The return of mobius ages - Vagrant Lands

Anyone gotten an elf out there yet? I'm getting close to 1,000,000 boss points and have some clannmates who have been there a while. Figured one of us would have found at least one by now.

Anyone thing Ateam is messing with the percentages? We were kind of thinking they may not seriously release elves until later. Not that I care that much, I'm in it for the spirits. But I was kind of expecting to get a few of those guys for the investment I'm making in the run.

BigBad wrote:Anyone gotten an elf out there yet? I'm getting close to 1,000,000 boss points and have some clannmates who have been there a while. Figured one of us would have found at least one by now.

Anyone thing Ateam is messing with the percentages? We were kind of thinking they may not seriously release elves until later. Not that I care that much, I'm in it for the spirits. But I was kind of expecting to get a few of those guys for the investment I'm making in the run.

its been released just very very low chance like a AA from a free ds. One of my clanmate got dark elf.

Kyan

Yeah I summoned a Dark Elf Bersecker from lv boss lv 50
Tks ATeam

ryesteve wrote:So how is it working in the big clans? The officers say "kill my bosses or find a new clan?"

My clan is not big but we have quite a few active players and vagrant was down so so long that many have full prog teams so we just wing it. People are setup in a range from bp to ep heavy but all have some of both so there are always some boss up and bosses doesn't last long. If its above lv40 less than 5 minutes. The high 30s are trickiest. Takes more to beat but no chance at a infinitestimally small AA summon but even those doesn't last long and everyone has progs so you can kill your own and move on if it last longer than you want.

Kyan

I like the way your clan works. I'm butting heads because I want the bosses cleared as quickly as possible, but some feel they should be kept up at least an hour to give everyone a shot at getting a summons.

ryesteve wrote: I'm butting heads because I want the bosses cleared as quickly as possible, but some feel they should be kept up at least an hour to give everyone a shot at getting a summons.

I know precisely what you mean. These particular events VL, and mobius require a surprisingly high level of coordination between a group of people possibly spread all around the world. when one turns the game on, it is generally because they have a spare moment; lunch, stepped out for a smoke, sitting on the toilet, pulled into the parking lot a few minutes early. And what better to do than burn through some energy and battle points? but nope. you do 4 taps and hit a nice big boss, knock out 60% of his health, and call for assistance. then what?

you can't really do more missions until that boss is downed. you're also not going to be able to neurotically "check" on the boss's status every few minutes for the indeterminate future. ends with plenty of ep/bp regeneration waste.

but realistically; I don't think there is anything you could reasonably ASK people to do about making this entire process more pleasant. People have things to do, and for some idiotic reason; A-Team decided to implement the 'call for assistance' thing they way they did. Most of these problems would be solved if the bosses were visible to all clan upon span like in mobius, AND the call for assistance sent a NOTIFICATION to clan folk who have notifications enabled. THAT would make this much easier.



Just a minor complaint really; I'm having a lot of fun with this event

it's not as many skills as mobius, but I can say I'm getting a fairly good haul of skills, also stacking success rates seem to be at an all time high (for me at least), and plenty of miscellaneous As

Aside from coordination, it's also an interesting case study in game theory because of the way they set up the point system. You need to be the one initiating the battles to earn a lot of points, but you can't start the next battle, until the current one is finished; yet the incentives for other people to help you, are pretty damn weak... except for the implicit belief that if you help them, they'll help you. I don't think A Team is smart enough to have done this on purpose, but the built-in conflict generated by the rules and point-scoring, are pretty interesting.

larry378 wrote:

ryesteve wrote: I'm butting heads because I want the bosses cleared as quickly as possible, but some feel they should be kept up at least an hour to give everyone a shot at getting a summons.

but realistically; I don't think there is anything you could reasonably ASK people to do about making this entire process more pleasant. People have things to do, and for some idiotic reason; A-Team decided to implement the 'call for assistance' thing they way they did. Most of these problems would be solved if the bosses were visible to all clan upon span like in mobius, AND the call for assistance sent a NOTIFICATION to clan folk who have notifications enabled. THAT would make this much easier.

Just a minor complaint really; I'm having a lot of fun with this event

it's not as many skills as mobius, but I can say I'm getting a fairly good haul of skills, also stacking success rates seem to be at an all time high (for me at least), and plenty of miscellaneous As

in moebius there were some confusion as to when is it appropriate to hit on someone else's boss. The finder should have time to get a crack at it before everyone else can wade it so I actually really like this change. If assistance is call then you know that they want it.

Kyan

ryesteve wrote:Aside from coordination, it's also an interesting case study in game theory because of the way they set up the point system. You need to be the one initiating the battles to earn a lot of points, but you can't start the next battle, until the current one is finished; yet the incentives for other people to help you, are pretty damn weak... except for the implicit belief that if you help them, they'll help you. I don't think A Team is smart enough to have done this on purpose, but the built-in conflict generated by the rules and point-scoring, are pretty interesting.

depends on what you want from this event. If you're not after ranking and just the summons. Setting up bp heavy and just hit bosses as other find them is an effective way to go about it. That's how alot of ppl were setup during moebius to farm the AA summons. Even for point scoring if there are enough bosses up and you're only setup for bp. the returns are pretty comparable but that's all contingent on others finding boss for you. The thing is that the ep cost keeps climbing (cap at 20) still ridiculously high whereas bp cost is cap by loss level comparatively not that high. With the randomness of boss appearence its a little harder to calculate boss points return per energy point spend versus battle point spend. For battle point its actually not so bad even if you're only assisting particularly in the later rounds where it is so expensive per tap but the rate of boss appearence seems to be if anything down compare to earlier rounds.

Kyan
Kyan

kyan wrote:
in moebius there were some confusion as to when is it appropriate to hit on someone else's boss. The finder should have time to get a crack at it before everyone else can wade it so I actually really like this change. If assistance is call then you know that they want it.

Kyan

actually; taking into account the particular nature of how boss points work in vl, as opposed to mobius where summons were the only tangible reward, I find it even more baffling that they disabled the auto-assist. If you want more points, you WANT people to kill your summoned bosses. I still think there should be some manner of notification (on the phone, like when you receive a trade, or ally request [frankly I'm not sure why they deem that a notifiable event... receiving a clan enlistment request notificaiton if you are a general or lt would make sense, but ally requests?]) which can be activated by the request button; as opposed to unsolicited assistance which was always readily available in mobius.

ryesteve wrote:Aside from coordination, it's also an interesting case study in game theory because of the way they set up the point system. You need to be the one initiating the battles to earn a lot of points, but you can't start the next battle, until the current one is finished; yet the incentives for other people to help you, are pretty damn weak... except for the implicit belief that if you help them, they'll help you. I don't think A Team is smart enough to have done this on purpose, but the built-in conflict generated by the rules and point-scoring, are pretty interesting.

I think that this particular circumstance in vl with the weird boss point system is a prime opportunity for well coordinated teams to really excel and get great return for minimal investment.

any placement in the top 100 yields multiple skill spirits; all of which are in high demand, and highly valuable. Working as "teams" would let groups of players who most certainly couldn't make it by themselves to the top rankings have a good chance with a little teamwork. Let's say I have 2 friends, and we each want a skill spirit. So... I spec for full energy, and the two of them spec for full bp. I find bosses, and call for assistance (for bosses over lv20, I use my one 'free attack'). If we could coordinate in real time; e.g. oh look, a 1 hour bonus session. I keep finding, they keep killing; we burn ep/bp until the bonus session ends; and do this repeatedly... We as a team can get far more soul points for far less ep/bp investment than any individual can for the same ep/bp investment (due to recharge, and effective increase in total resources expendable due to essentially consolidating the effect of mybp/elixers etc... into the point pool of an individual)

Anyways; the logistics of doing something like that seem to be "not worth it" for me. I'm sure someone "more invested" could very well do something like this and reap the benefits; but there are too many contingencies which are uncontrollable in-game. Unless your friends are literally your employed subordinates irl, I wouldn't expect to hold anybody to some sort of commitment where they have to kill things I summon in a certain timeframe after I summon them etc... and frankly even the idea of sending an email every time I spawn a boss to all my 'attackers' seems like a tedious prospect which once again seems "not worth it".

However, my personal apathy aside, I think this is a pretty interesting point system in vl; which I find quite impressive for A-Team; which does indeed require a little more strategy that
1. BUY EP 2. BURN EP 3. REPEAT 1,2
like most of their events.

that being said, I'm just finishing off clan requests when I see them, and knocking off over 50% of whatever I summon before I call for assistance. I'm not really trying to rank, just enjoying the change in pace from past "who can click this button more?" events and free summons

kyan wrote:

in moebius there were some confusion as to when is it appropriate to hit on someone else's boss. The finder should have time to get a crack at it before everyone else can wade it so I actually really like this change. If assistance is call then you know that they want it.

Kyan

lol, do you know, i actually had to deal with that already in my clan. our newest recruit, chiki, was conflicted about whether she should fight our bosses or not. i addressed the clan with pretty much the same thing: since we have the option of not sharing them if we want them all to ourselves, if you see one, it's ok to attack(if you want to).

larry378 wrote:

kyan wrote:
in moebius there were some confusion as to when is it appropriate to hit on someone else's boss. The finder should have time to get a crack at it before everyone else can wade it so I actually really like this change. If assistance is call then you know that they want it.

Kyan

actually; taking into account the particular nature of how boss points work in vl, as opposed to mobius where summons were the only tangible reward, I find it even more baffling that they disabled the auto-assist. If you want more points, you WANT people to kill your summoned bosses. I still think there should be some manner of notification (on the phone, like when you receive a trade, or ally request [frankly I'm not sure why they deem that a notifiable event... receiving a clan enlistment request notificaiton if you are a general or lt would make sense, but ally requests?]) which can be activated by the request button; as opposed to unsolicited assistance which was always readily available in mobius.

ryesteve wrote:Aside from coordination, it's also an interesting case study in game theory because of the way they set up the point system. You need to be the one initiating the battles to earn a lot of points, but you can't start the next battle, until the current one is finished; yet the incentives for other people to help you, are pretty damn weak... except for the implicit belief that if you help them, they'll help you. I don't think A Team is smart enough to have done this on purpose, but the built-in conflict generated by the rules and point-scoring, are pretty interesting.

any placement in the top 100 yields multiple skill spirits; all of which are in high demand, and highly valuable. Working as "teams" would let groups of players who most certainly couldn't make it by themselves to the top rankings have a good chance with a little teamwork. Let's say I have 2 friends, and we each want a skill spirit. So... I spec for full energy, and the two of them spec for full bp. I find bosses, and call for assistance (for bosses over lv20, I use my one 'free attack'). If we could coordinate in real time; e.g. oh look, a 1 hour bonus session. I keep finding, they keep killing; we burn ep/bp until the bonus session ends; and do this repeatedly... We as a team can get far more soul points for far less ep/bp investment than any individual can for the same ep/bp investment (due to recharge, and effective increase in total resources expendable due to essentially consolidating the effect of mybp/elixers etc... into the point pool of an individual)

That works well in theory but in practice you need so much more time than that to rank. It is so much more competitive than I thought at least based up the first ranking. We'll see if the pace has slow down when the next one comes out. Not only do you need coordination but lots of time as well and with the random bonus time. You'll have to coordinate several ppl to be on then. hard to do.

Kyan

kyan wrote:

larry378 wrote:

kyan wrote:
in moebius there were some confusion as to when is it appropriate to hit on someone else's boss. The finder should have time to get a crack at it before everyone else can wade it so I actually really like this change. If assistance is call then you know that they want it.

Kyan

actually; taking into account the particular nature of how boss points work in vl, as opposed to mobius where summons were the only tangible reward, I find it even more baffling that they disabled the auto-assist. If you want more points, you WANT people to kill your summoned bosses. I still think there should be some manner of notification (on the phone, like when you receive a trade, or ally request [frankly I'm not sure why they deem that a notifiable event... receiving a clan enlistment request notificaiton if you are a general or lt would make sense, but ally requests?]) which can be activated by the request button; as opposed to unsolicited assistance which was always readily available in mobius.

ryesteve wrote:Aside from coordination, it's also an interesting case study in game theory because of the way they set up the point system. You need to be the one initiating the battles to earn a lot of points, but you can't start the next battle, until the current one is finished; yet the incentives for other people to help you, are pretty damn weak... except for the implicit belief that if you help them, they'll help you. I don't think A Team is smart enough to have done this on purpose, but the built-in conflict generated by the rules and point-scoring, are pretty interesting.

any placement in the top 100 yields multiple skill spirits; all of which are in high demand, and highly valuable. Working as "teams" would let groups of players who most certainly couldn't make it by themselves to the top rankings have a good chance with a little teamwork. Let's say I have 2 friends, and we each want a skill spirit. So... I spec for full energy, and the two of them spec for full bp. I find bosses, and call for assistance (for bosses over lv20, I use my one 'free attack'). If we could coordinate in real time; e.g. oh look, a 1 hour bonus session. I keep finding, they keep killing; we burn ep/bp until the bonus session ends; and do this repeatedly... We as a team can get far more soul points for far less ep/bp investment than any individual can for the same ep/bp investment (due to recharge, and effective increase in total resources expendable due to essentially consolidating the effect of mybp/elixers etc... into the point pool of an individual)

That works well in theory but in practice you need so much more time than that to rank. It is so much more competitive than I thought at least based up the first ranking. We'll see if the pace has slow down when the next one comes out. Not only do you need coordination but lots of time as well and with the random bonus time. You'll have to coordinate several ppl to be on then. hard to do.

Kyan

yeah, pretty much; the "theory" for running something like this is incredibly simple; the execution is not.

I was describing 'lossless' progress during bonus times; as if a single person was controlling three phones; intangible delays between boss encounter and kill, and continuation of progress.

Even that would require some sort of precognition and preparation for when the bonus sessions were.

To rank in the end would likely require more time than solely the bonus time, but the bonus times would be a very profitable period in which to deploy such a strategy saving the collector quite a bit of ep.

kinda makes ya wonder lol; if a you ran several vms on a single desktop computer, and got a few participants in the same clan who were reasonably high level (so they have helpfully sized energy/battle energy reservoirs as opposed to creating a bunch of brand new accounts); 'account recover' on a bluestacks (or something similar) on each, and have some sort of macro control all vms simultaneously to assist the 'boss finder' account by checking for 'clan assist' prompt all day long, auto refilling bp if nobody WITH 'recharged' bp is available, etc etc...

but I fear I have digressed. The bottom line is that the 'theory' of how to optimally extract boss points from an event such as this is relatively simple, but the execution requires professional or automated degrees of coordination for true efficiency. So I have a feeling the rankings will come down more to who has slightly better nonoptimal coordination, rather than purely resources (like in the other events where everything is basically a "who has more ep" competition); although large differences in resources will make a difference. (the vm system I described running with 32 dummies and 1 collector using ZERO ep/bp and just waits on recharge will probably lose to a 1-member clan who spends 1000ep/1000bp)

I wonder if ATeam messed with all the summon %s.

Now that I'm back to farming the swamp, I'm seeing 50% skills from B summons (16 out of 30). Seems way higher than before the event. Need moar samples of course.

Stack level up % chance still blows, anecdotally speaking.

larry378 wrote:
but I fear I have digressed. The bottom line is that the 'theory' of how to optimally extract boss points from an event such as this is relatively simple, but the execution requires professional or automated degrees of coordination for true efficiency. So I have a feeling the rankings will come down more to who has slightly better nonoptimal coordination, rather than purely resources (like in the other events where everything is basically a "who has more ep" competition); although large differences in resources will make a difference. (the vm system I described running with 32 dummies and 1 collector using ZERO ep/bp and just waits on recharge will probably lose to a 1-member clan who spends 1000ep/1000bp)

it is a matter of resource. If you're willing to blow 500bp/ep. You can rank easily.

Kyan

Haha clearly more resources are always good.

Im just sayin this event allows for strategy beyond that.

Resources are not as 'absolute' in terms of utility as in say a tower event.

Playing differently could give you dramatically different yields between two identically leveled/point allocated players starting with identical resources.

there's no doubl
cut off to get in rank 50 will be at least 2m5 point

how does those ppl manage that much lol. burnt almost 200 pots total and i'm only on rank 567th pffff

dextery wrote:how does those ppl manage that much lol. burnt almost 200 pots total and i'm only on rank 567th pffff

guess youre around 280k right ? Im at 563 lol

dextery wrote:how does those ppl manage that much lol. burnt almost 200 pots total and i'm only on rank 567th pffff

they're doing that by what we were discussing about the weird boss point distribution system.

I've been leaving 10+% on the vast majority of my bosses (the exceptions obviously being the ones who have less health than a 20% attack), I've spend ZERO pots, ZERO myEP/BP/Elixers and I was ranked 3000 in the 1/10 rank check.

Obviously the way that rankings work are some type of exponential curves so that the higher you get, the more you need to move up one rank, but the fact remains; you really can get more bang for your 'buck' (potions) in this case by working in tandem with the boss point system rather than approaching this event from an individual tactical perspective.

I have to applaud A-Team for this though, this really is a true 'clan' effort. far moreso than those collect up to 100k of some item ones (drops of darkness, stalactites, etc...) wherin everyone is doing their own thing independent of everyone else and there happen to be some perks for aggregate results; and having a 'lazy' clan won't really hamper your personal performance (since true high rankers in that had well over 100k of the drop item each iirc). However in this particular event; you truly need a cooperative and coordinated clan to get more return for every single potion spent. (i.e. soloing all the bosses you summon is dreadfully inefficient; in terms of boss point output, as well as summon output)

also like kyan said; resources.

better tactics will stretch resources further, but even if you have the HAL 9000 running your botnet clan of 32 dummy accounts that just kill every boss you come across instantly leaving you to just do missions to find more; you will still be beat in boss point competition by the ONE guy who decided to use 10000ep/bp

(the numbers are exaggerated, but you get the idea)

Well, if there's one thing I've learned from this event, it's that there are even more clans than I thought that are f'ing amazing. I've been glued to the game for two days straight, and it felt like we were keeping a reasonable pace, but man, I sure learned otherwise.

lol ryesteve ur damn right, i'm 280k ish on point ;D. Guess what i gonna do larry. I gonna pump in 400 eu LOL. Will see who is better coord or me.

With coord, you need to share loot ;O. And pretty sure no one would go full bp, just for helping. Unless your paying him bp pot and skill book.

lol, dex, half my clan was madly redistributing points just before the event started. we have only a couple of finders and an overabundance of killers, and we're not even trying to rank anywhere, lol. you'll be surprised what the well oiled clans are like, they will easily rank with just a little bit of coordination.

Sounds like a good setup for your finders to be ranking...