Hunters Boost Road (HBR) has become too polarizing and should be changed.

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Ade

Ade

;3
I'm not suggesting a new mechanic or any changes to game balance. I was informed by Matt on the #pso Discord that it's okay to post about this.

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Anyway, here's how I feel about HBR:

I believe its original intent has been superseded. The intent of HBR was getting people to play "lesser played" content, but now those "lesser played" quests are quickly becoming the "only played" quests outside of TTF, RT, and sometimes POD. This means there's a huge chunk of quests that are deemed too strong for HBR, but are outside of the holy trinity of boss rush quests, that never get played. (ie. Road to Nowhere, Forsaken Friends, the full episode MAE quests, the XRD Series, MSB, and Tyrell's Ego, just to name a few.) A lot of great content is being completely ignored as of late, which means HBR is now doing the opposite of what it was supposed to do.

Many of us from the server, Matt included, had a very productive and civil discussion about this on Discord several weeks ago. Matt suggested boosting one or two quests each week to keep things fresh, and so that players don't feel locked into the same three to five quests for an entire month.

Another friend of mine, who prefers to remain anonymous, remarked that a player can grow to hate certain quests after a long and grindy HBR, which I hadn't really considered. However, this is very true! (I will hate Phantasmal World 3 until the end of time for precisely this reason.)

Furthermore, I especially dislike that certain quests are arbitrarily deemed "too powerful" for HBR even if they take way longer to clear. It's like their added length isn't even taken into consideration. (If you look at sheer "monsters killed per minute," some of these longer quests are way less offensive than New Mop Up Operation # 3, for example.)

Anyway, I hope something changes. HBR has really lost its luster for me. If I see a quest that I cannot stand and decide to skip HBR, as I have done for the last two months, it makes me feel excluded. I can either join open TTFs or make my own party and hope I get lucky, but that's about it. Not great.
 
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Mr Ade Prime!

I agree that HBR has become the only played quest and can become boring very fast!

It has become very hard to find other quests I want to play such as Tyrells Ego for my frozen shooter. But I never considered looking into how some quests actually are SUPER STRONG for some drops...like Tyrells Ego Forest and learned that my approach is also from pure selfish greed myself so your points made me reflect on myself a little!

I do like the idea that HBR tries to promote quests OUTSIDE of TTF, RT, POD...but I feel like the length of HBR is so long!!! If the quests can be rotated more frequently, that would be cool...But I also don't want to make it too hard on the GMs either!

Even if the HBR system cannot be changed for a while, I do hope that this threat can GENERATE SOME COOL DISCUSSIONS and IDEAS!!

Also, THANK YOU MR ADE PRIME for the Charge Vulcans 50h!

Yours,
Gachipon
 
I love event HBR because they usually have a good variety of quests that are worth running, while on the normal HBR if you don't play a lot on the first week you're going to have a hard time to increase your DAR since people will no longer join rooms that aren't that one OP quest.

Ade said:
Many of us from the server, Matt included, had a very productive and civil discussion about this on Discord several weeks ago. Matt suggested boosting one or two quests each week to keep things fresh, and so that players don't feel locked into the same three to five quests for an entire month.
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This with a lower requirement on the HBR ranks or even a monthly/seasonal reset would help a lot those who don't have much time to play would be neat.
 
Firstly I will ignore the fact you want people to play your quests ;)

But joking aside, I see this point. HBR is very strong, and if you are willing/have the time to grind you will get significant gains in all manners of PSO. That also causes some sort of issue where sometimes people will not want to party with people purely because they have not done the grind/put the work in to get a good boost, as nothing beats being in a full max party. The initial idea was great, to get unplayed quests played instead of just the same OP quests over and over. But as you specified now only HBR gets played aside from boss rush mostly. When it's an HBR you don't like or are too tired to grind for and skip, you end up soloing or boss-rushing instead of getting players for these other quests. For this reason, I barely play many quests at all. While I enjoy HBR immensely because I have the ability to grind endlessly sometimes I feel the community could definitely benefit from the system changing somehow.

The proposed idea by Matt boosting 1 or 2 quests a week to keep things fresh I feel is a good way to balance this. You could have a much smaller gain total; that way anyone could join and have the full boost and not feel left out because of time constraints, and the OP quests would not become too op/broken because the boosts would be a lot lower. This would also mean people will be less likely to get bored of the same quest as it's a shorter period and also not feel as bad playing other things during it, since they would only be losing out on a minimal boost. It would also make event timing a lot easier for the mods (like right now for example they decided to leave easter to the start of April to start with a fresh HBR).
 
I am also completely in agreement with this. The discord Voice chat group has regularly talked about this recently. Some dont want it to change cause they have the time to grind hbr most months and feel like a nerf to the boosts would penalize them. Many though dont have the time and if you come in halfway through a month or are in school while working you dont have time to grind hbr and there is no point in doing it for the last few weeks. In fact if you dont start the first week it can be extremely difficult to max hbr, especially during a slow month like this one. If there was a change to a weekly static boosted quest people wouldnt have to deal with joiners that have zero hbr, which people complain about and alienates parts of our community.

In light of this after much debate and thinking i believe a 50% or so, of hbr, static stacking boost would be good enough to make it worth it, maybe even if it was an not ideal quest, otherwise no one would play it anyway. They wouldnt have to grind hbr so the week or two doing that they would be getting buffs so it would balance out. It would need to function like hbr where it stacked depending on how many people in the group to encourage group play and non optimal quest enjoyment. I also think it should include more quests, with exception of some already OP quests like TTF and RT and stuff. Then if it was a really good quest there would be a lot of groups up!

I believe a change to the hbr like this would hopefully get more people playing regularly, happily grouping together, even with random joiners, and doing quests including sub optimal ones.

Ephinea!
 
Ade said:
I'm not suggesting a new mechanic or any changes to game balance. I was informed by Matt on the #pso Discord that it's okay to post about this.

View attachment 18891

Anyway, here's how I feel about HBR:

I believe its original intent has been superseded. The intent of HBR was getting people to play "lesser played" content, but now those "lesser played" quests are quickly becoming the "only played" quests outside of TTF, RT, and sometimes POD. This means there's a huge chunk of quests that are deemed too strong for HBR, but are outside of the holy trinity of boss rush quests, that never get played. (ie. Road to Nowhere, Forsaken Friends, the full episode MAE quests, the XRD Series, MSB, and Tyrell's Ego, just to name a few.) A lot of great content is being completely ignored as of late, which means HBR is now doing the opposite of what it was supposed to do.

Many of us from the server, Matt included, had a very productive and civil discussion about this on Discord several weeks ago. Matt suggested boosting one or two quests each week to keep things fresh, and so that players don't feel locked into the same three to five quests for an entire month.

Another friend of mine, who prefers to remain anonymous, remarked that a player can grow to hate certain quests after a long and grindy HBR, which I hadn't really considered. However, this is very true! (I will hate Phantasmal World 3 until the end of time for precisely this reason.)

Furthermore, I especially dislike that certain quests are arbitrarily deemed "too powerful" for HBR even if they take way longer to clear. It's like their added length isn't even taken into consideration. (If you look at sheer "monsters killed per minute," some of these longer quests are way less offensive than New Mop Up Operation # 3, for example.)

Anyway, I hope something changes. HBR has really lost its luster for me. If I see a quest that I cannot stand and decide to skip HBR, as I have done for the last two months, it makes me feel excluded. I can either join open TTFs or make my own party and hope I get lucky, but that's about it. Not great.
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The idea of a weekly quest or two that gets buffs and also changes is a good idea, I agree.

However, I don't really agree with the HBR complaints regarding the grind and/or how it penalizes someone who doesn't have time to play or jumps into HBR late in the month. That's a player problem and not really an HBR problem.

Most online games work the same way. If a player has the time, they will dedicate their time to clear content, sometimes over and over again, to get what they want. Whether that's an item, boosts, or some other reward.

If a player doesn't have the time to do that, they won't get rewarded. It is what it is.

A player who is complaining about growing to hate certain quests after a long HBR grind can simply, you know, not grind the HBR. They can play other content.

Would not playing HBR be optimal for experience or finding items? Probably not. But no one forces that choice onto a player.

You can play some other content or another game entirely. There isn't a gun to your head telling you to spam the same quests all month.

For those who do grind and reap the rewards for it, that's a choice they make and they deserve those rewards. Those who can't grind (and the reason why they can't doesn't matter) or don't grind, don't get rewarded.

We can't tailor to everyone's needs based on their schedules, life or willingness to do such and such, but the weekly quest idea could be a start to help those with less time or willpower to grind.

If such a thing is implemented, it's power would still be weaker than HBR, though. Because HBR requires effort, and the weekly quests do not. You just hop in and play whatever is currently boosted.
 
+1 for a rotation of weekly quests. 100% on board with it being significantly weaker than HBR. Just something to give a bit of direction and cooperation for casual play.

I would also be very interested in like, a single random daily quest with similar weak boosts. In a similar mindset to not being interested in a particular HBR, having something new every day could be good if the weekly quests don’t spark joy. I recognize how close this is to there being “dailies” in pso, but all of these are specifically just giving players some direction if they aren’t sure what to play.
 
I'm fresh so most of what you guys are talking about I can't speak to. For example, having not even been here a full month I can't say how stale grinding HBR can get.

I do have some questions based on some point in this conversation:

What exactly are the OP quests and what makes them OP?

Is there any reward or incentive to complete all the quests or all the quests in specific categories?

How important are good drops? if I never worry too much about good drops will I eventually hit a wall and start to struggle to complete quests?
 
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GatorCountry said:
I'm fresh so most of what you guys are talking about I can't speak to. For example, having not even been here a full month I can't say how stale grinding HBR can get.

I do have some questions based on some point in this conversation:

What exactly are the OP quests and what makes them OP?

Is there any reward or incentive to complete all the quests or all the quests in specific categories?

How important are good drops? if I never worry too much about good drops will I eventually hit a wall and start to struggle to complete quests?
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Very high monster count quests are typically what get deemed "too OP" for HBR. There are too many to list. The short list I provided is a decent chunk of them. Most of these are LONG ENOUGH quests that they aren't more "kills per minute" than the best HBR quests, but they still get excluded from the list, which I disagree with.

If we're talking about every quest in the game? No. But there are certain series of quests or certain paths you can take in the 1P Story Quests or Multimode Government Quests that provide specific rewards. Some regular quests (that can be played solo or Multimode) also have specific rewards. But no, there isn't a reward for beating EVERY QUEST.

Good gear is not important beyond personal importance. For example, a Ranger can [easily] beat the entire game with 50% hit Charge Vulcans, a 50% hit Charge Arms, Spread Needle with 0% hit, Frozen Shooter with 0% hit, Heaven Striker with 0% hit, and a 50% hit Charge Gungnir. All of these items are 1 PD each. Gear beyond essentials is just for making bigger numbers and personal pride.

I hope these answers help; and welcome to the community ;D
 
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Ade said:
Very high monster count quests are typically what get deemed "too OP" for HBR. There are too many to list. The short list I provided is a decent chunk of them. Most of these are LONG ENOUGH quests that they aren't more "kills per minute" than the best HBR quests, but they still get excluded from the list, which I disagree with.

If we're talking about every quest in the game? No. But there are certain series of quests or certain paths you can take in the 1P Story Quests or Multimode Government Quests that provide specific rewards. Some regular quests (that can be played solo or Multimode) also have specific rewards. But no, there isn't a reward for beating EVERY QUEST.

Good gear is not important beyond personal importance. For example, a Ranger can [easily] beat the entire game with 50% hit Charge Vulcans, a 50% hit Charge Arms, Spread Needle with 0% hit, Frozen Shooter with 0% hit, Heaven Striker with 0% hit, and a 50% hit Charge Gungnir. All of these items are 1 PD each. Gear beyond essentials is just for making bigger numbers and personal pride.

I hope these answers help; and welcome to the community ;D
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Very appreciated!
 
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In regards to the boost incentives if there was a change to HBR making it weekly, I think it would be nice to have a flat boost to everyone's DAR, even at a reduced rate, and also have the ability to grind those weekly quests for extra boosts past the flat rate(still at a reduced rate though). That way there would still be incentive for the people who do grind the HBR a bunch to keep on grinding like they do.
 
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Love this topic so far. I've sort of burned out on HBR even though I like it so I love the idea of finding more quests to play randomly.

What about a small boost apply to free rooms once 4 people join? Would that be a bad idea? Naturally this wouldn't be applied to quests.

I enjoy playing with randoms and even carrying new people is fun for me in general but I feel getting people playing random areas would help keep people out of camping in the lobby.
 
Ade said:
Very high monster count quests are typically what get deemed "too OP" for HBR. There are too many to list. The short list I provided is a decent chunk of them. Most of these are LONG ENOUGH quests that they aren't more "kills per minute" than the best HBR quests, but they still get excluded from the list, which I disagree with.
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I think this is a key point that should be brought up more. I think HBR is a wonderful idea but there's so many unused quests that it'd be sad if they weren't implemented somehow into the servers gameplay loop. Maybe, if they ever did these weaker weekly quests, they could have them compromise of quests that aren't normaly on the HBR in order to keep the experience fresh for players. The reduced bonuses would "balance" them out against the "weaker" hbr quests and admins could even have them grant a slight boost to the overall HBR score when completed as an alternative for players that can't farm HRB quests normally on week one. This game just isn't big enough, sadly, so anyone that doesn't grind out HBR on week one will tend to have a very rough time afterwards.

I think the system as we have it now is fine, I just feel that more alternatives would be great!
 
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Odd....someone either in LOBBY or in mew's room had JUST mentioned how "Happy" they were with the HBR and looking forward to more! She can't even say HOW many times mew's been pounced in lobby asking "Hey mew! When's the new HBR update???". So, HBR seems to be still hasing its Charm in some respects~! =3 Just sayin'! nya~!
 
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Harborer of Hope said:
Odd....someone either in LOBBY or in mew's room had JUST mentioned how "Happy" they were with the HBR and looking forward to more! She can't even say HOW many times mew's been pounced in lobby asking "Hey mew! When's the new HBR update???". So, HBR seems to be still hasing its Charm in some respects~! =3 Just sayin'! nya~!
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HBR is great for a new player to it imo. Good way to get pds, mats, other building blocks of wealth. HBR is still good overall. For sure when there are quests people like in it.
 
If setting up HBR to get people to do the "less played" quests doesn't work,
I see no problem with introducing alternative content to HBR.

I am in favor of changing the HBR eligible quests on a weekly basis.
The reason is that the weekly boosts are compatible with the quests.

For example, if you do an area with no rare enemies (mine or ruins etc) during the RER boost period, you will not benefit at all.

HBR is a great system, but it may have its drawbacks.
It takes a long time to polish, so people who don't have enough time to play may be put off by it.
The HBR system does not boost RER, so areas such as forests and temples, where the main purpose is to hunt rare enemies, are avoided.

HBR is supposed to be selected from among the eligible quests, though,
Quests such as Boss Rush and MAE are not included in the list of eligible quests. Such as those with too many strong enemies or too voluminous and take too long to complete.
If any of those quests are "less played", then no one will do them.

If there is content that can compensate for the shortcomings of HBR, wouldn't there be fewer "less played" quests?

Off topic, but there are people who only look at hunting efficiency for new quests and call out that quest.
It seems very disappointing to me that the creators put a lot of time and thought into balancing the quests so that everyone could enjoy them.
I agree that HBR is the way to remedy that.
But it may be a disaster for those who play only looking at hunting efficiency.

I look forward to your Easter event.

I am not good at English, so I used a translation tool.
I apologize if the meaning is difficult to understand.
 
Massively in favor of a handful of quests getting rotated out per week.

Nothing says "not playing PSO this month" best than a bad HBR. (I acknowledge that is a selfish issue as other players may enjoy the current rotation). On a weekly basis there is a good shot there will be something that everyone likes throughout the month.

Only thing I can add that I may have missed being suggested above is to have 3 quests per week. One from each episode to further broaden the net and improve the chances that there will be at least one quest that a majority of the player base can choose from.

I appreciate that HBR is being open to change and suggestions from the community.
 
I personally like HBR as it is currently. Even if there's only one "good" quest in the set, it gives you something to work on and build up throughout the month. January and February's HBR were particularly fun imo, but I wasn't a huge fan of this month's--just played other quests instead.

If HBR were to change, would that also potentially effect the seasonal events which use the current HBR system?
 
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