Time Trial: Labyrinthine Skiffs: Solo vs Group + getting times as a passenger.

[evlover.6270]

I'd like to point out some things about the skiff adventure since I suppose it's something they'll keep adding more of in the future (which would be awesome).

To start with, I really like the concept and this first track pretty much nailed it. Really having a lot of fun while trying to get personal best times. Would be great if these would be added to some EoD zones as well since it's perfectly possible to add both shorter and larger ones in Seitung/Kaineng/Dragon's End, just Echovald wouldn't really have enough space for a decent distance race.

It's also nice how an upgraded Jade bot with things like Skiff Supercharger and Mount Energy Booster can give you a small edge over others, depending on how much you've upgraded them.

However, there are two things that are interfering a bit with the intention of it being a time trial or a course that you have to complete as fast as you can on your own. 

The 1st thing that I'll kinda leave in the middle ground, is that you need 4 passengers to go for top times. Because each emote that's being performed, adds 10 endurance. So you want to have 4 people spamming emotes the entire course, to achieve pretty much permanent Turbo Boost. Is it something that's fun to cruise in open world? Sure. But it seems kinda odd that you "need" 4 people doing nothing but spamming emotes to help you out when you want to try and go for your best personal time. It's not like it's something active, like for example leaning towards the inside into corners at the right moment or anything, it's just spamming keys off cd.

Secondly, everyone present on the skiff can start the adventure, along with the one steering. So 4 people get times, for not actually doing the adventure, but for going along with the skiff owner and spamming emotes non stop. That just totally doesn't seem like the intention of an adventure with personal times and some kind of personal skill. I took a friend along that hasn't even played EoD yet and she now has a top 100 time while she doesn't even have a skiff yet.. That just seems kind of unintended no? :p

I think on the Lab Cliffs adventure, the difference between a top solo time and a top party time is somewhere around 10-12 seconds (don't know the updated top time but a week ago I've seen a 1:28 from a group while from solo I've seen a 1:38, so it's not a minor difference but really a lot.

I wonder how other people think about this for future skiff adventures and what possible solutions there would be. Whether it would be something that locks passengers from being able to start the challenge if they aren't the skiff's owner, or something like passengers being kicked from the skiff entirely upon starting a skiff adventure to prevent perma Turbo Boosting and making it more strategical where to use your boost, or something else?

Cheers

[SinisterSlay.6973]

Everyone getting credit for sitting around doing nothing but emotes seems a good idea to me.

You can already be carried in nearly every jumping puzzle and that's brilliant if your someone that just can't do them yourself for whatever reason.

Now festival events can be carried too. That's awesome.

I wish I could carry someone on my griffon and help them through the 2 races. I suspect a lot of people can't do them and I'd love to help.

Edited August 12, 2022 by SinisterSlay.6973

[evlover.6270]

While I agree about low intensity builds doing way too much dps and hence not giving people much of an incentive to learn more complicated builds for a small extra amount of dps, it's not really on topic. Sure, the game has evolved to some vanilla state where people want to get everything with zero effort (like the whole Soo Won discussion), but there are just some fundamental problems with these skiff races. As I said, you can just gift top times to people while they don't need to do anything. Like, an hour ago I just gave someone who happened to be there and could barely steer a skiff the 20th place on the all time leader board just because it's possible.

If like the top 5 people decide to cruise through it with their guilds, no one else will even be able to get a "ranked" top 1k spot anymore. It just seems really odd design that passengers can set times. That was the major point I wanted to address here, while leaving the perma boosting from emotes in the middle, at least the skiff owner still needs to be able to control the skiff properly in that case. But as long as passengers can set times, all the numbered 1k spots are just out there by the grace of the few fastest people until they decide to fill all those spots up, just because they can. With the griffon races all across the world, I've always had fun trying to go for like top 200 spots as it was an incentive for me to keep pushing. So before adding other skiff adventures, I think it's important to think about whether it's really a good idea to let passengers keep setting times before it's basically the same few people handing out near perfect laps that people won't be able to beat. So plz leave the vanilla game raid/jp topics aside and focus on how we can keep skiff adventures entertaining? 

[Sunchaser.9854]

What you see as a problem, 90% of the players will see as a feature xD I've learned. I guess skiff racing isn't too bad, but with the rates things are going. Getting the times of the "best", for just merely being there and occasionally pressing walk or emote buttons probably actually is a literal feature people want... Its like a house of cards, but 80% of players probably want to get results of the top 2% dps or racers for 10% the effort. Its not like boat racing hurts anyone anyways, but yeah. The absurd gameplay of needing 5 people in a boat to reach speeds is A manufactured problem. They might as well give mechanist a ability to equip other players, 5 at a time voltron style to achieve 700% dps next lmao. When they design their game they can manufacture any problem they want for the solution lmao. Im calling it. Next patch is " mechanist can now equip other players and use them to autoattack for 45k dps a equipped player" lmao and people would rejoice at it.

Might even solve the effort / reward issue for the other 5 classes to be their arms lmao at the point this talent team is making. Making the game more about just sitting there to participate than learn stuff to have the increasing skill process be the rewarding grind.  At this point. It looks like the direction is just like making people attach to a boat or auto attack spec for rewards lmao. and casuals who don't have to do anything but press 0-4 buttons on cd LOVE it. 😂😉😐

[Labjax.2465]

2 hours ago, SinisterSlay.6973 said:

Everyone getting credit for sitting around doing nothing but emotes seems a good idea to me.

You can already be carried in nearly every jumping puzzle and that's brilliant if your someone that just can't do them yourself for whatever reason.

Now festival events can be carried too. That's awesome.

I wish I could carry someone on my griffon and help them through the 2 races. I suspect a lot of people can't do them and I'd love to help.

I agree with this take. Less self-centric stuff and more cooperative stuff is on the right track to me. And it's not like it's a new philosophy being inserted into the game; this game was made to be more cooperative from the beginning, it was just something you can do in a cooperative way "alone together." So cooperative, but not necessarily needing socializing.

I think the components that are more focused on "selfish" rewards are more often a gem store agenda than anything to do with the original game's philosophy.

[Linken.6345]

Nice find OP now I can do it with my 4 alt accounts for easy AP

[Sunchaser.9854]

Soon, we're gonna have a Voltron Spec where both for platforming, movement, skiff racing, griffon racing and raiding, you just merge with a mechanist and each player gets one of their 1-4 buttons to press on cd. So player 2 gets sole responsibility of 2, player 3 gets button 3, player 4 gets button 4, player 1 gets autoattack and uh. Player 5 gets to spam emotes for emotional support that provide stacks of all boons in the game 24/7 for free while also doubling as a the skiff engine during races. YAY. DIVERSITY! 🤣

You kid, but i think this is actually what a good portion of casual players want lmao. XD. I've given up lol. But yeah i mean. Two player griffons? There's limited mount design space. There was literally like a 5-10k Wow gold item to just transform into a two player flying Obsidian cat/dragon.

They did that by having a shapeshifting potion to become the mount, so if you had no rider you just flew yourself. If you could become a two player flying griffon/skyscale with no energy limits that could like, gain height and not have the limits. Players would probably be willing to dump gold on that and buy races on it, and see it as a feature tbh. I've just given up lol. 

So people cheezing multi player skiff racing to spam emotes and people in support just seem like the cherry on top haha. XD. Next there'll be teleport into boat features and voltron arm finders haha. 

[Reaper.3871]

On 8/12/2022 at 9:22 PM, evlover.6270 said:

I think on the Lab Cliffs adventure, the difference between a top solo time and a top party time is somewhere around 10-12 seconds (don't know the updated top time but a week ago I've seen a 1:28 from a group while from solo I've seen a 1:38, so it's not a minor difference but really a lot.

 

[evlover.6270]

On 9/13/2022 at 8:20 PM, Reaper.3871 said:

 

You're out of this world when it comes to racing though, I was talking about mortal times, not deity ones 
I wonder how much you could shave off with a full boat, should still be a few secs 

[Shuzuru.3651]

He also got a full boat video on his channel 😉 (actually, it even came first)

The difference isn't much