Reduce Lusca re-spawn delay after each Tentacle kill

[Shin Magmus]

   If you haven't heard, all of the Giant Monsters got rebalanced and drop guaranteed Monstrous Aether (among potential other things) now.  However, unique to Lusca is that each of her tentacles yields 2 Reward Merits when defeated, for a total kill bounty of 22 Reward Merits and the Monstrous Aether.  That's a lot, and the fight is now very profitable.

 

   ...But it's also very long.  Worse: it's very long for a bad reason that kills fun and enjoyment.

 

   Every time you kill a tentacle, Lusca submerges to respawn: in either the same spot or 1 of 2 possible near spots.  The team backs up and starts looking around for Lusca to reappear so they can continue the fight.  This waiting period occurs 8 times during the fight, and each time it happens: people get bored and tired of waiting.  The actual forced delay of completely non-interactive non-gameplay is about 20 seconds each time.  This waiting around serves no purpose in the modern version of the game, and the power level characters are currently at.

 

   Recommendation: reduce this wait period by at least 50%.  I'd go as far as to say that it should only be 5 seconds total of forced waiting, before you're "allowed" to find Lusca and resume the fight.  Changing this will only improve the game and reduce tedium.  If there's a coding reason that this is difficult to do... well it's still a positive and important change to make so I hope the dev team can figure it out.  There's no downside to this suggested change and it doesn't need to impact her global spawn timer either. 

[Shin Magmus]

4 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Uh... I'm not sure how to say this that won't probably annoy you, but... if that's all it takes to bore you...

I never said I was bored.  I said it's wasting everyone's time, and that other people have said it's boring.  I recruit in LFG when I do GM Hunts, and people demonstratably show less interest in Lusca than in other GMs.  They know it's going to take longer, and they know the hunt involves at least 8 periods of waiting around for no reason: so they just don't show up.  Fast fights like Adamastor (and basically every other GM) fill with 3x as many interested players as Lusca does.

[Glacier Peak]

I don't see any issues with the current mechanics for Lusca and I haven't for years. It's not an enemy meant to be speed ran, it takes coordination and patience and players are rewarded for doing so. I don't find it boring either. 

[Greycat]

"For no reason." You mean something that's been injured hiding and pulling away from whatever's attacking it?

 

Be glad it respawns - as it has since live - in a *very* close radius, compared to how big IP is.

 

Absolutely no reason to change it.

[Shin Magmus]

32 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Absolutely no reason to change it.

Except to not waste as much of the players' time, except for that reason.

[lemming]

Gives some players that aren't as built up a chance to recover, etc...   I've never found it very long really.

 

Also, you don't have to defeat every single tentacle.   The head is immune to damage while there are more than two tentacles left, but if you're down to two, Lusca is vulnerable.
 

But what about my four reward merits?   Make sure all teams on the league do a bit of damage to each tentacle before taking out the head and you will get rewards for both tentacles and the head.  They count as defeated when the head is.

[Glacier Peak]

47 minutes ago, ShinMagmus said:

Except to not waste as much of the players' time, except for that reason.

This is the part of this suggestion that keeps being brought up that I don't understand. How is time being wasted? The mechanic has been this way since it was launched, where is this lost time coming from? Is there a perceived expectation bias being applied to content that has never been designed to be a quick encounter?

[tidge]

There is no problem here. The time investment is (now with tentacle merits) is entirely reasonable and in line with what I would expect for solo players, teams and leagues... keeping in mind this is a zone critter.

 

Next complaint: waiting for Hamidon to spawn because...

[Luminara]

The interludes exist so players can regroup and recover, and it's not instanced content.  Players with sub-50 characters, no IO set bonuses or purples or ATOs or Winter sets or any of the bells and whistles, bottom-level performance primaries/secondaries, and not even the faintest idea what they're doing, are going to show up and expect to participate.  And if the interludes are reduced or removed, that will restrict their participation.

 

You can tolerate a 20s breather between fights for the sake of keeping it accessible to everyone.

[Nerio72]

There has to be time for us to make our calamari jokes, c'mon!

[Oubliette_Red]

Reduce the time, reduce the rewards.

[Techwright]

3 hours ago, lemming said:

Also, you don't have to defeat every single tentacle.   The head is immune to damage while there are more than two tentacles left, but if you're down to two, Lusca is vulnerable.
 

But what about my four reward merits?   Make sure all teams on the league do a bit of damage to each tentacle before taking out the head and you will get rewards for both tentacles and the head.  They count as defeated when the head is.

 

Is the head shot with two tentacles something new?  I've not faced Lusca since the redesign.  I've never heard anyone mention this before, so if it's always been...wow.

[Rudra]

38 minutes ago, Techwright said:

 

Is the head shot with two tentacles something new?  I've not faced Lusca since the redesign.  I've never heard anyone mention this before, so if it's always been...wow.

I think it is original design? I remember being on a PUG that ignored some tentacles before, but I may be misremembering.

[Luminara]

51 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Is the head shot with two tentacles something new?

 

I don't know, I don't generally watch hentai.

[Burk]

I'm not sure it was that way on live, but the head becoming vulnerable with 2 tentacles left has been a thing for a while.

[Shin Magmus]

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

There's also the hangover effect where many people skipped it past the initial badge-getting, because they didn't think it rewarded enough.  That's been changed now, give people a chance to catch up! 

 

I say this thinking of the person I was in a league with that was taking down the Croatoa pair of GMs shortly after the update who told me that he knew that oh no, they haven't made any changes to them.  People sometimes don't pay attention...

I specifically try to mention that the Lusca hunt will give 22 Reward Merits when I recruit, and I've seen other people start doing this as well in LFG.  Though, when I'm online, I'm generally the first person to start the GM hunts in response to the Zone Event messages.  I'm just saying that the interest I see in Lusca is far less than the other faster monsters.