Adding stuff to GM drops without fixing spawn rates was just idiotic.

[Lumen]

Just look at Sharkhead Isle now. Theres a full league just ganking Ghost of Scrapyard every two minutes, just farming him over and over for some sparkly new rubbish.

[PeregrineFalcon]

Hey, at least people are playing villainside now.

 

Why is this a problem?

[Lunar Ronin]

8 minutes ago, Lumen said:

Just look at Sharkhead Isle now. Theres a full league just ganking Ghost of Scrapyard every two minutes, just farming him over and over for some sparkly new rubbish.

 

It's been fixed on open beta already, and I'm sure will go live next week.

[nihilii]

TBH, playing on Indom I wasn't even aware of new rewards for GMs. The system alert for Ghost of Scrapyard seems pretty infrequent, at least at the hours I play.

[MoonSheep]

what were the changes to GMs in the end? i think i saw they were going to have their HP increase but not sure if they gave them a good damage and accuracy buff too

[Lumen]

There is a league on Excel wiping him out every minute. No joke.

[ZemX]

Aren't there reward limits or are people alting every time to a new toon?

[Lunar Ronin]

1 minute ago, ZemX said:

Aren't there reward limits or are people alting every time to a new toon?

 

There aren't reward limits until the next patch.

[ZemX]

5 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

There aren't reward limits until the next patch.

 

Poor Scrappy...

[ivanhedgehog]

24 hour limit? or a week? The whole point was to get people to care about gms

Edited February 23 by ivanhedgehog

[GM Crumpet]

People will find exploits sadly. Then those exploits will get fixed. At least you have to work for Scrapyard rather than sit there AFK

[Zhym]

At least they're exploiting the new content.  The first time I logged in after the patch went live, It wasn't 30 seconds before I saw someone in LFG looking for a fire farm.  All that new stuff—and still, there are people just doing fire farms.

Edited February 23 by Zhym

[PeregrineFalcon]

40 minutes ago, GM Crumpet said:

People will find exploits sadly. Then those exploits will get fixed. At least you have to work for Scrapyard rather than sit there AFK

I'm not sure how this could be considered an exploit. They're playing the game. The developers have said that they aren't going to ban farming, how is this any different from farming? At least they're not AFK.

 

BTW, I take exception to the word 'sadly'. The human brain is literally physically designed solve problems and look for 'exploits.' Do you really think that putting lightning into a box and getting it to make high-speed decisions for us is 'working as intended'? If the human brain wasn't so good at finding exploits we'd still be hunting our lunch with spears instead of driving to Taco Bell.

 

And just to clarify, I'm not angry, I'm not upset. I am just sitting in my office on a slow day calmly typing my thoughts on a keyboard made of fire hardened oil.

[ZemX]

2 minutes ago, Krimson said:

It's only because Scrappy is the only Giant Monster that can be summoned repeatedly. Yep of course players are going to zero in on it.

 

It's not only that.  You'll notice Crumpet said "at least they aren't just sitting there AFK".  And Number Six pointed out the same in another thread where someone was complaining about the reward limits going in.  Solo hunters have been AFK timer camping the GMs that ARE on timers to collect the merits and not sharing.  Game Masters were getting complaints about that.  In other words, Solo hunters did this to themselves.  They can cry us all a river.

 

One could argue there was no rule mandating sharing GM spawns and they'd be correct.  There was no rule against being greedy.  Doesn't mean being greedy can't have consequences.  Here they are.  Enjoy!

[ZemX]

37 minutes ago, Krimson said:

What... Which GMs have timers other than Adamastor?

 

Adamastor is the one being discussed in the other thread.  Maybe it's the only one that's a problem.  Beats me.  I don't hunt GMs on the regular. I'm just pointing out that both in this thread and the other, a dev/GM has mentioned someone hanging around AFK killing GMs and in the other thread actually said they were fielding player complaints about it.  You think they are making that up?  That they are just tossing in pointless restrictions for fun?  Because I kind of doubt that.  

[Ironblade]

57 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Adamastor is the one being discussed in the other thread.  Maybe it's the only one that's a problem.  Beats me.  I don't hunt GMs on the regular. I'm just pointing out that both in this thread and the other, a dev/GM has mentioned someone hanging around AFK killing GMs and in the other thread actually said they were fielding player complaints about it.  You think they are making that up?  That they are just tossing in pointless restrictions for fun?  Because I kind of doubt that.  

Pretty sure that it's only Adamastor.  The reason is that you get a temp power that can spawn him.  Apparently, masterminds would sit there with the temp power on auto-fire and their pets set to aggressive.

[Clave Dark 5]

7 hours ago, Lumen said:

Just look at Sharkhead Isle now. Theres a full league just ganking Ghost of Scrapyard every two minutes, just farming him over and over for some sparkly new rubbish.

Sparkly rubbish (new toon name!) that sells for a lot, for now, plus they're getting easy merits!  Literally everyone knows this game is and can only ever be about rigging your way to phat stacks,* so of course people gonna farm.

 

*Please to be noting my sarcasm here, folks

[Excraft]

5 hours ago, GM Crumpet said:

At least you have to work for Scrapyard rather than sit there AFK

 

Fixing Adamastor I could see since he can be AFK summoned and farmed solo, however since other GMs "have to be worked for" then their rewards shouldn't be changed so drastically, if at all in my opinion.  I can already envision a whole host of other fun GM spawning activities getting smacked by the nerf bat because of this.  I don't know about all the servers, but periodically several teams on Excel, Torch and Everlasting are coordinating multiple Synapse runs to spawn multiple Babbages simultaneously.  I guess we can assume that this bit of occasional fun will get smacked down as well?

[tidge]

3 hours ago, Krimson said:

What... Which GMs have timers other than Adamastor? I've never soloed Adamastor because since I started hunting in 2021, I've NEVER been able to get him alone. Heck I was able to solo Paladin ONCE and only because the player that called it out bailed to do a TF.

 

Where are these timers? Have I been doing ridiculous search patterns for years for no reason at all? 

 

The Goliath Warwalker in Boomtown has a one hour waiting period before it can be summoned.

 

Deathsurge can be summoned, but the mobiles necessary to summon it are few in number and spread all over the map.

 

Caleb can be summoned, but it is on the day/night clock.

 

The Grim Vale event is on a two hour cycle, but only from the time when the last mobile from the previous event has been cleared.

 

Pretty much all the other open world zone-specific giant monsters are on a four hour cycle, from the time when there spawn conditions have been met.

 

[Judasace]

7 hours ago, Excraft said:

coordinating multiple Synapse runs to spawn multiple Babbages simultaneously

 

I believe only the zone version of Babbage drops the rewards that are at issue (The Monstrous Aether) So Synapse Babbage shouldn't be an issue now if he wasn't before.

[ZemX]

9 hours ago, Excraft said:

Fixing Adamastor I could see since he can be AFK summoned and farmed solo, however since other GMs "have to be worked for" then their rewards shouldn't be changed so drastically, if at all in my opinion. 

 

Looking at patch notes again, I only do see Adamastor (in page 7) and now Scrapyard (on beta) mentioned in reward limits.   Seems none of the other Giant Monsters have or are getting reward timers... yet.

[tidge]

2 hours ago, ZemX said:

 

Looking at patch notes again, I only do see Adamastor (in page 7) and now Scrapyard (on beta) mentioned in reward limits.   Seems none of the other Giant Monsters have or are getting reward timers... yet.

 

This is how it should be: the other Giant Monsters are not "exploitable" in the same way as Scrapyard. Four hours between spawns, combined with the general improvements to toughness  is enough to motivate teaming.

 

Adamastor having a daily limit was targeted at a very specific set of players who (per discussions on the forums) parked themselves at the Adamastor summoning spot and would either resummon the GM or just be present when others resummoned the GM to score 6 merits an hour. They also got the shame of admitting that this is what they were doing!

 

If other Giant Monsters get reward timers, I hope that we'd get the option to buy (via Aether)  specific pet recipes as opposed to the random roll. The drop rates for the pet recipes are pretty poor... I have several hundred Merits from Giant Monster drops, but only two pet recipes have dropped. If ALL the GM rewards are put on timers, it will make it that much harder to get a specific recipe. Since the pet recipes are also planned to become non-fungible on the market, this next set of updates could be really miserable for those of us who have characters that want a specific pet.

[Excraft]

So a group of 8 of us each ran the Operation: World Wide Red arc via Oro individually to coordinate a mass Kronos spawn in Talos.  We were 0 for 8 in spawning him, so whatever changes have been put into place to correct Adamastor, it looks like it totally broke the ability to spawn Kronos in Talos.  Talked with a few others in game who had a similar result since this patch went live.  Seems like this change broke more than it fixed. 

 

Is there any "official" word on whether or not spawning multiple Babbages and Kronos Titans via coordinated teams considered an "exploit" now?  Would be nice to know so we can all avoid wasting our time any further on these activities. 

Edited February 24 by Excraft

[Jimmy]

 

27 minutes ago, Excraft said:

So a group of 8 of us each ran the Operation: World Wide Red arc via Oro individually to coordinate a mass Kronos spawn in Talos.  We were 0 for 8 in spawning him, so whatever changes have been put into place to correct Adamastor, it looks like it totally broke the ability to spawn Kronos in Talos.  Talked with a few others in game who had a similar result since this patch went live.  Seems like this change broke more than it fixed. 

 

Post in the bug forum if you haven't already.

 

It's unlikely this is related to the Adamanstor change, but it was a huge patch so there's always a chance something went awry.

 

27 minutes ago, Excraft said:

Is there any "official" word on whether or not spawning multiple Babbages and Kronos Titans via coordinated teams considered an "exploit" now?  Would be nice to know so we can all avoid wasting our time any further on these activities. 

 

These are fine. They require a meaningful amount of effort.

 

Scrapyard is not, because he can be respawned every 1-2 minutes with minimal effort if enough players are participating. Even if you don't consider it an "exploit" (I'd say it's borderline), it's definitely an abuse of the system.

[Hedgefund]

This Scrapyard "exploit" has been around for a long long time now.  Seems like a Monstrous Aether problem, not a Scrap problem so I hope whatever this fix address those drops and not Scrappy.  He's needed for an accolade and, as of the day before p7 it was helpful to be able to gather some teammates, kill enough striking workers then get Scrappy.  Maybe do it again if folks were of a mind to do so.  Wasn't deemed to be exploitative then and it was the same behavior.  The only difference?  Monstrous Aether.

Edited February 24 by Hedgefund