Season One and Race feedback

Season One is in its last week. We have enjoyed watching the events greatly. I'm looking forward to seeing the streams, and tracking the results, as the season comes to a close.

We know there is a lot we want to do to make Season Two better, and we are keen to get your feedback.

Please post it here.

Season Two will not be starting immediately after Season One, which will allow us to run some longer events, and some testing and fun events. We also know many players have put a lot of time and effort into the Season, are are likely to need a rest!

A couple of things we know we want to do:

- tailor the rewards for each race type
- more race types
- Cutthroat!

3 hour solo races are fine. 2 hour solo races are too boring - just involves farming western.

3 hour party races involve farming docks for one and a half hours. Too many of these can get boring. more 2 hour party races would be nice.

We've only had two 4 hour party races. The first one was quite alright, but second one did not have any top teams participating in it at all, I daresay that that's a sign that 4 hour races are way too long.

Desync is definitely still an issue, and is much more evident in turbo races, but you guys are probably already working on it.

The server definitely feels more laggy during races. There is a marked difference in lag when playing in races compared to playing in the standard leagues after. It has come to the point where I've been unable to log in to the game at times during the past few races after logging out to save portals. There have also been times whereby I'm faced with a permanent loading screen. I had to close the client and restart it. In these cases, my team reported me as still being in the game, albeit standing still and not doing anything despite my client being closed. Only when I relogged into the game did my character in game go offline then online again.

Early game physical damage mods on gear could use a buff, and early game elemental damage mods need a slight nerf, if there is to be any choice between going ele versus going phys. Atm, there is no choice, ele wins anyday.

Docks farming definitely feels better now in terms of FPS after the recent changes to LA as well as docks optimization.

Perpetus should be given the chance to spawn near the ledge more often, to make city of sarn farming more challenging.

More LMP dogs in docks please!

More race types are definitely nice! I enjoyed the variety

I think there has been quite clear evidence of the possible involvement of third-party applications. I genuinely hope that you guys take measures to either discourage it or change how the game works to make it impossible or at least harder for these applications to work.

Incoherent suggestions:

There should always be a solo race taking place together with the party race. One might be able to keep up some time but in the end party play beats solo in the long run.

Long races tend to be too long if you do them repeatedly. Things that annoy you the first time do so the next time and even more. Vaal Ruins and Waterfall Cave spoil the fun for me. It tends to feel like work.

Could checkpointraces be a possibility? Continued character over a period of events.


The shops need some serious tweaking for earlygame. coral rings are completely overpowering the other variants and not having one at the start often forces you to take a risk of dying where players with coral rings dont have to take that risk.


More objectives could be added. All those Superuniques out there are just being skipped right now.
'Kill Gneiss 3 times'.


Add small differences to normal gameplay like adding some additional superunique bosses,


Also:
With a working mapsystem wouldnt there be a possibility to do mapraces instead of level 1 races?


p.s. Let the character stand on creation in the ladder.

"

SVD wrote:

More objectives could be added. All those Superuniques out there are just being skipped right now.
'Kill Gneiss 3 times'.

This could be pretty interesting. Imagine a league where you must kill all unique enemies in a zone to unlock the the entrances to connected further zones, and kill all unique enemies of an act to complete it.

"You must kill Gneiss to enter Crossroads" when you enter Old Fields.
"You must kill Marceus the Defaced to enter Market Sewers, the Catacombs, and Battlefront" when you enter Marketplace.
"You must kill Archbishop Geofri the Abashed to complete Act 2 and enter Act 3" when everyone tries to enter City of Sarn.

The case of the Bandits would be an exception, I suppose. You wouldn't need to kill all of them, you'd just do the quest as normal.

I don't think anything that could be done to a race would make it interesting for me.

Ever thought about adding another game mode.

Something like an art of defence:

- The game can be played a set amount of times per 24 hours.
- All regular hardcore characters can play.
- Difficulty is based on an average of player level.
- Each wave increases difficulty.
- The only thing that matters is how long you survive, death of players in your team affords no loss of points.
- The defence could be of an object with a set amount of health or an area in which monsters need to reach, with a set limit on how many can reach that area.
- The map can be changed from open(attack from any direction) and one-three directions. Also narrow passageways, ground ice/fire and other things could be randomly placed each event.

I had fun playing in races this season, but I definitely feel like many things could be improved upon.


I am a casual player and I'm not at the level where I ever had a chance of getting a Demigods. I would love to see the rewards restructured to give more incentive to play in a race even if you know you won't win the top prize.

The point system has a lot of potential, however the uniques that were offered in season one were a little disappointing, other than the ilevel 100 ring. Perhaps other players see more value in the alternate art, but for myself it isn't important. If a similar reward system is used in future seasons, I would prefer it to be more rewards like that ring (high ilevel white items, guaranteed socketed items, or random rares). Other possible reward ideas would be microtransaction points or items, such as one extra stash tab or one extra character slot. Having more rewards set at closer intervals of points would also increase the incentive to race.


A lot more objectives could be added in for more ways of getting points.
Here are a few ideas:

first boss kills
first unique kills
first full area clear of any area
first unique item found
first rare item found
most monsters killed
most rares found
best ratio of monsters killed to experience earned
furthest quest progression
furthest area progression

And for fun, there could be weird consolation prizes, like highest level to die or last person to die before the end


Also, as a way to make more unique race types, consider having leagues that DON'T feed back into the permanent default and hardcore leagues. This would open up a huge possibility of new race ideas without worrying about messing up the economies of the permanent leagues.

Here are some ideas that I have heard other people on the forums come up with:

starting at a higher level
starting in cruel or merciless
crafting only league - only white items drop but currency drops at a higher rate


I would also love to see more ways to keep track of your previous race results and records. I enjoy breaking my own personal records and would like to see some functionality for this integrated into the website or the game. Currently players have to use third party sites to achieve this.

I would also love to see more incentives for those of us that are not very good at racing to participate. I spent time watching videos and reading racing tips to figure out how to get to level 10 in a one hour race. It was really hard for me, but I managed to do it and I felt proud when I survived at level 10 when the race was over. Then I hopped onto the forums and read posts complaining that the point levels were too low (because it was too easy to get to level 11, which was the 3 point level).

I tried four races total and died in three of them for a total of 1 point. I know for a lot of people, the existing point levels were easy to hit and probably too low, but for others, they are not high enough to give even a hope of a reward.

Would it be possible to have a separate race league for novice racers? Or is this just too difficult?

I'd like to see progression rewarded more, not just exp farming.

Maybe it can be a separate type of race, whatever makes the most sense.

As of now, racing is basically just trying to reach the optimal farming zones (ledge, western forest, docks) as soon as possible and then farming there.

In progression focused races I'd suggest the following changes:

1. Disable the instance manager. This prevents people from farming the same zone(s) for most of the race.

2. Provide incentive to complete quests. Maybe award points to the first 50 players who clear a question, or bonus points for clearing X number of quests, etc.

3. You could also award points based on how far someone gets in the game, not necessarily level.

These are just a few quick ideas, I'm sure they can be refined. Basically there should be different race types that focus on things other than just who can most efficiently farm exp.

The rewards for season 1 were pretty underwhelming IMO.

I think small currency awards would provide good steps between major prizes.

For example I have 33 points and the next prize is at 60 points, this late in the season I will never get to 60, I have no incentive to play any more of the races. So it would be nice if there were minor prizes (something as simple as 5 fusing orbs for example) at small point intervals (say every 10 points or something) just to keep the carrot incentive of racing there.

The rankings should be changed more like on exilestats.com but improved.

-Number of Overall Wins
-Number of Wins as a certain class
-Average Wins/Points Earned
-Number of Races Participated in
-Number of Deaths
-Records for race types and classes, etc.
-Points Dependent on rank of your class, not just overall rank.

and those other leagues please!!

Cut-throat
Attrition
Iron Man
Pure Progression based races.

The idea of a crafting league sounds awesome too.
and the Starting at 50 or in Cruel/Merciless as well.

Make some races have a fee of an exalt or something then the winner takes the whole pool. Much more competitive and fun sounding!

Also, I know you're planning on tailoring rewards for classes and certain races but you should always overshoot the rewards. Even if it seems completely impossible cause you never know when the RNG gods will be with you!