Nexus Clash

Let's get right to the point: clicking Search (or I guess using the keyboard shortcut for it) in various places thousands of times, spending AP cycle after AP cycle hoping the RNG blesses you with enough of The Thing to fill out a badge is boring. It also doesn't really interact with other players, at best you'll be a target.

I've heard about ideas floating around but figured that we could get some written down before we suggest something more detailed than "I want them to be less bad".

So, to start, here's two I came up with.

First, class-based achievements you have to fulfill to get the ranks. Similar to how badges work now, but instead of "click Search approximately 2500 times in a brewery", it's more akin to "kill 500/1 000/2 500/5 000 pets or kill that many with your own" for a PM, "deal 10 000/25 000/50 000/100 000 damage to wards and/or fortifications" as a basher, "heal 2 500/5 000/10 000/20 000 health" as a Lightspeaker or Advocate. Stuff like that. Resetting would carry over the number of badges achieved, so it's technically possible to just get the bottom set of badges if you want, but imo being handicapped to starting from scratch versus having a 30A/B/C character is enough of a punishment.

Second, change things up a bit. Keep achievements, but break them up into smaller bits. Now you'd need 10 badges to progress, but you'd get a killing badge at 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 240, 320, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 and 1000 or something. Healing at 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 6000, 8000, 10 000, 12 500, 15 000, 17 500, 20 000 etc. Take the opportunity to toss the reading, lockpicking, pills/booze/food consuming, door breaking/fixing ones. Maybe combine it with the first suggestion and make the healing badges easier for angels and the killing ones easier for demons, idk. The important part is to interact with other players as much as possible, though it should be possible to get a decent start making or repairing items.

Feedback, suggestions? Let's get the ball rolling!

Thanks for bringing this up! This is a long-term (and ongoing) concern. In short, as you put in other words: Grinding badges is unfun. Grinding badges is also the thing that "post-max CP" is gated behind, so people feel the need to do it to stay competitive in endgame. Some things we've done have ameliorated this - having more normal activities count for badges, nerfing the gains to give veterans less of an edge, tying it to XP, etc. but having something as important as endgame tied to something so unfun is frustrating.

There are several theories that have been floated about what to do about it, which I'll try to list here:

A - Staying the course
I'm putting this one out there because it's the thing we're already doing and that gets done if nothing gets done about this. The thought process here is that the reason why grinds are so onerous is because they make up so much of the game's endgame content, so players looking for something more in endgame are basically forced to interact with them to keep their characters active and progressing. People focus on (and worry about) badges and badge CP because there aren't enough compelling, engaging alternatives for what to do with post-maxout AP. Adding more exploration content like Carousel Station, more depth to the raid war the game claims to be about, a return of boss fights, and more open-ended endgame content like what DO/Wizard/Conduit/Revenant get (the logic goes) will take pressure off grinds and mean they'll matter less.
Pros: It's what we're already doing and we don't have to come up with a replacement.
Cons: "Post-max CP" is a rather important thing to leave in the hands of a mechanic that we're trying to de-emphasize.

B - Just kill badge rewards and change nothing else
I'm also putting this out there for completion's sake, but it does have its proponents. The name says it all - destroy achievement stats and badges as a feature or just strip all rewards from them without any other change and without adding any new content to replace them. A variation on this some have suggested is "replace them with purely cosmetic rewards", which is a significant enough variation to be worth mentioning but not enough to be fully listed separately - the end result is still that there's no mechanical benefit.
Pros: Levels the playing field a lot between veterans and newer characters.
Cons: Blasting potentially hundreds of CP off the builds of hundreds of characters is a pretty hard sell to the playerbase if they get nothing in return and probably only could be done at a breath change. Most people did grinds expecting to get something and we'd have to adopt quite the my-way-or-the-highway attitude telling them the reward is now nothing. Most people like the idea of "post-maxout CP" even if it isn't in this form.

C - Different grind rewards
One idea that's been put out there is to stop tying post-max CP to grinds and instead have each grind reward with a small, thematically linked benefit to the thing so grinded. For instance finishing Angels Killed would grant a small benefit vs angels or Items Repaired would lower the costs of repairing.
Pros: It'd take the focus off of grinding for good and people who did a thing because they liked a thing would get a boon to that thing.
Cons: On its face it'd mean giving up on the idea of post-maxout CP or else we'd have to find something else to tie it to. Some players are probably pretty attached to the idea of having gotten some amount of CP and that'll have to be smoothed over. Some badges are hard to add thematic boons to.

D - Change how you get Ranks
By replacing the requirement with procedurally generated quests or other steps you have to do to earn the Ranks. I've heard no two similar proposals of this type. Perhaps this is the proposal thread for how to do it. The OP puts out one such proposal.
Pros: Hard to say without getting into specific proposals. That said, as Bob is fond of saying, "The fun thing should be the thing that wins the game". There are a lot of things we could ask players to do to earn Ranks than what they're doing now.
Cons: Leaves us with the question of what happens with characters who put effort into badges. Maybe the "different rewards" thing. Telling people they get nothing is a hard sell.

E - Add More Badge Categories
...without raising the Rank cap. (I'm not going to include "Raise the rank cap so veterans get even more" in this list of options as unlike the other five options here, it has no vocal fans that I know of) There are a lot of other things that can be included - Transcend kills, items found, items consumed, spells cast, infusions laid, that sort of thing. The idea here is to put more and more of badges into the range of things players were going to do anyway and let people opt out of some that are boring or contrary to their roleplay without losing anything.
Pros: Keeps the current system intact without having to turn the game upside down to replace it. Part of the bad reputation of badges is from how it feels for completionist-minded players (one of our constituencies as a game; this is not an insult) who feel that because the game rewards something, they have to do it and are being penalized for not being able to e.g. Angel characters being unable to get Angels Killed.
Cons: The above constituency feel frustrated with this because boring or unattainable badges represent a roadblock to the highest Rank. The highest Rank is still an absurdly distant goal rewarding multi-breath veterancy, unless we add a lot of these and make practically every action contribute to a badge somehow.

F - Lower the Requirements
The OP has a suggestion on this too, and variations of it have been tossed around. Make lower badges count toward Ranks so you can get more Ranks with fewer grinds, thus making a high Rank easily attainable for most active characters.
Pros: Probably easy to do. People like getting stuff, and it'd take the most onerous/boring/difficult badges off the table since the reward incentive to seek them is gone.
Cons: Hard to find the right balance of ease. Too little of this and some Ranks are still purely tied to multi-breath veterancy. Too much and every meta-active character has 600 Tier 3 CP at maxout more or less by default and we'd have to balance around that.

Kandarin has listed a lot of individual ideas, but any solution is likely to incorporate bits and pieces from all of those options. I see three major questions that any sort of re-do of the system would need to address

1. Should we reward user veterancy?
The biggest reason that Dev team never did anything with grinds in the past few years is that there was a worry that people would be very irritated that their years of grinding were wiped away and they would up and leave the game. As the userbase has turned over several times in the last 2-3 years (I myself only came back into the game in May 2020) this has become less of a concern as many long-time players have voiced that they'd rather do away with the grinds for the good of the game.

Our new system implemented in B5 also was a big step towards reducing veterancy bonus, although there are some major issues with the current system as well. Also it still is rewarding long-time user veterancy bonus (users who have seen multiple breaths). I am fine with rewarding people who stuck around in a current breath, but people who played in B4 should not have any significant advantages over B5.

2. What is a reasonable amount of CP to have easily obtainable? Maximally obtainable?
This is the real spicy question, mostly because people have strong opinions on things. Lets define easily obtainable as something that a player could gain in around 3 months of consistent play on a character. Currently you obtain 620 CP from level 1-30, and there will probably always be around 40-60 cp gained from exploration badges in any given breath (50 currently planned in B5, although not everything is in the game) You can also obtain another 300 from grinds, although in 3 months of play you'd probably be hard pressed to do more than one 500 grind unless you picked one for XP gain. We also will likely have other mini-badges for endgame boss pets and other such event things, but for ease lets disregard those.

In our current system, this gets you maybe 700 cp max at level 30, but more likely just levelling CP + badges. I think that's pretty low and I would see something like 800 cp being a better amount to have earnable within that playtime. I think maximally available CP is at a good spot, currently we have 970 max for people who have been playing for probably 5+ *years* and more like 930 for people who have been dedicated grinding. I think I'd split the difference and have 950ish be the max before any event CP awards are considered.

3. If you take out the grinding, what do we do with the stats? Just there for stats sake or something else?
This one is where it gets really open ended. I don't think grinding is bad, because sometimes you just want to spend your AP while still doing *something*. But making grinds so important that people drive themselves insane optimizing it is not ideal either.


Anyway I think some sort of minor achievement system where you gain small buffs from every stat that passes a benchmark is ideal. This would also only be per-breath, career stats would just be there for posterity. I think this would allow much smaller numbers that are achievable, but also eliminate a lot of the NEED to grind as the buffs would be more QoL or just interesting things (like drinking booze after you've done 200 this breath now heals small amounts of MP or something). There is a big list of these that Nayru posted elsewhere that we'd probably iterate from.

The trickier part of this equation is how you earn the CP. I'm not 100% sure, and I think that there might still be some element of ranks and having to achieve some amount of things to unlock that final bit of CP. However, as above, I'd rather that just be your final 150 or so CP and make 150 more CP readily available. Maybe something like every exploration badge is worth 2 CP and then you get a bonus 20 CP at level 10, and a bonus 30 CP at level 20. That's just off the top of my head, there are a million other ways to distribute it

While I don't mind losing all the grind on High Rank characters, I also don't have confidence that the classes will ever get balanced where Base Level 30 CP will be will be enough to: 1. Have a fun class 2. Competent Class. 3. Hell, Even My Rank H NC doesn't feel good to play.

For this reason, I'm more inclined on the option E. Make more fun badges. Let everyone get there easier that doesn't take years to achieve. Let it be a true end game content. No potential trashing of the all the hard-work all the grinders alredy spent on this game and everyone gets to achive their ranks.

I agree that CP rewards should be stopped at a certain stage (I think the current one is in a pretty good place) I still want to see the Rank letters go up for the over-achievers. Let them flex their letters without being more overpowered than the rest.

Make Temporary* badges or achievement ranks for factional play too. Renown spent, Flags Capped, Ally flag recapped.

Tie Achievement to events like the carousel (yes, not just exploration badge)

I also don't agree ranks being tied exclusively to XP. Because the classes aren't balanced to get the same amount of XP/AP so there is a huge bias in this design. If when that's ironed out, maybe...but I think this is bigger problem if tackled together.


*Achievement unlocked by faction with benefits enjoyed by the members.

(PS, Don't always have to reinvent the wheel when everyone points out how it works and how it can improve)

I think it's also worth noting that the current system as implemented, for those of us who feel they want/need to participate in it (I feel like I NEED to get more CP to get that final set of HP for my ES, but I also feel like my Conduit and IB are fine and done), makes us "disappear" from raid rosters/activities the faction may have planned, since most of our AP SHOULD go toward grinding, which is boring and not what we want to promote in a game like this.

Dissident wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 8:16 am While I don't mind losing all the grind on High Rank characters, I also don't have confidence that the classes will ever get balanced where Base Level 30 CP will be will be enough to: 1. Have a fun class 2. Competent Class. 3. Hell, Even My Rank H NC doesn't feel good to play.

For this reason, I'm more inclined on the option E. Make more fun badges. Let everyone get there easier that doesn't take years to achieve. Let it be a true end game content. No potential trashing of the all the hard-work all the grinders alredy spent on this game and everyone gets to achive their ranks.

I agree that CP rewards should be stopped at a certain stage (I think the current one is in a pretty good place) I still want to see the Rank letters go up for the over-achievers. Let them flex their letters without being more overpowered than the rest.

Quote-cropping this specific part of Diss' post, because this is more-or-less how I feel about the problem. I'm extremely leery of CP being stripped from achievements entirely, because almost every class in the game feels terrible with the core lv30 CP (and that's without examining how some trees go deep into the 90-cp bracket while others don't, and how some classes need some hefty CP investment before they're even functional), and while something could/should(?) be done to make endgame more accessible, that 'something'... probably shouldn't be taking a hammer to everyone's fingers? Like. There's already a problem with some skills never seeing active play due to tight CP budgets mandating "useful" over "fun", locking everyone to an even stricter budget would only make that worse or cause a truly insane amount of skill-buyback-skill churn.

I'd also miss it if the Grind(TM) went away entirely, because it's a longstanding oddity of the Nexus and it'd be weird to see it go, plus it incentivizes interacting with portions of the game that would otherwise never see use (hi, Lockpicking, how you doin') - but other then that, I'm all for making it easier for newer characters.

Grind is good. It solves many of the 'need CP to make working character' problems and can assist with issues of balancing.

Provide more fun badges. Suggestions have been made many times by many people, I'll float/reiterate a few here:

Wards damage dealt - support factional warfare!
Wards destroyed - support more factional warfare!
Standards taken - support even more factional warfare!
Standards retrieved - go on, take a guess...
Transcended kills - support murder!
AOE damage dealt - support indiscriminate murder!
Kills as a mortal - support challenging murder!
Bob Q Generic kills - support really challenging murder!
Environmental deaths - the Darwin CP award
Discrete tiles explored - support dev challenges!

SkullFace wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 10:23 pm Grind is good. It solves many of the 'need CP to make working character' problems and can assist with issues of balancing.

Provide more fun badges. Suggestions have been made many times by many people, I'll float/reiterate a few here:

Wards damage dealt - support factional warfare!
Wards destroyed - support more factional warfare!
Standards taken - support even more factional warfare!
Standards retrieved - go on, take a guess...
Transcended kills - support murder!
AOE damage dealt - support indiscriminate murder!
Kills as a mortal - support challenging murder!
Bob Q Generic kills - support really challenging murder!
Environmental deaths - the Darwin CP award
Discrete tiles explored - support dev challenges!

Hah, hey I like these a lot, especially the last two! Even if they aren't tied to badges or CP, having more stats tracked makes things more interesting.

I don't really mind keeping some aspect of the current system, or putting something entirely new in place. However, I continue to think that the current system is excessively beneficial to older players, and would like to see it flattened significantly. I think the following are worth considering if we're basically keeping the current system:

1) catch-up mechanism like the one I proposed in the suggestions forum that effectively lets recently grinded (this breath) badges count for double for new players. I.e. in breath achievements also count.
2) increase the rank cap without increasing cp beyond rank h sounds totally reasonable - give people something to show off
3) more achievements for stuff people actually want to do is a great idea
4) more achievements in each class to allow super specialists to continue to benefit (2000, 4000, 8000?)

Overall: increase flexibility in how achievements are acquired and lower the initial ramp up on cp for new characters. Allow characters to really specialise in the things they like doing beyond the normal grind limit. Grinding 1000 locks picked shouldn't feel like something every character eventually needs to do to 'actually' max out.

Klapaucius wrote: ↑Wed Sep 07, 2022 1:05 am4) more achievements in each class to allow super specialists to continue to benefit (2000, 4000, 8000?)

I really like this idea. Lets leaderboard goons keep on grinding for ranks while going for their leaderboard rankings instead of taking time off that grind to grind other grinds.

That said, one thing I really like about the current system is that it makes a lot of the search grind items inherently valuable and usable as a currency - they're fungible, relatively portable, relatively durable and an actual store of value (AP labor) that can be converted into another use value (grind stats). More mediums of exchange are always good ways to encourage player engagement in other game systems!