Dying and Deco (and some Grumping) 1/19/2018

Somehow logged off in the middle of the grind last night, so Sliggy is only level 31.

Benni: Squall 3 = 0. Lifa: Kai Tok 3 = BOOM, Horned Raptor. 57 pts but still. Aerys: Torton 3 = 0. /sigh  Osho: Choku 2 = 0.

Grind spot had room in it for me, but not for Okoral, so we grouped up and headed to the Western Dant village. There were two other small groups there, but it was workable, so that's where I logged. Sliggy is 32. And then my laptop decided it couldn't see the wifi, and that was a wrap. :( Ah well. I hope Oko can forgive me.

Logged back on in time to flip incubators:  Benni: Mamien 1 = stat boom! Osho: Choku 3 = 0. Aerys: Quenker 1: Stat boom! Good day for starters, clearly.

I messed about a little on Dath, pulled a few hydros from likely looking Rancors. I did get distracted by RL stuff, and died on Dath a bit too often, but meh. I did complete the Prologue quest again and will do more in spare moments. It takes about half an hour to complete a quest, I'm just not sure how many more I have to do. (I've done the foraging and the kill quests twice each, and the advice quest once.)

Actually read the dialogue on the Prologue Seed Jar and recalled something about it turning into a plant of some kind, so I did the thing and ta-da, two new schematics for Osho! I will buy more Jars when I am out shopping, which is what I plan to do for the rest of the night.

That gave me a momentary inspiration, so I did a squinch of deco, too, and it looks good. Thinking of turning the back room of the hospital into Aerys' chambers, as she currently doesn't have a house, per se. It's a thought. I miss Hoggle, but I don't think he's coming back in any long-term way, and the main room loaded with incubators looks better. Aerys needs a bed. And an office.

Had a chat this morning with a member of the dev team about hydro values and slow spawns. There is a grumpy old curmudgeon in me that says, just figure it out and do it, folks, make it work, but there is also a growing awareness of the unevenness of the playing field: I came back into the game to a business and a partner and creds: I was playing at close to peak within a month. Not everyone has my advantages. (I will be writing up a more in-depth post on the concept of MMO Privilege at a later date, but suffice to say, the conversation made me very aware of it.) They were considering a response to a player request for speeding up the Ancient Krayt spawns, trying to find ways to please the outspoken players, but you can't please all the people all the time, and of course the people who are fine with things aren't talking about how they are fine.

So I tried to answer the questions with some analysis and from the basis of experience. I wouldn't mind seeing the drop rates on those gold elites higher: if something that takes you 90 seconds to kill only drops a 4 pt hydro, it's kinda hard to maintain a stock of raws. But a gold elite is a gold elite and they should all drop that same range, so hydro hunters need not feel confined to just that valley, even though they seem to. It's a valid question to ask if they even would, but time will tell, if they announce the change.

Speaking of missing Hoggle, and grumbling a bit more, apparently the city's Mayor caught an earful from a displeased former Mayor of a city in the area. Labyrinth Labs is very near to the Dantari grind village with the best returns, and her city had been there first, but when I came to the game, she had been gone for a few months, many of her citizens were gone as well, and the city was losing rank quickly. Hoggle won the election, and after talking it over with several key members of the community, opted to kill that city and rebuild nearby.

So Labyrinth Labs was born, and very quickly achieved rank 5, and served the same purpose as her city had, except it was not faction or guild-affiliated, which I agree makes it more in keeping with the original feel of the Beast Master community as science-based and non-factional: it was more welcoming. In addition, we would not ahve to wait for a city packup to move houses around and fit in the citizens to keep it active and ranked up.

Any who, while I was away from the game for the last half of 2017, she came back, (about a year after she left), and is apparently upset at the new Mayor (not even Hoggle) for "stealing" "her" city. I did my best to reassure Okoral that this is not his fight: he's doing a great job as Mayor and he shouldn't have to mollify any player for things that happened a year go and that he was not even involved in. Drama Gualama, anyone? The fact of the matter is Labyrinth isn't going anywhere, and she has already re-established her city near enough to still reap the benefits of proximity to the grind spot, in what I think is a prettier spot, too.

Sometimes, we just need to get over things and let those negative emotions go, or they could ruin our enjoyment of our chosen hobby. It's a hard lesson, but an important one.