Musings on Astral.

Karlach

This is a topic that's been on my mind for a while, it took a back seat while I was pondering about Icewynd, but with the current state of affairs (and some nodes having troubles for several weeks) it feels appropriate to discuss what is slowly becoming an Elephant in the room.

Astral is a very popular bashing area. At Demigod it's probably the only place capable of offering multiple end game hunters the chance to bash at once without being overcrowded at any one time. This is because there's 12 different planes to hunt, the nodes recharge and people gain insanity that makes bashing harder to do the longer you stay up. That way there's a constant source of mobs available for people to bash at any given time.

In theory.


However the reality is nodes are quickly drained due to the following reasons:

A: A larger population base than when Astral was last tuned, and more Demigods and high level mortals that are able to hunt there solo.

B: Some nodes are really undesirable. Capricorn and Scorpio are rarely hunted down properly, and Pisces and Gemini spend most of their days untouched and gathering dust (When was the last time either of these was past Rainbow Halo?)

C: Because the popular/viable nodes are constantly left at motes to recharge fast (in theory) people coming up see these nodes at the start of their timezone bash them out immediately to a lower recharge level, rather than wait an hour or so to let them refill. This has an endless cycle loop till we reach a "Grab what you can when you can" phase of people constantly emptying nodes as soon as they have any power in. 

Coning/Darklinking /insert alternative names here all drain power ridiculously fast and can drain a node in under an hour from full to flat.

E: Some people really have no idea how astral recharge works at all and fail to realise what the different node stages even mean.


Ideally I'd like to see Astral be more accessible, across all the nodes and regardless of timezone. So if you log on and someone spent the day bashing them, you don't have to spend your entire game time twiddling your thumbs or having to squabble over the few other limited endgame bashing areas.


That being said here's a few ideas I've had:

1. Standardise all node recharges to a fixed % of their total power per in game day. This will be about the same as linking from them normally (without a flux capacitor) so flux linking, double linking and nexus linking will all still drain faster than it recharges, but it won't kill a node for anyone else afterwards (unless you're really hammering at it) However all stages have the same recharge time, this way you aren't going to wait forever for a dead node to return, so should you get a crazy group of double flux nexus linkers bashing somewhere out, it'll take a half day to recharge at most as opposed to currently where it takes about a week. Let insanity be the pacing mechanism for how long people stay on Astral, not how much is left in the node.

2. Reduce all nexus linking skills to 5p at a time. 5x the normal rate is far too strong, and too easily gained. I've done it myself and it's simply too easy a power gain for too little risk. 5p is equal to a full set of empowered aspects and you'll still harvest power faster than it takes to clear all the elemental planes. This also will reduce the speed in which nodes are killed off.

3. Have a look at reducing the frustrating stacking balance loss spam of Eagles on Gemini and the web/paralysis hell that is Pisces Parasites, making them viable for smaller/solo hunting. Also possibly consider looking at Capricorn's knock down frequency and maybe removing one of Scorpio's combine of bleed spam + poison affliction + knockdown, it only really needs two out of those three. While the latter two can be solo bashed out, they're both unpopular and unfrequented nodes because of their hindering and damage as opposed to the majority of others, the former two are ignored by the majority, save the odd brave person or someone who doesn't know yet why no one else bothers with them.

I don't want Astral to turn into an essence/xp on demand factory, but at the same time the current state where only a select few at the right hours get all the perks and everyone else is left to fight over the scraps until we all lose out for a week or so, with people not having patience to let them recharge, is removing a large section of the end game as far as hunting goes. I firmly believe node recharge being the pacing mechanism is a mechanic that no longer functions properly with the current density of high level characters capable of hunting it, and that the combination of insanity and no gold drops are more than enough to prevent anyone from sitting on a node and forever linking their way to demigod and beyond.


Anyway these are thoughts and suggestions of my own, and I'd love to get feedback and ideas from others on this.

Xenthos

If the regeneration time is changed, don't really need to muck with the organization link abilities too much; they're already a bit slower in between ticks than regular linking.  The biggest issue is the recovery time for the nodes, and the fact that there is no warning sign on Astral saying "the lower the node is, the longer it will take to recharge!"  No matter how many people you tell, more show up and just start linking.  It's a little aggravating, because that's entirely outside of your control. 

Estwald

I don't see any of this as necessary. Despite the 200+ demigods, it's still very feasible to link enough to get what you want without draining them completely. If you drain a node you're trying to drain it.

Some nodes being "really undesirable" is a good thing. Consider they're not that way for everyone. For example, Capricorn and Scorpio are among the best nodes to link, in my opinion. Scorpio is by far the best experience, and scorpions have an attack that does 0 damage - very helpful when you're fighting a group of them. As for Pisces and Gemini, I agree that they're more difficult to bash, but they're not impossible. 

If you don't want to drain nodes, get a group of 6-7+. You'll find that permalinking is impossible, and the experience and essence increases dramatically (aetherbashing doesn't compare). 

Estwald

Hence the term........... "ur'bash" - has anyone been paid for coining this yet?

Acrune

Maybe a node should give messages (both in growing and draining) that show the regen speed changes.

"As the node grows in power, the energies twist more rapidly, feeding off each other to recover at a higher pace"

"The node dims in brightness as its energy is diminished and it is no longer able to sustain its previous rate of recovery"

Its not something you'd see too frequency since there are only a handful of node levels and it might get lost in spam, but hey, you'd only have to see it once to get the idea?

Karlach

It would have to be extremely visible otherwise as you say it's lost in the spam.

It doesn't fix the other issues sadly, other people are still draining nodes in a "grab what you can" scheme rather than exercising a bit of patience. It's entirely possible for a small number of people to keep Astral barren, intentionally or unintentionally. If that's their goal then great, it shouldn't be this easy to accomplish though.