Kalguur has stopped me from playing new leagues and private leagues

"

SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

I do like what you wrote

Your past examples are GOOD examples of what micro is, VERY different from Kingsmarch: managing maps, managing puzzles, things like OG harvest crop planting, the graveyard, things like that. not everyone liked all of those, but they are examples of ACTIVE micromanaging. Setting up a Betrayal board is a great example. Leveling and gearing the folks in that other town for alternate items. Purposeful planning that actually has an effect on the outcomes of the mechanic. And requires repeated, ACTIVE interaction with killing things, looting, etc. AKA....the game.

Everything you describe about Kalguur are BINARY, non-choices. It's fake micro. The opposite of micro. It's a single choice that doesn't really change any outcomes. Upgrading the town is entirely idle: you wait until you have enough resources, then upgrade. There isn't any "decision" involved. Ultimately, you are going to max everything anyway, as quickly as possible. Choosing how to spend your gold and resources AFTER maxing the town is also not micro: its a single decision with no repercussions for not choosing or acting correctly.

And every single decision in Kingsmarch is the same: did I wait long enough for resources to do something? Yes? Okay lets do something. And now we wait. Spending gold in different places such as recombo, mapping, or boating aren't micro decisions.......it's akin to just deciding what map you want to run at that particular moment. The downside is the amount of TIME it takes to be able to make another decision. That's literally it....time, time, time.

Having to make smaller decisions in the grand scheme of things is the micro managing, which includes all the decisions to do or not do something. Loot is something one has to manage any league and as space is limited you transition from a keep or don't to a more stringent variant of is it worth the space. But that's just something one does every time, still micro just not included because its the case for everyone yet the criteria isn't the same for everyone (as we have varied additional storage).

I do wonder why you're so adamant about something you seemingly haven't experienced. The league was out for almost a year and I still got my challenges almost exclusively in a few weeks before that Phrecia event ended. But it does explain why you don't understand why its micro, just not why you would feel the need to argue it.

For example, my recruiting is waiting for the 100k upgrade - while on its own is relatively doable, I still have to come up with several hundred thousand more to cap everything as I still need several levels in runesmithing, recombinating and mapping as well. Depending on content you earn typically anywhere from less than 1k to 15kish gold and me averaging 5k to 7.5kish per map.

I'm well past the 500+ map bosses killed. The only two maps I haven't done once are vaults and doryani. She's stuck at 2 orbs as it takes ages to get the guardian maps needed to drop as well as needing both elder and shaper. But moot since she doesn't scale up well enough for maven anyway. But as far as the big picture goes, I've already done more than I accomplished in some of my previous leagues that actually went most of the 3 months, and she was originally intended only to level to 80. I went longer as settlers was the first "new" league I had done since archnem and it was making regular mapping "FEEL" more rewarding, at least at first.

Eventually as the gold costs kept getting higher that sense of reward only became dread as the earnings flattened out long before. She's currently at 12d 16 hours played, which is longer than a level 98 (by more than 2 hrs) that's been sitting in std since Delirium finished but still putting in time as a mule.

In other words, its not like I haven't put in time, but so much time that the novelty of settlers has worn its welcome. The motivation to finish the town is gone. With the last 2 leagues I 40/40'd, I wanted them to go longer. Between Phrecia and merging into settlers my interest faded in less than a month and a half.

I don't mind the concept of a player town, but the 11 tiers of increasing gold cost per upgrade, gold cost to gamble (keyword gamble) potential workers, hiring fees on top of hourly wages and having to constantly fund the treasury for work to be done -- too many gold\time sinks.

I honestly, no offence, cannot fathom how anyone could name this city builder complex, in the broadest sense of that word

you build city to get something. there are just 3 ways of getting something:

- ships
- maps
- recombinator

ships you can run from L1, but maps are not worth touching unless maxed. same as recombs

maxing recombs require maxing disenchants (for unique dusting, rares just dont cut it)

ores are needed for upgrades, so you stop mining and smelting immediately after doing related upgrades (i honestly think this is one of the biggest blunders of kingsmarch - item rewards just cannot compete with currency rewards. once i sent few mils worth of bars for scarabs and got less than T17 map produces on a bad day. this could actually have been a decision point. but no, ignore bars, sent crops and crops only)

you max out mining for 'ore => gold' upgrade, because that means 1000+ gold a pop. do not overinvest into smelters/miners - you dont need T10, you will do just fine with T3 (remember, just the upgrades, ores are otherwise worthless)


all that is a linear A -> B -> C activity where the only decision points are:
- do i even care about the city (if yes - max out crop production and ships)
- am i going to recombinate? (if yes - max out disenchant/recombinator)
- do i play enough to fuel mappers along my crop production (if yes - max out mappers)

if you play few maps a day - stick to ships, send few verisium bars there and there (one mined plot should suffice for days) and collect freebies. you wont be able to sustain crops/maps anyway
it is this simple. once you set stuff you do not touch it.


wanna fast gold? run Olmec Sanctums. 8-12k gold per map. boring but it is the easiest gold in the game

^yep, exactly my point too. There AREN'T decisions in Kingsmarch lol. There is no micro, there is no complexity. It is tedium and passivity just for the sake of it.

And its all on timers. All of it.

"

SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

I do wonder why you're so adamant about something you seemingly haven't experienced. The league was out for almost a year and I still got my challenges almost exclusively in a few weeks before that Phrecia event ended. But it does explain why you don't understand why its micro, just not why you would feel the need to argue it.

I do not chat on the same account I play, for both security and in case I say something stupid and get banned. I have played every iteration we have had of Kingsmarch to completion, and its been stupid since the very first time.

I am adamant about this because I personally believe that Kingsmarch and this particular league mechanic is the single WORST league mechanic that GGG has ever created, and it worries me for future installments because they went the "lets go AFK" route. D4 went that direction too and.....

To hear someone confidently claim there is complexity and micromanaging in Kingsmarch is absolutely bonkers wild to me. It quite literally is the opposite in both categories: and it is the opposite on PURPOSE. It is NOT complex: it is automated and there aren't any choices to be made, apart from "do I have enough gold/ore?". It is NOT engaging: all income is gathered passively in maps, you don't even look at the numbers. To use the league mechanic, you press a button and wait. Or you even have to wait for DAYS before pressing a button to wait.

No complexity. No engagement. Passive. No point. It's like you are trying to convince me that it is "complex gameplay" to decide whether you left click or right click. In fact....that might actually be a more complex decision in the game than anything Kingsmarch has to offer.

"

sidtherat#1310 wrote:

I honestly, no offence, cannot fathom how anyone could name this city builder complex, in the broadest sense of that word

wanna fast gold? run Olmec Sanctums. 8-12k gold per map. boring but it is the easiest gold in the game

I think I have one left - I've definitely been doing the uniques quite a bit given the higher quant, but I mean I can't remember there being a time where I had gone this long without a single vaults of atziri.

Now complexity - its complex in what it entails, not necessarily sophistication.

Like in order to turn gold into player wealth, it needs to at least fund workers pay which then returns a particular resource which then can be used to turn into currency\reward.

For example

Gold -> farmers -> shipping -> reward

Gold -> items (collected and selected) -> recombinator ->reward

Gold -> ore -> smelted bars -> shipping -> reward

Gold -> previously found maps -> various reward and varying chance of failure

Now that's a simple breakdown and assumes TIME is already considered, whether time spent collecting something, sorting something or deciding on something.


When you consider most leagues are mostly centered around killing and looting, its not hard to qualify as "more complex".

Breach

Abyss - breach that instead of expanding outward is an assortment of abyss monsters released along a "crack" that leads to a number of pits that spawn monsters.

Beastiary - special Rares that can be potentially stored and killed again for varying rewards

Incursion - mostly another variant of breech that does away with the initial expanding ring but retains the timer, allowing it to increase by kills.

Betrayal - one of the more "original" mechanics, the player would have to attack and defend against the old masters primarily in 4 main scenarios as they were overhauled.

Delirium - "fog" that adds monsters and increases the health and damage of the enemies during its duration

Archnem - basically introduced overpowered rares but at least compensated with generous rewards as the risk increased (mostly)

Blight - Poe's Tower defense (major performance issues for those of us with older machines at the time)

Harvest - breachlike engagments activated by player to collect potential crafts\plants\currency (depending on version)
etc

But aside from something like expedition with multiple layers of "interaction" most mechanics are heavily focused in combat and dealt with directly in a per map basis.

But to really drive the point home, I don't think most would be willing to do all that work every 3 months all over again if they had managed to keep the old 3 month league schedule.

"

SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

Now complexity - its complex in what it entails, not necessarily sophistication.

Like in order to turn gold into player wealth, it needs to at least fund workers pay which then returns a particular resource which then can be used to turn into currency\reward.

For example

Gold -> farmers -> shipping -> reward

Gold -> items (collected and selected) -> recombinator ->reward

Gold -> ore -> smelted bars -> shipping -> reward

Gold -> previously found maps -> various reward and varying chance of failure

Now that's a simple breakdown and assumes TIME is already considered, whether time spent collecting something, sorting something or deciding on something.


When you consider most leagues are mostly centered around killing and looting, its not hard to qualify as "more complex".

How are you unable to see that what you just wrote is the OPPOSITE of complex. It's bloat, pure and simple. More steps doesn't mean more complex lol, my god.

Look at ore: you mine it in a map, which gets sent to your town (also don't forget...out of the 5 ores, ONE doesn't even require fighting lol). You then need to hire miners to turn that ore into....ore. But wait because that currency is still totally unusable. So you need to hire smelters to turn it into ingots. Oh but wait, its STILL not usable...you need to send it on a shipment to get anything. Four freaking steps of WAITING until anything actually happens. This isn't "complex" at all....you aren't controlling anything. You aren't doing anything. It's waiting, waiting, waiting. For an automatic process to happen. A process that didn't need four steps EXCEPT to waste your time.

This is NOT complexity!!!!!! It is NOT micromanagement!!!!! You have no control over this process, short of the fact that you need to play the "normal game" to get this process started. "But hiring workers and deciding which to keep because upkeep costs" is NOT complexity.....its not micromanagement either. Whether you have level 1 workers or level 10 workers is irrelevant, the entire process is the same. It just takes less time if you have more gold. Woohoo that's great. Less time waiting. Shouldn't be waiting in the first place, but hey. It was so basic that people figured that out less than an hour into the league. Running out of gold too fast? Hire lower level workers. Wow, ingenious micromanagement!!!

And now you bring up "most leagues are centered around killing and looting"....hmmm, I wonder why? Maybe perhaps because this is an action rpg? The entire reason for the game's existence and prevalence across over a decade? The entire reason for the genre to be as popular as it is? EVERY league mechanic should be first and foremost focused on killing monsters and loot. What form that takes changes, but THAT should be the core. Not idleness

And lets talk about the fact that many (if not most) other leagues did the "killing and looting" pretty damn well, unique to each league, AND with real depth and complexity.

You brought up breach: there are 5 bosses, each with unique items to them. The mechanic itself was a UNIQUE way to play the game (at the time), albeit still actively killing and looting and requiring a decently strong character. And to add complexity you had upgradable unique items, with many of them being usable at BOTH grades and you had to choose based on your build needs. And that was a league released during the 2.0 years.....the game was wayyyyyyy smaller back then. And it still kicks Kingsmarch out of the water in complexity, style, innovation, itemization, and general "fun". You killed things and got loot. Even collecting the shards to get a breachstone, you still got loot at every "step".

You claim Incursion is just another breach. Except....again, unique items. Unique rooms. Unique encounters. Opening doors and crafting a temple. It had similarities, sure, but that's kind of the point. Hell....double corruption was and remains a massive game changer.

Bestiary: conveniently decided to ignore beast crafting, aspects, the four bosses, and FULL UNIQUE SETS for the first and only time. Yes, the nets were a bad idea.

Delirium: conveniently left out cluster jewels......one of (if not THE) the biggest passive tree shakeups EVER. And the unique small clusters that created multiple new builds all on their own.

Betrayal: strategically crafting the board for repeated rewards. Actually GETTING and using the rewards. The big baddie. How do you completely IGNORE all this?!

Archnem: again you IGNORE the complexity! Gathering collections of specific mods. Combining mods into different mods. Learning what the mods did and what your build could handle. The loot conversions associated with the various mods and how to maximize them.

I could go on and on and on......what game have you been playing?!?!


Leagues SHOULD have similarities....we are still playing an action rpg here. Not an idle game. Not a tower defense. Not a farming sim (that OG harvest was ultimately a mistaken design).

Your list ignores some real key aspects and game-changing parts of past leagues....which are all conveniently non-existent in Kingsmarch. We got a few weapon implicits to add to our items. Whoop-dee-doo. 99% of them were never used. And the ones that WERE usable required you to......send shipments of multi-million resources and get lucky. Multiple times. To actually engage in the ONE unique part of the league, you needed to WAIT for days on end and pray. Not gameplay.....just waiting.

God damn dude, you got me heated. Your definition of "complexity" is absolutely ridiculous. And you typed out that whole chart of everything Kingsmarch is and failed to see ANY of it. How each freaking thing is exactly the same. How there is ZERO complexity and its "wait for step 1, wait for step 2, wait for step 3, sometimes wait for step 4". And you even put recombinators in there lol....not even a Kingsmarch original thing.

All past leagues have their issues, but Kalguur is an issue in its entire conception: its anti-gaming. It cedes all control and play, in favor of multiple layers of timers. And offers nothing truly unique in return, for the most part.

I think you're misunderstanding something. Look at my profile, see what is 36+.

New uniques.... isn't that every league?

Double corruption, can be amazingly useful or make an item absolutely useless, though a little less so with the tainted currency.

And again, it was simply describing the "complexity" of the mechanic interaction, not the benefits added by the league (like betrayal and the scarabs for example). Beastcrafting aside from the duplicating rare recipe largely fell out of favor as the meta changed (which the meta always does).

It's like we're both saying it sucks, but because I'm not saying it sucks the same way you are you've gotten the impression I might be impressed or something. I was literally just explaining how settlers forces you to take additional steps to get anything done when typical mechanics of the past focused their interactions on the combat side.

Cluster jewels did make an impact sure, but as the coolest thing we were shown they could do was the herald\aura stacking, it was the very first thing that got gutted. The stat stacking jewels and introduction of hollow palm made it possible to hit 1500+ in dex but then got nerfed and restricted to allow only 2 where I was using 4 or 5 during the actual league. Meanwhile they added 5 more levels to the simulacrum so it was fine for them to make something even more difficult. My hollowpalm cyclone used to be unreliably clear all 10 as it was, but now even my RF can't guarantee clearing the first 10 despite the additional health and mitigation - and even if he does he eventually doesn't do enough damage as the mitigation added turns the bosses into bullet sponges from hell.

You're defending breach for all its nuances - its not they weren't lost on me, just how almost all of it largely became irrelevant. Breach was before my time, but even by abyss its magic had waned, only gaining new life with the addition of breach stones - and of course there were complaints they were granting too much xp but the examples were largely the groups running rotations and not the random person doing an occasional solo - but of course they nerf the solo aspect.

Incursion is essentially a variant on breach - sure its own flavor but it ultimately does boil down to kill and loot. And really its not such a bad thing --- but compare the loot explosion from previous leagues and what it is now. I enjoyed Incursion, even had my meta trapper with shimmerons and extras I was saving for sale later. Incursion was also my first lesson in Poe "economics" in the sense that if something is relatively popular, expect it to get nerfed and probably to the ground.

Betrayal was great, I think it was my first 36+. But it was hardly problem free, whether it was the assassins and massive latency resulting in unavoidable deaths or having no chance to save the evidence and failing almost instantly at the higher tier maps. I think it was the first time I got over 95 though I did have to use the trick where not completing the save the evidence could prevent the rest from spawning. Unlike Delve,Incursion or Beastiary, betrayal retained most of its value despite the loot getting both reduced and overhauled (scarabs).

Archnem was the last one I 40/40 and while I was able to enjoy the league, I hate what it did to the game. The modifiers added to rares changed the dynamics of basic mapping. Sure they did EVENTUALLY tune them down a lot (Although it took a league or two after to do it) it meant dramatic "difficulty" spikes as suddenly something incompatible with your build\character could spawn in an otherwise sea of mediocrity, making it impossible for you to kill or even just take forever and a day. It was also what killed most of my interest in Poe.

So let me remind you, just because I say "complex" doesn't mean the same as "complex in a good way". Settlers complexity is basically an advanced version of the incubator where loot you've already supposedly earned is held back and requires additional player time and investment in order to be received.

Its kinda like how the Kirac Pass not only requires payment upfront but you then have to do additional work to basically get access to what you paid for.

I was also pointing out that while it does help with player retention for a while - making early progress with the town itself can "feel" rewarding but that eventually the gold and time sinks are likely to exceed the player's tolerance. I was able to get to 96 when the original goal was 80 but character fatigue set in as the town progress slowed to a crawl and I was left deciding to save for additional expensive upgrades or actually fund production in the town.


"Micromanagement in gaming is the handling of detailed gameplay elements by the player. It appears in a wide range of games and genres, including strategy video games, construction and management simulations, and pet-raising simulations. Micromanagement has been perceived in different ways by game designers and players for many years: some perceive it as a useful addition to games that adds options and technique to the gameplay, something that is necessary if the game is to support top-level competitions; some enjoy opportunities to use tactical skill in strategic games; others regard it as an unwelcome distraction from higher levels of strategic thinking and dislike having to do a lot of detailed work. Some developers attempt to minimize micromanagement in a game's interface for this reason"
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement_(gameplay)

So where you thought I meant complex meant "good" I was using complex in the sense that the player is inundated with a lot of menial tasks to hide how loot is being withheld to make certain actions appear more rewarding. Maybe it allows\justifies a hidden improvement of loot that would have been earned like how you get currency of increasing value - but even if it actually did that currently I would expect it to be severely reduced in order to make the next new league mechanic appealing.

Interesting argument you guys have going here, but on the side of simplicity, Kingsmarch is an MMO-style mechanic which keeps you playing longer and "engaged" in PoE rather than an alternative.

"

Glorfndel01#6465 wrote:

Interesting argument you guys have going here, but on the side of simplicity, Kingsmarch is an MMO-style mechanic which keeps you playing longer and "engaged" in PoE rather than an alternative.

Fully objectively based on player data and numbers.....it has done the exact opposite lol. From the rollout of Kingsmarch to a single month later, over 60% of the playerbase left. If what you said was true, we'd see far greater retention than other leagues. And repeated Kingsmarch restarts has NOT brought the playerbase back in any significant way. Only two real conclusions can be drawn from this: 1) players are tired of the base game or 2) 3.25 wasn't engaging. We know that 1 isn't true based on data from previous leagues over the last few years (players returning in greater numbers, and other leagues with far better retention), so the logical and objective conclusion is that Kalguur, as a league, was GENERALLY crap.

The point is it DOESN'T keep you engaged. It's secondary and passive, leading to much faster and MUCH stronger burnout. Simply put, its boring and uninteresting. PoE players in general are far smarter than what GGG gives them credit for: they know and FEEL when a mechanic is designed from the ground up for the sole purpose of wasting their time and nothing else.

And that's pretty standard for IDLE gameplay: it keeps people engaged for a short time, but then there's a STEEP rolloff when people just get bored of sitting around and waiting all the time. Many idle games combat this by "restarting" the game via new servers every few weeks. WEEKS. Because that's how short of a draw this kind of "gameplay" is.