I fully agree with the sentiment here. I do understand that FC aims to limit the power creep, bt after all the huge investments to reach endgame it feels frustrating that we are supposed to use the same grinds as mid-game. And concerning the diversity of the gameplay: before the ‘balance’ i could (and did) freely switch between parabolean wars, building for the bone market, painting or hunting in hurlers if I needed to grind for echos/scrip, now after the ‘balance’ I wont do any of those grind unless I need a specific item :(
[quote=Frenzgyn][quote=Tsar Koschei]
Clearly the thing to do as a player is to consider each good new grind a temporary thing and milk it for all it’s worth before it gets snatched away.[/quote]
You’re right, but it’s a bit frustrating. I honestly would have not minded a light tuning down of best grinds… but some of them were rendered utterly useless as grinds.
Too drastic, in a manner or the other.
Last time I felt emotions of this kind were years ago when I played MMORPG (WoW) and they nerfed a class or another with every update, but - holy cow! - that was an online PvE/PvP game![/quote]
I have to say, I haven’t usually been bothered by even pretty significant nerfings and don’t mind too much about getting the absolute best EPA, but this one has me feeling a little disgruntled. Endgame players have had a number of very expensive and punishing new storylines in a row, and a lot of the tangible rewards for all that expense (and in the case of Discordance, stat cost, too) have been a bit stingy or have mostly provided reward in items that remain unclear what value they will have. Even though I have found these latest big stories very rewarding in their own rights - the most important thing - I was already finding myself feeling a little hard-done-by from the ratio of expense to reward lately.
So, given that, it feels pretty brutal to have the rewards for late-game content not just reduced significantly, which I’d consider fair, but slashed to the point of being no better than mid-game grinds. I’m not generally too particular about making sure I’m doing the most efficient grinds, but stuff like painting with moonlight now requiring a resource cost, makes me feel like there’s a chance it might be a waste of resources and actions rather than an improvement, so either I’d have to research and hope it’s better than it looks, or I’m not going to touch it, and will just hoard moonlight while feeling vaguely annoyed that it’s piling up to no purpose. I imagine a lot of casual grinders will do the same.
I’d been really loving the sheer variety of decent EPA options, and it made me use more of the game; maybe I’ll hang out at Helicon House for a while, then go do a war or two, dip into the Mammoth ranching for a bit, while I’m at the Bone Market why not make something else, putter around in the lab, wander over to Moulin for an expedition or two, oh, better pick up some supplies at Jericho Locks. It felt like it was clear that late-game activities were generally acceptably profitable, enough so that I could spend time on even the less profitable ones for the fun of it without feeling like it’s adding a decade to my cider grind. And having them tend to be clearly more profitable than mid-game options made it feel like a reward for my expenditures and efforts on the railroad/lab/parabola, it felt like an achievement that improved my station in life. But with such an intense nerfing, now it seems like a lot of those things might be wasting my actions a little too much to feel good about, leaving a vague disgruntlement that I "wasted" my Echoes on opening up those options to begin with (although obviously it wasn’t truly a waste because the stories themselves were the real reward. I don’t mean to dismiss the value of the - quite wonderful - stories) edited by enail on 6/18/2021
…this is a horrifying development to wake up to in the wee hours of the morning, slightly hungover. To endgame grinders everywhere: If it was my thread that brought the Parabolan War to the eyes of FB’s nerfbat, I sincerely apologise and vow to simply never post about grinds here.
And good god, am I glad I had the paranoia to finish getting 1-2 of each 312.5 item before the nerf hit when I’d been previously selling them as part of my goatherd fund. Mostly out of anticipation for what Hell might want when we finally get in there.
I mean, I can understand wanting to remove the no-brainer status of morale-based campaigning and make the other warfare options relatively more attractive. But the thing to do here should have been to SLIGHTLY nerf morale, and increase the value of the other options to bring them up to the new baseline.
Instead the devs took the easy way and just nerfed the most profitable option to the point of making it useless. Naturally the end result is that rather than being left with attractive Parabolan wars that can be effectively pursued in a number of ways, there’s basically no longer any reason to go out on campaign again if you can help it.
And sadly this is more or less the approach to balancing that we’ve been seeing with all the new content. Whether there’s any reason to go back to any of it doesn’t matter as long as they cut off any path to "excessive" profit players may have found. edited by Tsar Koschei on 6/18/2021
[quote=enail]I’d been really loving the sheer variety of decent EPA options, and it made me use more of the game; maybe I’ll hang out at Helicon House for a while, then go do a war or two, dip into the Mammoth ranching for a bit, while I’m at the Bone Market why not make something else, putter around in the lab, wander over to Moulin for an expedition or two, oh, better pick up some supplies at Jericho Locks. It felt like it was clear that late-game activities were generally acceptably profitable, enough so that I could spend time on even the less profitable ones for the fun of it without feeling like it’s adding a decade to my cider grind. And having them tend to be clearly more profitable than mid-game options made it feel like a reward for my expenditures and efforts on the railroad/lab/parabola, it felt like an achievement that improved my station in life. edited by enail on 6/18/2021[/quote]
This is exactly how I feel about it. I also really liked that if I was busy I could run through a simple lab grind, or if I had more time I could choose something more elaborate.
I have an alt that I created to play through Nemesis. She’s literally just begun to unlock the Railway, and is building up her Parabolan base Camp. I thought I’d be able to run through knifegate using a few different late-game grinds. Now I’ll just finish working on knifegate in Doubt Street. TBH, I’m a little annoyed that I’ve wasted the resources I already have.
Totally agree. And I will just mention the other problem with the non-morale options is that the skill checks are very high and ravages are so punishing. I am all for forcing you to use the other options to wage war, and in theory it makes for a nice resource sink for some of the stuff you pick up like well-placed pawns and solacefruit. But in practice because of the skill checks and ravages on failure, its all worthless.
Its all just baffling to me. Parabolan War clearly took a lot of effort and was a a point of pride, but now its just punishing to play it…so why would you?
[quote=Marcusi]Its all just baffling to me. Parabolan War clearly took a lot of effort and was a a point of pride, but now its just punishing to play it…so why would you?[/quote]I’m wondering the same thing. I went through each campaign once or twice and was already kind of tired of it, simply due to the actions required. Now that it’s been nerfed, I really have no incentive whatsoever to play through them again. Seems weird for something they put so much work and effort into.
Frankly, I’m even more concerned by further nerfs to Lab grinds. The reason for my disappointment is that the recent changes have post-factum significantly decreased the value of hard-earned (A Dream of Truth-Standing, eh?) or Fate-Locked (top-tier Whitsun companions) items, by decimating the value of AoRTs and KT, among other things. I believe, such game-design decisions are usually considered to be somewhat lacking.
That being said, I see that most other complaints are about the same basic fault — the effort vs reward scheme not working in a way that could be seen as just or fair.
[quote=Tsar Koschei]So is there any even somewhat distinctly effective grind left or is it more or less irrelevant what you do for echoes now in the 3+ range?[/quote]Moulin should work out to be about 4.5 EPA between expeditions and monographs, though you’ll need 12 Mithridacy for maximum efficiency.
Mammoth Ranching is also not dead yet - new strategies are being worked out, and it’ll probably end up >5 EPA still (but only as a long-term thing - taking advantage of the weekly bone market shifts will be essential). edited by 34Witches on 6/19/2021
Moulin… I never looked very deeply into it since it seemed pretty complicated and messy and there were more attractive and straightforward grinds available, what’s the best way to go about it?
Also, have they ruined the drowning pool at Hurlers yet? That one seemed like a pretty decent spot earlier.
[quote=Tsar Koschei]Moulin… I never looked very deeply into it since it seemed pretty complicated and messy and there were more attractive and straightforward grinds available, what’s the best way to go about it?
Also, have they ruined the drowning pool at Hurlers yet? That one seemed like a pretty decent spot earlier.[/quote]
It depends on which fate locked things you have. You need 10 KT (+Whitsun pet) and 10 Shapeling Arts in one outfit. And Tabitha or Silk-Clad. For optimal grind.
Okay, so Moulin still kinda sounds like more trouble than it’s worth compared to newspapers.
[quote=Amalgamate]They decreased the hurlers pool a little. Don’t know how good it is now, they lowered the final breath cap to 22, they said.[/quote]In other words they slashed it by roughly a third? Sounds about right. So to sum things up, as near as I can tell they hit all the major areas and more or less everything sucks now.
It would seem that the War got a few more buffs after the balance patch (grumble grumble Discord). Mostly in the form that failures are mildly. It’s taken a while to find the details, as Wars take even longer when you’re trying to fail, but my impression of the result is that many more options are worth clicking on. Airs options are universally really good, and fast-progress options are sometimes good depending on what items they cost. Stats and generals also matter.
[quote=PSGarak]It would seem that the War got a few more buffs after the balance patch (grumble grumble Discord). Mostly in the form that failures are mildly. It’s taken a while to find the details, as Wars take even longer when you’re trying to fail, but my impression of the result is that many more options are worth clicking on. Airs options are universally really good, and fast-progress options are sometimes good depending on what items they cost. Stats and generals also matter.[/quote]Yeah - Bruno mentioned on Discord that a bunch of branches got their failure penalties reduced (either to consume less items or give less ravages).
