while also being safer.
Though BeoH is at least faster than summoner/BeoA for me in dungeons/towers/monuments (though that wasn't the case for quite some time in T10)

---

Also, later in the game equipment from bosses (outside of a few things from mammons) aren't super relevant.

Most things worth getting/farming are from raids which do not spawn in the world.

I do think it would be good to take a look some at Towers as a good example,
as that is by far the most compelling thing to chase in the real world right now.

Though they are solo content (so not delivering on party play) they are definitely one of the more attractive things for GPS play right now.

[maiden forum]

I can only speak hypothetically about this as I have 5 towers and two of them are 50F

[umbral mason]

lol

I was gonna conveniently leave that out for right now

[maiden forum]

That's honestly the biggest issue with the GPS functionality in general. Your OT makes exploration redundant. From like T1-2 you're already building shops and blacksmiths, by the end you have your own place to MF/DF and run towers.

It's like the OT had some power creep issue and there was just zero attempt to make world spawns keep up

[umbral mason]

I think I'd be more OK with not having towers in the OT if the number of floors for towers didn't change so much (and start so low) for wild towers

I suspect OT towers are kinda needed mostly due to how wild towers work with their number of floors

[maiden forum]

Maybe if OT towers cost twice as many keys to enter

[umbral mason]

I think if Wild Towers

• were always 50 floors
• you could choose to fight the titan early

but OT towers were the same (but maybe cost more)

wild towers would be more compelling

[maiden forum]

I also had this idea a long while ago that wild dungeons could have a random mat associated with them every week, and every battle won in that dungeon awarded 1 of that mat (with mats being awarded for only one dungeon completion per day, to prevent abuse) - this would make it so even two normal dungeons would be distinct from each other and make players REALLY remember if they found a dungeon that had a mat they were locked on in a specific place

[umbral mason]

If wild towers were always 50 floors I'd have been content to mostly run wild towers

For reference,
I have 4 50-floor towers in my OT

and that was mostly since I was tired of low floor count wild towers

[maiden forum]

This would be compelling to most players I think. I've slowed down since hitting like 2.5m shards because there isn't much point, but engaging some players is better than engaging none

[umbral mason]

If I could

1. Know where "nearby" towers were without aimlessly wandering, and
2. wild towers were always 50 floors

I don't think I would have bothered with the effort to build my own towers up to 50 floors

I had to run a lot of endless to get the orns for those towers

[umbral mason]

that sounds neat

[maiden forum]

I would guess you probably spent about 15 hours of endless for that many orns

[umbral mason]

especially if it could be a special mat (like balorite)

[umbral mason]

pretty sure it was more than that.
especially if you include taking extra effort to find some of the equipment I wouldn't have otherwise been interested in getting.

[maiden forum]

Similarly I like the idea of a random chance of getting faster/cheaper Blacksmith upgrades, or Bazaar items in shops, if the building is wild

Considering I NEVER touch shops maybe it should be something even more enticing like a guaranteed ornate

[umbral mason]

As a side note,
I think if the bestiary scaling was flipped I'd have less issues with BeoA follower stuff.

i.e. max level you can build is T4,
but wild Bestiaries are all T10

though that might make some stuff too hard to find.

[maiden forum]

Scouring bestiaries already kinda blows, maybe increase the appearance rate to compensate? Not a huge deal either way since Monument Guild now gives followers

[umbral mason]

For faster upgrades I'd want to know before I hit the upgrade button,
but I do like the chance for wild blacksmiths to be faster than normal in principal.

---

Really, until they become irrelevant (you get everything you need from them)
Arcanists might be one of the better GPS elements.

They're not that hard to find by just wandering around since they're fairly common
and they have a chance to have some pretty good spells.

And while you can get some of that stuff from the monument guild,
it's much cheaper to get from the arcanist where it only costs gold insetad of proofs

And you can force more rerolls by travelling more,
but monument you just have to wait and pray

[maiden forum]

That just gave me an idea. What if everything you access through a WV is a little more expensive? That way it doesn't become impossible to access stuff through a WV but it's easier if you can do it moving around

[umbral mason]

---

On the note of introducing wild world raids,

I think for them to work they'd need to:

• be instanced per player
  • a player could only clear it once (even if hopping parties), but someone else defeating it would not make it disappear
• not have reduced rewards
• not take incremental damage (would have to defeat it in a single battle)

I think the alt problem would not be relevant here since they couldn't be summoned.
So less issues with economic things.

[maiden forum]

More wild raids is definitely a good thing. Especially Yeti and Phoenix - scrolls and pinions are relevant pretty much no matter what

[rancid sigil]

We used to have wild world raids, they were just very rare to find

[umbral mason]

I think for wild world raids to work (especially if they're rare)
you'd need to be able to look up where they are.

but interesting to know that they used to be in the game

[maiden forum]

I wasn't aware they were discontinued, I thought they were just THAT rare

[umbral mason]

With how rare wild Mammon is I can see why you'd think that lol

[tidal widget]

Regarding wild towers: for me it was most of the time the other way around. I looked at yaco which wild tower will be f50 at what time and collected up to 5x F50 towers (e.g. on my way home) . It was much (!) later that I had my own 5x F50 towers. So I would say: wild towers are OK.

[umbral mason]

That seems a bit more specific to your situation.

That also assumes you're already traveling enough to happen to be able to find that many towers which seems kinda high to me.

In my case, I don't happen to travel that much (and when I do I'm usually driving and thus can't really use my phone).

Perhaps I am too biased towards wanting an excuse to bicycle/walk

[tidal widget]

Or maybe: 10 more max level for wild towers would be good to have an incentive to search for wild towers (even if this mainly targets only a small player base, which has maxed towers).

[umbral mason]

but for me, I could scout around and see some nearby towers,
but it is very common for only one or maybe two to be above 30 floors

[tidal widget]

I sometimes had an outlook reminder for f50 😂

[umbral mason]

and that also means I need to happen to have a wild tower with a good number of floors on whatever day I want to do towers

[umbral mason]

nice

And I don't think in isolation it's a bad thing for the number of floors to fluctuate

but when the alternative is "you can just make one in your OT that is always the number of floors you want" it makes the GPS part much less appealing

If it was flipped where the OT towers fluctuated,
and wild ones were always 50 floors
people might not like that as much
but it would definitely make wild towers more appealing

and thus promote GPS play more

[tidal widget]

Though the investment for f50 is pretty high. And I think it won't happen that the floor count is reduced/removed after people had invested a lot into it.

Moreover, I think people should be able to choose themselves whether they prefer to play mainly at home or GPS based. So any incentive for GPS is welcome, but it should not nerf couch playability.

[umbral mason]

I agree that the investment is substantial

and that taking that away from people would be bad

[tidal widget]

So maybe simply increase max floor count for wild towers only to f60

[maiden forum]

But that's kind of the problem. You aren't traveling to destinations, you're treating your commute as a "reroll" where you just queue up stuff you want as it comes your way. There's no intentionality behind physical travel, you're only queuing things as a consequence of traveling you had already decided to do in the first place.

[tidal widget]

Yes, you are right...

[maiden forum]

A big part of that is view distance is huge and things are very far apart in Orna. So even if you want to walk to something, you have to walk like half a mile for like, one dungeon. Compare that to just increasing view distance, or using someone's Wayvessel, and also the fact that destinations aren't unique (one dungeon is the same as any other dungeon) and there's almost no reason to ever go somewhere deliberately

[umbral mason]

I don't think there's a problem with GPS games enhancing outings that you're already doing.

I see the main issue being that the incentive to also go out just for the purpose of gaming is a bit low.

[maiden forum]

This is why I think having a random mat assigned to a dungeon each week and increased cost of accessing stuff through a Wayvessel changes that calculus at least a little.

[maiden forum]

I don't think it's necessarily bad to rack up settlements or explorations if you're on a roadtrip, but at the same time I wish you could have the experience of "it's a nice day outside, I think I'll go for a walk and get some stuff done in Orna"

[umbral mason]

agreed

[maiden forum]

That's essentially what memory hunts are but that's yet another flawed system - what if you get a couchable? What happens when you clear every arcanist and option and it's another 20 minutes until the next amity is activated?

[umbral mason]

I think the bigger flaw with memory hunts is that the effort to just find out what is available is so high,
and the number of rerolls you need to get 2-3 bonuses is so high,
that the only way to realistically get good amities is to find couchable memory hunts.

[maiden forum]

Yeah. If you want good shit you really HAVE to be aware of what the memory hunters have

[umbral mason]

Even with the current rates,
If I could know exactly what was available without spending DMs,
I think things are fine

even if the good stuff is still pretty rare

but to know what's around you have to spend the DMs to actually get the amity

[maiden forum]

One good buff is doable (like 40% crit) but as soon as you want like... 40% crit AND follower protect, it's completely unreasonable to stumble upon one by accident

Which I suppose makes it good that you get a lot of orns and mats from hunts, but again, that just privileges quantity over novelty and we end up right back at the issue of couchables being more rewarding

[umbral mason]

Also, just from a time perspective

I think the intended memory hunt (i.e. not couchable) is intended to take 5-10 minutes between walking around and doing the mini-games.

but I think I usually need at least 20-30 rolls on a single amity to get the 2nd bonus

which would be 1.6-5 hours the "intended" way
and that is after you find an amity you know you want to roll to find the 2nd bonus on

[umbral mason]

I wonder if world farming/riftbreaks are going to be the best thing to look at for this 🤔

It is easily the least effective thing to do in orna right now,
so I think buffing/changing it would result in the least amount of touching systems people already use a lot

[maiden forum]

Despite being my favorite feature in the game, exploration is less effective

But I agree Riftbreaks have a lot of untapped potential. Maybe have some kind of "riftbreak about to happen" indicator on the map that shows what it's going to be and when an hour ahead of time, so you can get there early, and also award some kind of material in addition to the theme of the riftbreak (rats, snowstorm, whatever)

Maybe monument guild XP as well

[umbral mason]

Really, if there were riftbreaks for specific monster/boss spawns (limited to at most 3 different monsters)
I think they could be really worth exploring.

End-game players biggest obstacle to ALs is materials,
and usually needing something very specific.

Right now (aside from proofs) dungeons are by far the best way to get materials that aren't locked to a specific (kingdom) raid.

This is partly because you have much more control over the tier of monster you find,
and because you can progress through monsters waaaay faster in a dungeon compared to world farming.

This essentially makes world farming a much slower, much more random version of a dungeon.
Since monsters can not only be from any tier, but also only spawn 1 at a time, and if you're doing party play only 1 person gets the loot.

• I know in principal you can share the loot, but the multiplayer is too finicky for that to work consistently.
• and even if it did work consistently it would be even slower.

If some mechanism of world farming (possibly riftbreaks) was basically

• "I know you could try your luck with random spawns in dungeons, but if you walk/bicycle/travel over here you can find a bunch of INSERT_MONSTER_HERE".
  That would give world farming something unique that could be pretty valuable at least.

Better yet if everyone nearby in the party got drops from the monsters that were killed.

I think alt play wouldn't be much better here since it would be difficult to do fast farming with more than 1 device I think.
At most you could try to dual-wield phones, but I think having to look between the two phones to click on more monsters would make that difficult.
Plus if you could get 3+ people in the party it would 100% be faster than alting.

could also help earlier game players interact with the blacksmith more.
In lower tiers my biggest obstacle to upgrading equipment was materials, so I didn't do it much

[maiden forum]

Biggest obstacle to upgrading at low tiers is you progress too fast. In the time it takes to farm an ornate of anything you're probably at the next tier already

[umbral mason]

I would have upgrades stuff more if materials weren't as tight.
even without finding an ornate

Either way, the more I think about it the more I like it.

It would actually give me something to do with lower level friends.

• for context I prefer to play with IRL friends, but I am also incapable of taking my hobbies casually, so I'm a much higher level.

To summarize my proposed world farming changes

• More riftbreak-like things
• Some way to see where they are & how much time they have left from afar
• More targeted on specific monsters/materials
• The whole party gets drops if nearby
  • currently just exp is shared, and only if within 25 levels of each other
• resets either daily or hourly

This would attempt to address the following issues

• World farming is basically a worse (more random & slower) version of dungeons currently
• In parties with high power difference, lower power players can not meaningfully contribute in any content
  • with independent world farming they can still give a tangible benefit, and actually speed up farming
• Dungeons are very alt-friendly and the current best group material/item farm
  • 1 character plays actively at a time, and everyone (including alts) gets the loot
  • With world farming more people actively inputting means more gains (if loot is shared always)
  • An alt-wielder does not have 6 hands
• gives more reasons/excuses to go out and do stuff
• Being localized and reset daily/hourly means you can't plop down your OT for the week and then not move

If I could get all of the above, I'd actually try to drag people around to play Orna.
I did actually do some of that with the halloween riftbreaks since I needed that for pumpkinless scrolls
(and it was by far the best way to get some of the required materials)

I also did that some with one of my friends after I realized the ice riftbreak had yetis

to get them a yeti coat

though having to let them initiate the yeti fights to make sure they got drops was very awkward

[rancid sigil]

Is it cause you left anguish on?

[umbral mason]

Is what because I left anguish on?

[rancid sigil]

they shouldnt have needed to start the fight for drops.

If you have World Anguish (Despair) though, and you start a fight, if they dont have an equal (or higher?) anguish set, they cant Join

[umbral mason]

possibly?

Though we've had issues joining each other's fights since lvl 1
so I wouldn't have thought much of it

It's just very inconsistent

[rancid sigil]

I've not had much issue with world party fights on monsters. Bosses get annoying without the ⚔️ icon being visible

[umbral mason]

and to be clear,
I have not had issues with all players getting drops when everyone joins into the fight

it would just be better for farming speed if just everyone in the party (even if not in the fight) got drops

I'll have to check anguish levels the next time I try to do world stuff with people

[torn egret]

World of Warcraft is what i can brainstorm. Seperate equipment, equipment from PvE will be reduced to a certain power level, and does'nt have the stat that makes you do more against players and take less from players

For me, i feel the same. I joined for the GPS aspect in 2020, but that is pretty much dead the moment they added wayvessels. Even worse, the content that got added over the years makes couch play even more attractive. The GPS content feels like a remnant and never gets build on in a noticable manner, if anything, we only ever get reworks of systems that do anything with GPS. It almost feels like a mistake that is tried to be covered up.

And its not like Orna is anything super special without it - its just there enough so its worth mentioning.

I would love more GPS content in the form of special party activities, wild hunts, riftbreaks that mean something (like spawning some good Fight once they are full), a new version of Otherrealms where you find random portals in the world that lead to an area where you fight a biiiig raid boss together, that has a few billion finine health, etc.

[maiden forum]

I do think there are bits and pieces of good/rewarding GPS gameplay, like memory hunts and conq guild. It's just that memory hunts are optimal when doing couchables and there's no sense of exploration

Finding something that you can't just find a copy of by traveling a bunch in random places would be useful. Something that would make you want to come back to an area more than once so it feels like you found something that MATTERED

Maybe if there was something like a memory hunt but more long form, where you're visiting way more objectives but have several days to do it. Especially if there's some strategy to it. Like instead of going to one objective and then boom, done, each point has some kind of purpose and you can choose what order to do things in to try and accomplish different things?

Like as a totally random example, let's say you're trying to craft a certain number of a certain item, and you can only carry so much at a time, and you have to combine several things, and you can only grab one type of item per location. So you have to reason out where to travel and in what order. If you mess up it's not critical, it just means you have to walk around more and make extra trips

[kindred olive]

I dislike that the only change to Beastfelled this time around was to take away some of the GPS/multiplayer part of it.

The event had a big aspect of searching for beast dens (GPS) or joining up others' wayvessels to run beast dens. Odie's stated goal of the event dungeon is to supplant beast dens for farming.

[kindred olive]

The game feels like it's in a constant struggle between introducing GPS features and players repeatedly asking Odie to make those GPS feature irrelevant (like the constant suggestion to make Origin Towers able to be ran as hardmode)

Or the constant suggestions for an Origin Town monument

[kindred olive]

I would argue that what killed the GPS aspect wasn't wayvessels, it was the Unfelled Concord. I discussed this a bit in my hardmode thread but the Concord giving all dungeons only a 1-2 hour cooldown killed the need to have more than like 1 or maybe 2 good wayvessels. Now if you have one friend with good dungeons in their Origin Town you're just set to hop in there whenever.

[maiden forum]

I would disagree that Concord makes GPS less relevant. Even removing wayvessels wouldn't really change this. Players just hit they can reach from where there are instead of walking to locations, and if they can't reach very much, they just do without. This is because everything you find on the map is "nice to have" rather than critical, and also because view distance can become SO large while buildings are SO far away

Like if you could only see 25 meters but only had to walk 25 meters to find a building, players would be way more likely to go on a short walk and queue up like 5 dungeons

Obviously this has issues like making players go onto private property and GPS not having that kind of precision so I'm not proposing it as an actual solution

[maiden forum]

Okay so this is my WAY BETTER memory hunt idea:

So here you might walk to 15th and Myrtle and get 5 bacon, go to Myrtle and 16th and convert it to 5 breakfast, then deliver it to drop-off point, repeat that between 17th and Elm to combine 3 Hollandaise, you get the idea

What's the optimal path? Players probably won't be 100% optimal but there's a sense of being in some kind of persistent environment instead of "go to X location, you got it, now you never have to think about it again"

Realistically players will probably complain that it's too fetch quest-y which it is, but this idea addresses what I think is one of the biggest issues with Orna's GPS functionality, and it's that locations don't feel like they're defined by anything unique or novel, they're just a place where you can access stuff and if you're lucky that stuff is 10 dungeons and if you're unlucky it's 3 dungeons. You never think "I need X, I need to travel to Y"

[celest anvil]

I made a suggestion a long time ago about adding raid-like bosses you have to draw out/hunt down.

To start, you would have to fight regular mobs until the boss appears. The monsters you need to kill would be thematic to whatever the boss was, so if it's a Titan Slime you would need to kill a bunch of slimes within X amount of time to make it appear, etc.

After taking X% of damage, the boss might decide to Flee from battle. If it does so, you need to locate it by traveling or going to an Inn to Gather Information on its whereabouts for a compass marker to continue the fight until it's defeated.

Only the character that has completed the preliminary mob killings and initiated the boss fight will see this boss on the map (like using a Haunted Calling Bell for Dullahan) so you can't exploit it in any way with an alt.

If the monster families were more defined, then there could also be items added that lure certain kinds to you in order to start testing what monsters are needed to bring out each unique boss.

[brisk sail]

Yeah that sounds super cool

[torn egret]

Didnt knew this thread existed.
Im SUPER glad it does tho. 💟

[toxic adder]

i like the games gps content as it, it does not have to be more. ^^

[celest anvil]

The beautiful thing is that there's no need to engage with it if you don't want to!

But that's also why I suggested the monster hunting thing as new GPS content rather than changing anything existing and causing an upset/forcing players to adjust.

[torn egret]

I would love to see the next few updates entirely focussed on GPS

[maiden forum]

Here's an idea I just came up with. What if all view distance gear was removed, but steps increased your VD for that day, and you could spend proofs of distance to increase it further? Similarly you could make wayvessels cost a PoD to go through

Maybe make PoD payouts more generous to compensate - like one for every 300 steps (and increase the cost of current PoD purchases by 10x to compensate)

Currently VD is so vast players don't really have to walk anywhere and the world is too big for you to walk somewhere meaningful, but if the fact that you're moving matters more than where, I think this keeps the incentive and also keeps from unlucky situations where you'd have to cross private property or whatever to access something in-game

I also think that the weekly refresh of towers and movements serves as a good pity system for players that are just unlucky, but it makes the optional strategy "just wait" instead of "go out and find it" - this proposed change would give you the best of both worlds

For sure it would be abused - someone will put their phone in a rock tumbler - but I think it will be a net positive for most players

[ripe urchin]

I like my vd

[tidal widget]

I would not think about changes that remove any current core features - there will always be many players which are happy with the current features that it will never be changed. This includes VD. For example, I was for 1.5 years in HoA because I thought Orna requires too much GPS play (if I am outside, I am mostly with my kids, which means: no smartphone). I stayed in orna after I was sure that it's also couchable.

Thus, I think we should rather focus on nice added features or rewards which support party play or the gps aspect.

[latent tapir]

ToSing multibox/alt play would be the way forward to incentivizing effort to work with other players. Could also go the pokemon go route of having queues for some content. We have waygates as well.

[maiden forum]

I have mixed feelings about this on a philosophical level. They say given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. Features that are fundamentally broken in the player's favor will make players upset if they're taken away, but if the feature is broken enough, designing around it instead of fixing it turns the game into an ugly patchwork of bandaids that becomes uglier and harder to address the longer the root issue is left unfixed