Planet Cyrene June 13th, 2023 VU Notes

[Kris | Cyrene]

New Additions:

• New areas-

– The Skull Birds have dug into their nesting grounds and vitriol they manifest has effected the land
– Scientists at A.R.C. HQ have done some terraforming and created a habitat for Byg Byrds on Cyrene
– In a futile attempt to reign in the wandering of the ROOT, the Imperium have erected various cages and fences at the various locations
– Additional warps have been added to A.R.C. HQ between floors 1, 2 and 3 to get around easier

- A.R.C. Healers outside of Rookie Teleporter

-- Zorra has deployed some very short range healers at various locations outside of the Rookie zone​

- Refurbished H.E.A.R.T. Fap rank VIII Mission

– For anyone who has completed the Refurbished H.E.A.R.T. Rank VII upgrade, the Rank VIII upgrade is available from Kandake at 0x101 Supply Depot.​

- Refurbished H.E.A.R.T. Utility Swap

– If you wish to change from a Speedy to Vigorous H.E.A.R.T. you can speak to Ananias at 0x101 Supply Depot​

- Mercenary's Favor

– For those with death in their hearts, those who are working towards or have completed A Collection is Required - CoH Part 7 mission can come see Miss Regan Maul near the Duster Hazing Station for a new mission.​

- The Zyn’viathan - Epic Pet Mission

– This mission from Zyn’Dingo on the outskirts of 0x101 Supply Depot is an effort to pull from all professions and give all players a way to contribute towards earning or helping other players earn this pet.
– All missions come from Zyn’Dingo, have no prerequisites (outside of acquiring an Unlimited blueprint from Zyn Psyche Master Aten'ten) , and give a tradeable reward that is needed from all their missions to be combined to enter the fabled Genesis Beach and speak to a Primordial Being.​

- Molten Textures

– Fashion forward colonists can travel to Zyn’Tukano and visit Hoban Statsk who needs some help with materials but has high level texture blueprints available​

• A.R.C. Offensive additions:

– Team Instance
– Bosses
– Achievements
– Pristines have been replaced with Droplets
– Droplets: Refine 5 into 1 Pristine, these will only drop from A.R.C. Offensive Event, (normal pristines will continue to drop as they already do outside of the instance)
— Paneleon Droplet
— Tide Claw Droplet
— Stalkerbot Droplet
— Acidic Jelly Droplet
— Wiles Droplet
— Golem Droplet
— Byrd Droplet​

Changes:
- Skull Birds have had their biome adjusted
- Separated Scout Bot 100 and 200 spawns so they each have their own
- Guardian Epis Wasp spawns have been adjusted slightly
- Stairs on the smaller terminals have been replaced
- Big Byrds have been moved away from Carnaps Landing to visually show they are not apart of the Land Area
- Red ROOT has been moved away from Carnaps Landing to visually show they are not apart of the Land Area
- Red and Blue ROOT have been properly caged in
- Vigorous H.E.A.R.T. fap has been adjusted to now buff the target instead of auto default onto the player

Bug Fixes:
- Adjusted Guardian Empis Wasp so they will no longer spawn beneath the nest
- Various text fixes:
– Roy Vulker’s Helmet
– Maze Hammer
– Level II Finder Amplifier ‘Athena’ (L)
– S.I. P.I.G.V. (L)
– A.R.C. Lancer
– Ozpyn BRS - P1 (L)
– Ozpyn LPX - P4 (L)
– Ozpyn BPX - P2 (L)
– Ozpyn BPX - P3 (L)
– Ozpyn BPX - P1 (L)
– The Cypher - COH part 3
– The Cypher - COH part 4
– HUB says
– To hear the tail…The Cypher - COH Part 5
– B.E. A.R.C. Pilot Helmet Blueprint (L)
– B.E. Zekkonian Short Sword Blueprint (L)
– Zorra
- L2 Pilot Target Dummy should no longer spawn
- Imperium Ranger Tier 1 should only spawn in its designated location
- Getting Slimed WP should now send you to the correct location
- The following missions should now be completable:
– Guy’s Mission
– Help the Cap’n

Known Issues
- Support weapons are not currently working properly, this is a platform issue
- All Cyrene vehicles (P.I.G.V., Spear, Lancer, Dragonfly) have default sounds, this will be addressed in a future patch
- A supplementary mission for Rank 5 of Brown Beetles to give proper mission rewards is not working correctly and will be fixed in a future VU
- Some Quality Ratings information in the blueprint book: A.R.C. is incorrect

Please give RNGesus some time to ensure all items reach their intended recipients and MindArk time to make sure that all missions are activated.

 

[Shawna | Cyrene]

I've opened up the thread so we can talk about the VU updates, but please keep the bugs in the designated post here, so we can more easily keep track of them and get them fixed.

 

[jetsina]

Oh, ah, thanks. It has taken me until today to see this thread is now opened up.
As balancing and communication have been two of my larger topic areas over the years, I'd like to address these here as well.
Communication has recently been some of the best I've seen in all the years, but often something is not spread well across the communication channels.
Good in this respect is that a discord explanation of how the healing mission works was copied to the forum too and that the bug thread is now updated at the top with official info on statuses. There is a fair amount of info for the patch there...
Negative is almost always balancing stuff on new introductions, or wave characteristics of the drops etc. Part of that is probably because of the required interaction between the various teams, or possibly sloppy implementations - but how to deal with this? Maybe by being as clear and communicative as humanly possible on requirements, for example the need to tame 2500 of x to complete a mission part and not just to "fill the bar". Having to gather loot mats from rarish and unknown drop rates is a further poor criteria as it becomes impossible to estimate costs due to 'dynamics' and fluctuating mus, for example. I think devs need to be very clear to MA about hard-wiring drop rates in some way (which is already partially being done), or very clearly setting any randomness to be uncapped and fixed. Saying devs will have to wait and see the data before making adjustments is to me a recipe much like on other planets, where requirements are consistantly lowered vu after vu.

With the epic pet it is currently somewhat academic whether to do elements of it or not, even though people can do parts of the mission simply to sell the tokens to someone wanting all ten, which I like a lot. This is because the pet is unknown - how epic is epic going to be in terms of functionality benefits? What sort of value are we looking at compared to other pets available right now? Will there ever be a window of value depending on when the first become available and potentially how long for reaching unlock level requirements?

On the bright side, I suppose fortune favours the brave, as they say, and those who are prepared to grind. However, I don't think players on Cyrene have ever been asked to learn to walk before being asked to run at world-record pace. Oh, sorry, the tempo dailies are actually exactly what new players need, moving up to 'meet the x' dailies etc, so maybe the middle and high ground is poor? Dunno... enough for now, thanks for letting me express my thoughts.

 

[Kris | Cyrene]

Hey jetsina,

Oh, ah, thanks. It has taken me until today to see this thread is now opened up.

Yes, Shawna asked if we can starting having these threads open for discussion so from now on that will be the way forward.

As balancing and communication have been two of my larger topic areas over the years, I'd like to address these here as well.
Communication has recently been some of the best I've seen in all the years, but often something is not spread well across the communication channels.
Good in this respect is that a discord explanation of how the healing mission works was copied to the forum too and that the bug thread is now updated at the top with official info on statuses. There is a fair amount of info for the patch there...

Yes, we try and make sure that the information is spread out across the 3 main channels: Forum / Discord / In Game

However, some things do slip through the cracks. In this particular case, we've integrated the information into the mission so *hopefully* it's more clear.

Negative is almost always balancing stuff on new introductions, or wave characteristics of the drops etc. Part of that is probably because of the required interaction between the various teams, or possibly sloppy implementations - but how to deal with this?

I'm a bit confused by this? You mean that there is an inherent negative connotation in regards to how items are balanced in general? Or due to the complexity of these interconnected systems that the waters can get muddy very quickly?

For The Zyn'viathan mission chain, we tried to emulate the similarities of Mission Galactica in terms of straightforwardness and attempted simplicity. Although I'll be the first to admit that the Healing Heart mission could have been more clear in it's wording. Which I believe should be more clear after the Mini Patch.

Maybe by being as clear and communicative as humanly possible on requirements, for example the need to tame 2500 of x to complete a mission part and not just to "fill the bar". Having to gather loot mats from rarish and unknown drop rates is a further poor criteria as it becomes impossible to estimate costs due to 'dynamics' and fluctuating mus, for example. I think devs need to be very clear to MA about hard-wiring drop rates in some way (which is already partially being done),

On the progress bar, there are a couple of missions in The Zyn'viathan that make it difficult to display the progress numerically. So for the sake of consistency all the missions had progress bars and not a mix or both in some cases.

If players don't like progress bars and would prefer to have numerical counters then it's something we can make sure to keep in the future where possible.

As far as drop rates, we've done our best to try and avoid it for most of the mission of the Zyn'viathan, but I assume you're talking about the Gear Up: New Fap - Stage 11. This was something that we made very clear at the inception of this mission that we'd need to make sure the item drop from Skull Birds would be available to players attempting to complete this mission.

or very clearly setting any randomness to be uncapped and fixed. Saying devs will have to wait and see the data before making adjustments is to me a recipe much like on other planets, where requirements are consistantly lowered vu after vu.

Randomness is part of games, and it can't be fully uncapped. I'm speaking more broadly than Entropia, but all games have an element of randomness to them.

The formulas and algorithms used in Entropia are complex, and at times we can't see the whole picture. So part of what we do for our planet and our players is to gather data and present it in a way that shows what it is versus what we think it should be allowing us to affect real change in real time.

It's been getting better over the years where we have been able to get ahead of it but it is a living system and we have to work with it.

With the epic pet it is currently somewhat academic whether to do elements of it or not, even though people can do parts of the mission simply to sell the tokens to someone wanting all ten, which I like a lot.

Yes, we're really happy with how this chain came out in terms of rewards and felt very inline with Entropia on the whole.

Like with all Epic missions on Cyrene, these are meant to be long term goals, and this one is no exception, with the added caveat that players from different disciplines can participate in part of it and not need to do all of it.

This is because the pet is unknown - how epic is epic going to be in terms of functionality benefits? What sort of value are we looking at compared to other pets available right now? Will there ever be a window of value depending on when the first become available and potentially how long for reaching unlock level requirements?

I don't think I can show the pet stats at this point in time, but what I will say is that:
There is no other pet like it with these buffs in Entropia Universe currently.

As far as a "window of value" I think this pet will follow the standard skill breakdown as most other pets in game, at least to my limited knowledge.

On the bright side, I suppose fortune favours the brave, as they say, and those who are prepared to grind. However, I don't think players on Cyrene have ever been asked to learn to walk before being asked to run at world-record pace.

I don't know if I agree with this sentiment, Cyrene attracts players of all levels and we do our best to try and make sure that content can be completed by as many players as possible.

Oh, sorry, the tempo dailies are actually exactly what new players need, moving up to 'meet the x' dailies etc, so maybe the middle and high ground is poor? Dunno... enough for now, thanks for letting me express my thoughts.

Yeah, this is more of the sentiment I would concur, this is the gap that needs to be filled better by Cyrene and something we're working towards.

I hope that this has been useful / helpful / informative and answered some of the questions and sentiments expressed. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

Cheers,
Kris

 

[jetsina]

Thanks for the detailed response. I can explain more, yes.

I'm a bit confused by this? You mean that there is an inherent negative connotation in regards to how items are balanced in general? Or due to the complexity of these interconnected systems that the waters can get muddy very quickly?

In many many introductions across the pps, some critical or even non-critical material has been not only almost impossible to gather oneself, but also virtually zero on the AH, including historically. After a time, something is changed in a vu to make the mat maybe twice as common, which still turns out to be a complete turn-off. Maybe it is then changed again (and we are now many months down the road), with apparently still no idea of what a sensible balancing point might be.
Alternatively, a material is poorly available, but the mu due to something already in game, maybe a bp, makes the maths for using it in the new additional content way off as well. I think it is up to players to decide for themselves somewhat, so I don't want to force a particular opinion here, just that I end up saying no to it for possibly years.
(edit: Shawna helpfully mentioned you looked closely at how many badges to require for the new molten textures mission. The amount chosen (50) may become pretty fair as something people sometimes do with badges, once pressure on the epic hand-ins decreases, so alright on that, for example. I had said I thought it was too high for a daily, but I gather it may have been planned as a weekly...)

As far as drop rates, we've done our best to try and avoid it for most of the mission of the Zyn'viathan, but I assume you're talking about the Gear Up: New Fap - Stage 11. This was something that we made very clear at the inception of this mission that we'd need to make sure the item drop from Skull Birds would be available to players attempting to complete this mission.

What makes me suspicious of the "formulas and algorithms used in Entopia" (complex) is that I looted a mostly intact skullwhatsit (if that is what you mean) on my very first kill - then nothing. What I mean about randomness is that simple randomness would be ok, but not additionally that "at times, percentage unknown", a player actually has zero chance of looting what he/she wants, for whatever reason...
I think it's why a pp resorted to daily/weekly missions that gave a choice of mats as a reward - to guarantee a certain tt of the desired material once a mission was completed. This is healthier, given the climate, imho.

It's been getting better over the years where we have been able to get ahead of it but it is a living system and we have to work with it.

Well, ok.

It is also tradition in EU to have some things in oversupply (low mu) and others in undersupply (high mu). I assume the ten missions, because the tokens will be tradeable, will also achieve some kind of mu spread, due to how often people finish them (and maybe when there is a flood of finishers too at some point?) This is fine, I guess. Players can indeed decide for themselves what to go for.
Finally, yes I would personally like to see something more numerical to show progresses, by the way, especially if testing for an hour still requires a player to try and count red pixels. ;p
Thanks!!!

 

[Rusty Venture]

I am glad these threads are open for discussion now! Just took 11 years

This update is great, this mission chain is awesome, I am having a lot of fun working towards the goals that are doable by lower level gameplay, even if it's kinda huge levels of spend needed.

Could you let us know estimates for the missions where we need to hunt? for example, do we need to spend 10000 ped? do we need to get 150000 points (I know different mobs are diff amounts, or diff spends, so just give a rough guess like 5 small turrelion, etc)

 

[Rusty Venture]

I am glad these threads are open for discussion now! Just took 11 years

This update is great, this mission chain is awesome, I am having a lot of fun working towards the goals that are doable by lower level gameplay, even if it's kinda huge levels of spend needed.

Could you let us know estimates for the missions where we need to hunt? for example, do we need to spend 10000 ped? do we need to get 150000 points (I know different mobs are diff amounts, or diff spends, so just give a rough guess like 5 small turrelion, etc)


You guys REALLY need to fix the forum though!!! I took me like 12 hours of clicking post reply here and there throughout the to post this, not joking.

 

[HcTz]

Hello @Kris | Cyrene ,

I have a suggestion which I believe everyone will agree on it.

For this new pet mission specifically, it's a really long grind, and it would be really nice if we could see numbers to kill/loot instead of just progress bar, as it's extremely frustrating to not know exact amount of creatures that needs to be killed & claims to be found. At least % would be nice, so we would know how much the progress has moved, instead of taping stuff on the monitor where progress bar is displayed

Exploit/Bug report

There were people who managed to access the new diamond blueprint first day. That is phisically impossible amounts of sweat required to do the mission, which requires 5k+10k+20k+40k+80k sweat actually sweated from the creature.
So instead of sweating, I found out they are using exploit to craft blueprints that uses sweat. where if it hits near success, it returns some sweat, which counts towards the mission. This is acceptable among the community and I can notice that everyone is doing it, instead of doing what mission requires you to do.

Thank you

 

[Kris | Cyrene]

Hey guys,

Let me try to answer these as I can:

Thanks for the detailed response.

You're welcome!

I can explain more, yes.
In many many introductions across the pps, some critical or even non-critical material has been not only almost impossible to gather oneself, but also virtually zero on the AH, including historically. After a time, something is changed in a vu to make the mat maybe twice as common, which still turns out to be a complete turn-off. Maybe it is then changed again (and we are now many months down the road), with apparently still no idea of what a sensible balancing point might be.
Alternatively, a material is poorly available, but the mu due to something already in game, maybe a bp, makes the maths for using it in the new additional content way off as well.

Alright, so basically: the price fluctuations are something that many players feel is a point of contention for new content, which I can for sure empathize with. There are some mitigations that we try and do prior to new content being released but due to the amount of variables it can be difficult.

There's a handful of reasons I believe that this happens and I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about any of them =P

For the most part I think it comes to down compromise, expectation, and circumstance on the side of both MA/PP and players.

I think it is up to players to decide for themselves somewhat, so I don't want to force a particular opinion here, just that I end up saying no to it for possibly years.
(edit: Shawna helpfully mentioned you looked closely at how many badges to require for the new molten textures mission. The amount chosen (50) may become pretty fair as something people sometimes do with badges, once pressure on the epic hand-ins decreases, so alright on that, for example. I had said I thought it was too high for a daily, but I gather it may have been planned as a weekly...)

Of course, it's 100% up to players if / when they want to participate, one of the ways on Cyrene that we've been and will continue to do is to provide compound or stacking value.

AKA increased benefits for activates you're already doing on Cyrene which I think help to mitigate some of the pain points you mentioned to players.

What makes me suspicious of the "formulas and algorithms used in Entopia" (complex) is that I looted a mostly intact skullwhatsit (if that is what you mean) on my very first kill - then nothing. What I mean about randomness is that simple randomness would be ok, but not additionally that "at times, percentage unknown", a player actually has zero chance of looting what he/she wants, for whatever reason...

I wasn't pinpointing one particular item but drops as a whole.

We (Planet Cyrene) can't see the individual player experience when it comes to loot drops intrinsically, we have to look at the larger picture and extrapolate.

It can be hard to see the randomness in a pool of players, which is a big part of why we'll go to bat for players on Cyrene who tell us that they are having trouble getting X item and we can go through the data and see what is happening and if it is a problem.

It can be that we're happy with how X item is dropping, but then over time that rate changes and players can feel it in the loot and we can take investigative action.

I think it's why a pp resorted to daily/weekly missions that gave a choice of mats as a reward - to guarantee a certain tt of the desired material once a mission was completed. This is healthier, given the climate, imho.

This is certainly interesting idea for the future and give players more agency, it's something that we wanted to do in the past but for whatever reason it wasn't implemented.

However, if the system is designed this way from the ground up it could be more feasible.

It is also tradition in EU to have some things in oversupply (low mu) and others in undersupply (high mu). I assume the ten missions, because the tokens will be tradeable, will also achieve some kind of mu spread, due to how often people finish them (and maybe when there is a flood of finishers too at some point?) This is fine, I guess. Players can indeed decide for themselves what to go for.

Ideally yes, this is the plan of it, really letting players who feel confident to complete the parts of the mission they can do in the most economic way leverage that for players who could not or do not at the same level.

Finally, yes I would personally like to see something more numerical to show progresses, by the way, especially if testing for an hour still requires a player to try and count red pixels. ;p

&

Could you let us know estimates for the missions where we need to hunt? for example, do we need to spend 10000 ped? do we need to get 150000 points (I know different mobs are diff amounts, or diff spends, so just give a rough guess like 5 small turrelion, etc)

&

I have a suggestion which I believe everyone will agree on it.

For this new pet mission specifically, it's a really long grind, and it would be really nice if we could see numbers to kill/loot instead of just progress bar, as it's extremely frustrating to not know exact amount of creatures that needs to be killed & claims to be found. At least % would be nice, so we would know how much the progress has moved, instead of taping stuff on the monitor where progress bar is displayed

I put all these together because I feel like they are all a uniform suggestion: please add in a numerical counter and not just a progress bar to the Zyn'viathan missions.

As I mentioned above to jetsina:

On the progress bar, there are a couple of missions in The Zyn'viathan that make it difficult to display the progress numerically. So for the sake of consistency all the missions had progress bars and not a mix or both in some cases.

If players don't like progress bars and would prefer to have numerical counters then it's something we can make sure to keep in the future where possible.

So it's something that we'll work to get updated as soon as we can.

There were people who managed to access the new diamond blueprint first day. That is phisically impossible amounts of sweat required to do the mission, which requires 5k+10k+20k+40k+80k sweat actually sweated from the creature.
So instead of sweating, I found out they are using exploit to craft blueprints that uses sweat. where if it hits near success, it returns some sweat, which counts towards the mission. This is acceptable among the community and I can notice that everyone is doing it, instead of doing what mission requires you to do.

So there's some misinformation here that I want to clear up.

• This is not a new mission it was introduced in the May 31st 2022 VU.
• We found out quite late in the development cycle that crafting items that uses sweat (technically received as loot) would work for this counter which is why the amount of sweat that is turned in for this mission is double what is required by the mission to be collected.
• This is not a problem unique to Cyrene, and while I feel it would be a grey area if it is considered an exploit or not it's for sure a more expensive way to move the counter. It wasn't intended to be completed this way but this was the best workaround we could find due to the system limitations.

That being said, of course we're glad to have you bring this to our attention.
IIRC Shawna has mentioned or posted about this in another thread but I'm having a hard time locating it.

Thanks for all the feedback and comments, it goes a long way to improving Cyrene and letting me express the ideas and design philosophy.

Cheers,
Kris

 

[jetsina]

Thanks again!

AKA increased benefits for activates you're already doing on Cyrene which I think help to mitigate some of the pain points you mentioned to players.

Yes, I'd noticed and it does help to mitigate some of the pain points. However, if it only reduces a very clear 'no' to 'still no I'm afraid', then you may not have won over any people at all, depending on their opinions about 'balance'.
I realise that I personally may never be won over, ...[edit2]

Sometimes even something seemingly as small as a 'collect fruit/stones/dung' repeatable makes me feel psychologically 'moved'.

I DO like the direction, though, and the communication for SURE here. That is valuable to the psyche too!!!

edit: something I don't think any other planet has is a dedicated mob counter or turnover counter mission. I like to be able to hunt exact numbers of mobs for comparison, or set turnovers, which is possible with the 'any mob' missions or as part of tracking codex missions carefully. But the idea is to complete these/move higher...
Can you please consider some repeatable missions where the reward is not really the aim, but the following of progress or peds spent? Thank you

edit2: wanted to add a more questioning point than 'consequences'. So, my balance estimate is that the pet should be worth something like at least 2-3k peds without any levelling. Most of the zyn missions for it have been discovered, i.e. done at least once. How do people feel about it so far?