Patch notes 05/02/2020 -- Discussion

[Mihai]

Well I'd be inclined to get that plat card once once I gather 1000+ tickets to just clear my champs, but considering how awful are the newly released girls (in general) and if this trend continues I might just downgrade to silver card or none at all. I'm simply not interested to spend kobans/$ on those girls.

[DvDivXXX]

Thanks for the transition, Mihai! ^^ I was just about to talk about artwork again a little bit.

With everything else going on, I only just remembered about Bonny's and Pelagie's upgrades a few minutes ago. I had a nasty surprise (Bonny) and a very good one (Pelagie), so... it would average to neutral, I guess?

• Bonny's new affection scenes feel rushed and the style is rather ugly. More importantly, her new poses have zero continuity with the existing ones, and aren't that great (though not quite as bad as the affection scenes). Too bad, because I liked the original work a lot, and was looking forward to the new stuff with her.
   
• In sharp contrast, Pelagie's new scenes are very nice (to my taste at least), both in concept and execution, and her new poses, while noticeably different in style, are tastefully done, and also in direct continuity with her previous poses. Very nice surprise, because I wasn't a fan of the original work, which felt rushed and not particularly inspired to me.

Bottom line: there's still a long way to go to regain the quality and consistency of the game's golden age. Right now, it's still very hit and miss.

[~Crown Clown]

I think someone said from bug reporting that the tickets gain bug will only be for the contests before update, let's wait this new contest to end xd

And john said up there 16k upgrades omg, how much discount did he got from there then

[Mihai]

8 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

Thanks for the transition, Mihai! ^^ I was just about to talk about artwork again a little bit.

It's the elephant that's still in the room after all...

9 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

I had a nasty surprise (Bonny) and a very good one (Pelagie)

Oh sorry to hear that, I have only seen the poses after searching for them on the wiki and I was surprised that the artwork on the poses was very good. At this point I don't judge too harshly the idea behind the drawing or mistakes about character, I am going to appreciate when decent artwork is made. However now I am afraid to unlock the scenes after reading your comment. Well I shall reserve my judgement on that for now.

[fenronin]

Il y a 12 heures, Karyia a dit :

Just got an 100 drop for Date Arianne  So I can't really complain.

But there's good days, and bad days. Not so long ago I had some bad streaks on the Circus Event, while the Foreplay one was also a.. challenging one 🙄

On the other side, I got a 100 drop on that one that made up for it, now another on this one.

The thing is, there's now potential for things to go quicker and a chance for yet an additional girl. 

The odds part will always go back and forth, so it is what it is. Gotta try grinding through it 👍

Same *100 on Arianne

[Antimon]

Oh ok, so there's a bug with the multi stat purchase. It seemed very strange that I managed to buy something like 180 points for each stats paying I think less than one single x100 purchase I made the last time

[fenronin]

Are you sure it's a bug tho? Seems impossible  this would change to *30 and *60 alone.

[DvDivXXX]

1 hour ago, fenronin said:

Are you sure it's a bug tho? Seems impossible  this would change to *30 and *60 alone.

Well, that part is obviously an update. The bug is what messed up the prices in the process. As I said last page:

14 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

they updated the buttons to be slightly more practical and better aligned with how many stat points we get per new level (the x30 and x60 buttons). The fact that it now costs much cheaper than it should except if you use the x1 button as in the old days is obviously a technical issue.

 

[fenronin]

I think the decreasing value the more you buy was intended but maybe not by this much

[Zamio]

on Nutaku, apparently players reporting only one contest a day, now

It'll be a bloodbath when there's only one contest running and everybody focuses on a single one. I can't imagine how hotly contested, donations contests will be now.

 

 

 

 

 

[~Crown Clown]

1 hour ago, Zamio said:

on Nutaku, apparently players reporting only one contest a day, now

It'll be a bloodbath when there's only one contest running and everybody focuses on a single one. I can't imagine how hotly contested, donations contests will be now.

 

 

 

 

 

Rip and there's too many bugs going on right now too, and no mods are acting that's capable of answering

1 constest, market bug, tickets contest bug omg

[Zamio]

Just now, ~Crown Clown said:

Rip and there's too many bugs going on right now too, and no mods are acting that's capable of answering

1 constest, market bug, tickets contest bug omg

the daily one contest thing - not sure this one's a bug. I think test server was showing that (one contest only being generated), and I think everybody was hoping that would not be the case and the final patch would result in 3 dailies.

If this was intended all along, I must say this patch is a real dud for me. The newsletter was worded as if we were all getting massive opportunities at getting more kobans, bigger prizes etc. I think for me the only positive thing was the combativity reward, I think it's far more valuable than a piece of junk equipment.

But all in all, there's really no effective change. Let me explain why

One contest daily - no real change in frequency (we used to have 3 running for 2-3 days). So there's not much more improvement in the opportunity of obtaining kobans.

Winning positions remain the same.

Amount of kobans - increase for lower level players, but only a very marginal increase for mid-high level players.

In fact now, I don't understand how KK is effectively nailing the coffin on the EU timezone players (effectively their biggest market?)

You can bet now, contests are going to be more difficult to win. Everybody has only one running and devoting their resources on one contest at a time. Attention is on only one, so ability to react to sniping/anti-sniping is improved (you don't have to watch multiple contests and get distracted). If some would consider sniping bad, it's just got worse now. Again those asleep at reset time suffer a massive disadvantage - if they want any chance to win, they'll have to go in "blind", possibly laying tons of ymens in vain, whereas those in favourable timezones can just relax and decide at the very last minute if they are going to even try to go for it (i.e they can decide if they are gonna lose big without even spending anything or min-max every single bit of resource they have, to score a win or place in 2-4).

The reduction of the duration to 24 hours makes a huge difference, as well. Margins in winning/losing are much smaller now. So say someone in the EU who has been asleep for 4-5 hours +, at the time of reset, is missing on tons of opportunity (in combat tokens, XP gained etc) to score points in the contests. You could build a lead when a contest last 3 days, it's not so easy to do in only one day, so then again, those who are in Asia, Australia and the Americas by being able to spend their tokens/CPs etc until the very last second are going to be the ones who will be winning those contests more often.

Just to note, I'm not in the EU timezone, so this is not biased rant against these changes. In fact, I'm advantaged by these changes. But it has to be pointed out that these changes, are in my opinion, a step backward, as far as fairness is concerned.

 

 

 

 

[~Crown Clown]

4 minutes ago, Zamio said:

the daily one contest thing - not sure this one's a bug. I think test server was showing that (one contest only being generated), and I think everybody was hoping that would not be the case and the final patch would result in 3 dailies.

If this was intended all along, I must say this patch is a real dud for me. The newsletter was worded as if we were all getting massive opportunities at getting more kobans, bigger prizes etc. I think for me the only positive thing was the combativity reward, I think it's far more valuable than a piece of junk equipment.

But all in all, there's really no effective change. Let me explain why

One contest daily - no real change in frequency (we used to have 3 running for 2-3 days). So there's not much more improvement in the opportunity of obtaining kobans.

Winning positions remain the same.

Amount of kobans - increase for lower level players, but only a very marginal increase for mid-high level players.

In fact now, I don't understand how KK is effectively nailing the coffin on the EU timezone players (effectively their biggest market?)

You can bet now, contests are going to be more difficult to win. Everybody has only one running and devoting their resources on one contest at a time. Attention is on only one, so ability to react to sniping/anti-sniping is improved (you don't have to watch multiple contests and get distracted). If some would consider sniping bad, it's just got worse now. Again those asleep at reset time suffer a massive disadvantage - if they want any chance to win, they'll have to go in "blind", possibly laying tons of ymens in vain, whereas those in favourable timezones can just relax and decide at the very last minute if they are going to even try to go for it (i.e they can decide if they are gonna lose big without even spending anything or min-max every single bit of resource they have, to score a win or place in 2-4).

The reduction of the duration to 24 hours makes a huge difference, as well. Margins in winning/losing are much smaller now. So say someone in the EU who has been asleep for 4-5 hours +, at the time of reset, is missing on tons of opportunity (in combat tokens, XP gained etc) to score points in the contests. You could build a lead when a contest last 3 days, it's not so easy to do in only one day, so then again, those who are in Asia, Australia and the Americas by being able to spend their tokens/CPs etc until the very last second are going to be the ones who will be winning those contests more often.

Just to note, I'm not in the EU timezone, so this is not biased rant against these changes. In fact, I'm advantaged by these changes. But it has to be pointed out that these changes, are in my opinion, a step backward, as far as fairness is concerned.

 

 

 

 

Im just kind of sad that there's too many problems in the game right now, and there are no news at all if they even know these bugs are happening

And yeah one contest with same placement rewards, would be a hell, i thought they're gonna change it but then it was edited to 2-4😣😣

[Dr. Lust]

On a "cynical" note I cannot help but wonder if someone high up in the game designers organization intentionally gave this "time zone advantage" to whatever market will give them the most real cash inflow.  It just might be the same old story.   Just follow the money.   Give the advantage to those that would potentially profit you the most and forget about the other markets if you impact them negatively.

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Dr. Lust

[GeorgeMTO]

4 minutes ago, Dr. Lust said:

On a "cynical" note I cannot help but wonder if someone high up in the game designers organization intentionally gave this "time zone advantage" to whatever market will give them the most real cash inflow.  It just might be the same old story.   Just follow the money.   Give the advantage to those that would potentially profit you the most and forget about the other markets if you impact them negatively.

 

Its been said before that daily reset was set at a deliberately off-peak time in order to reduce server load from everyone trying to start new things at once. We have definitely experienced that in the past, with new leagues sometimes not starting up for nearly 15 minutes due to too much activity (we believe there has since been a server upgrade).

Favouring part of the American time zones is likely just an unintentional side effect.

[Dr. Lust]

You are probably correct that it was unintentional.  I only know that I can be a cold hearted businessman.  A real SOB when needed and I cannot help but think that if in a global market someone knew that a sector of the globe would get some sort of advantage, if it was me making that decision, I would make absolute certain that the time zone getting the advantage would be the one that most positively impacts my bottom line.

[Chthugha]

1 hour ago, Dr. Lust said:

You are probably correct that it was unintentional.  I only know that I can be a cold hearted businessman.  A real SOB when needed and I cannot help but think that if in a global market someone knew that a sector of the globe would get some sort of advantage, if it was me making that decision, I would make absolute certain that the time zone getting the advantage would be the one that most positively impacts my bottom line.

In that case they would chose a reset time which is great for both the Americas and Europe. Those are the two biggest markets.

[Karyia]

22 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

Thanks for the transition, Mihai! ^^ I was just about to talk about artwork again a little bit.

With everything else going on, I only just remembered about Bonny's and Pelagie's upgrades a few minutes ago. I had a nasty surprise (Bonny) and a very good one (Pelagie), so... it would average to neutral, I guess?

• Bonny's new affection scenes feel rushed and the style is rather ugly. More importantly, her new poses have zero continuity with the existing ones, and aren't that great (though not quite as bad as the affection scenes). Too bad, because I liked the original work a lot, and was looking forward to the new stuff with her.
   
• In sharp contrast, Pelagie's new scenes are very nice (to my taste at least), both in concept and execution, and her new poses, while noticeably different in style, are tastefully done, and also in direct continuity with her previous poses. Very nice surprise, because I wasn't a fan of the original work, which felt rushed and not particularly inspired to me.

Bottom line: there's still a long way to go to regain the quality and consistency of the game's golden age. Right now, it's still very hit and miss.

I was wondering when the artwork would pop up again  

I can't say much, as I've only seen Bonny's 4th start pose but I liked it  

I agree that it's off in continuity but arguably, if you consider it like a sort of star 0 or 1 pose, I think it's more than adequate. It's the most "in" character one, regarding the swordfighter trait about Bonny. The pose in itself, while not super revealing is pretty cool, IMO. I also consider it sort of a bit of fresh air  And I rate it miles and miles away from some of the "dreaded" artwork that we've been getting lately. A good add-on in my book   

1 hour ago, Zamio said:

the daily one contest thing - not sure this one's a bug. I think test server was showing that (one contest only being generated), and I think everybody was hoping that would not be the case and the final patch would result in 3 dailies.

If this was intended all along, I must say this patch is a real dud for me. The newsletter was worded as if we were all getting massive opportunities at getting more kobans, bigger prizes etc. I think for me the only positive thing was the combativity reward, I think it's far more valuable than a piece of junk equipment.

But all in all, there's really no effective change. Let me explain why

One contest daily - no real change in frequency (we used to have 3 running for 2-3 days). So there's not much more improvement in the opportunity of obtaining kobans.

Winning positions remain the same.

Amount of kobans - increase for lower level players, but only a very marginal increase for mid-high level players.

In fact now, I don't understand how KK is effectively nailing the coffin on the EU timezone players (effectively their biggest market?)

You can bet now, contests are going to be more difficult to win. Everybody has only one running and devoting their resources on one contest at a time. Attention is on only one, so ability to react to sniping/anti-sniping is improved (you don't have to watch multiple contests and get distracted). If some would consider sniping bad, it's just got worse now. Again those asleep at reset time suffer a massive disadvantage - if they want any chance to win, they'll have to go in "blind", possibly laying tons of ymens in vain, whereas those in favourable timezones can just relax and decide at the very last minute if they are going to even try to go for it (i.e they can decide if they are gonna lose big without even spending anything or min-max every single bit of resource they have, to score a win or place in 2-4).

The reduction of the duration to 24 hours makes a huge difference, as well. Margins in winning/losing are much smaller now. So say someone in the EU who has been asleep for 4-5 hours +, at the time of reset, is missing on tons of opportunity (in combat tokens, XP gained etc) to score points in the contests. You could build a lead when a contest last 3 days, it's not so easy to do in only one day, so then again, those who are in Asia, Australia and the Americas by being able to spend their tokens/CPs etc until the very last second are going to be the ones who will be winning those contests more often.

Just to note, I'm not in the EU timezone, so this is not biased rant against these changes. In fact, I'm advantaged by these changes. But it has to be pointed out that these changes, are in my opinion, a step backward, as far as fairness is concerned.

I would just correct this -> But all in all, there's really no effective very impactful change.

If we're down to just one contest per day and it always has the same reset/deadline, than you're pretty much stripping us (I'm european) from (potentially) "hundreds" of kobans/resources. (Arguably) Not only will we struggle to win ONE contest, but there won't be ANY other contests to actually compete in (and win something). I also see zero improvement in going from 3 to 1 contests (if this gets confirmed). The rewards changes will have zero meaning to me, since I'm out of the competition anyway lol

That's not "no effective change". It's massive change! (for worse) 😅

Also, I'm not "attacking" or criticizing your post, quite the opposite. It's a good read on the consequences from the changes, I just think they are even worse for our timezone 😒

[Zamio]

7 minutes ago, Karyia said:

I would just correct this -> But all in all, there's really no effective very impactful change.

If we're down to just one contest per day and it always has the same reset/deadline, than you're pretty much stripping us (I'm european) from (potentially) "hundreds" of kobans/resources. (Arguably) Not only will we struggle to win ONE contest, but there won't be ANY other contests to actually compete in (and win something). I also see zero improvement in going from 3 to 1 contests (if this gets confirmed). The rewards changes will have zero meaning to me, since I'm out of the competition anyway lol

That's not "no effective change". It's massive change! (for worse) 😅

Also, I'm not "attacking" or criticizing your post, quite the opposite. It's a good read on the consequences from the changes, I just think they are even worse for our timezone 😒

yes. i should have mentioned that I stated not much effective change in the amount/opportunity to gain kobans from my own perspective.

Then I started drifting on the impact of changes and the dynamics of the timezone differences. And wholeheartedly agree with you, this is quite massive if you just happen to be in EU

Edited February 7, 2020 by Zamio

[arilou]

well i guess they fixed the *30 and *60. hope you are happy =/

[DvDivXXX]

4 hours ago, Zamio said:

Amount of kobans - increase for lower level players, but only a very marginal increase for mid-high level players.

Is that really the case? I'm getting close to reaching level 250, and for me the koban rewards went from 144 and 72 to 300 and 120, which is a huge bump. How much kobans were #1 and top 4 for, say, a level 350+ player before the update?

I agree with everything you've said about the time zone disadvantage for European players (I live in CET so I'm directly impacted). But that's already true for everything in the game for which the reset time matters (aka most important and basically all competitive aspects of the game), regardless of the update. I would definitely like the reset time to be moved to something fairer for EU. 5AM is too early for most people, and too late for most other people. It's just about the worst they could have picked for CET.

However, I don't entirely share your pessimism on the impact of the move to one daily contest. Three daily contests would have been a massive increase (even if they didn't change the rewards at all), whereas one contest a day is similar in frequency to what we were getting previously, but cleaner and simpler. My expectation is that it should get less competitive over time with a faster rotation, though. Right now, there's usually one or two contest(s) ending every other day, and each contest runs for 2 or 3 days, so there's a bigger build-up to its conclusion. With one every single day, I imagine less players should fight tooth and nail to win each one. I could be wrong, though, as perhaps for those in US time zones sniping the daily contest at the last minute and then getting a headstart on the next one could just become a part of their daily routine... Which could be very frustrating for players closer to my own time zone, for sure.

In any case, the contest generation bug seems to persist on HH, so we have 4 active contests instead of 3 or 1 right now. But I think the intended update is what happened on Nutaku: 1 contest a day, instead of +/- 3 contests every 3 days.

[_shal_]

51 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

Is that really the case? I'm getting close to reaching level 250, and for me the koban rewards went from 144 and 72 to 300 and 120, which is a huge bump. How much kobans were #1 and top 4 for, say, a level 350+ player before the update?

The rewards at 361+ were 192/96, for 401+ they were 210/102.

[Zamio]

58 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

Is that really the case? I'm getting close to reaching level 250, and for me the koban rewards went from 144 and 72 to 300 and 120, which is a huge bump. How much kobans were #1 and top 4 for, say, a level 350+ player before the update?

I agree with everything you've said about the time zone disadvantage for European players (I live in CET so I'm directly impacted). But that's already true for everything in the game for which the reset time matters (aka most important and basically all competitive aspects of the game), regardless of the update. I would definitely like the reset time to be moved to something fairer for EU. 5AM is too early for most people, and too late for most other people. It's just about the worst they could have picked for CET.

However, I don't entirely share your pessimism on the impact of the move to one daily contest. Three daily contests would have been a massive increase (even if they didn't change the rewards at all), whereas one contest a day is similar in frequency to what we were getting previously, but cleaner and simpler. My expectation is that it should get less competitive over time with a faster rotation, though. Right now, there's usually one or two contest(s) ending every other day, and each contest runs for 2 or 3 days, so there's a bigger build-up to its conclusion. With one every single day, I imagine less players should fight tooth and nail to win each one. I could be wrong, though, as perhaps for those in US time zones sniping the daily contest at the last minute and then getting a headstart on the next one could just become a part of their daily routine... Which could be very frustrating for players closer to my own time zone, for sure.

In any case, the contest generation bug seems to persist on HH, so we have 4 active contests instead of 3 or 1 right now. But I think the intended update is what happened on Nutaku: 1 contest a day, instead of +/- 3 contests every 3 days.

am at lvl 330, currently and I think it's somewhere around 180/90. I may have exaggerated the "marginal increase" bit, but you get the gist. For 2-4 places, it's not that big of an increase.

What you say about contest being less competitive might come true at mid-low levels. Players have less resources to use and have to manage it efficiently. However, at higher levels, there's tons of cash. We'll see how it develops in the next few days, I am pretty sure I won't be very active in donations contests now (you may be right that it deters competitiveness after all 😂) but am quite sure that at the top, it'll just exacerbate competitiveness.

I can tell you however that there is a huge difference between the brackets. I hit the 320-360 bracket a couple of weeks back and the jump in difficulty is noticeable when it comes to contests (I was fairly easily placing regularly in all the brackets prior to the one I am currently in). Obviously am still in the lower section of that current bracket and I can't compete with my resources with somebody who is 30 levels above me. But the change is brutal and you will probably notice it when you reach that stage, more snipers, you really have to be very attentive to the timer to be able to secure a koban-winning place.

I can see that a lot more players, at this level, are optimising their gameplay around reset times (like having 20 CPs/15 league tokens stocked in at that time and immediately spending it after reset). So if you do not do the same thing, you already start with a handicap from the onset. 

Like I said, the reduction to 24 hours, means the margins between winning and losing are so much smaller. Over a period of 3 days, you can still make mistakes and make up/catch up for it. Over 24 hours, one less boss fight/arena fight can make a whole lot of difference between winning and losing a contest. If you are not spending 5-8 hours worth of natural regeneration in CPs/Combat tokens because of sleep, you are already starting with 25%+ handicap on one day. That's nearly impossible to make up in the higher brackets. Over 3 days, by very active play, you can build up a lead that is almost insurmountable - it's not easy to build such a lead in just 24 hours, so every hour of regeneration counts. So if you could get away by being slack before, you probably can't now and that's why I think everyone is going to be a bit more competitive.

[DvDivXXX]

2 hours ago, Zamio said:

If you are not spending 5-8 hours worth of natural regeneration in CPs/Combat tokens because of sleep, you are already starting with 25%+ handicap on one day.

That's fair. A CET player who typically goes to bed way before reset and wakes up long after the reset, which is probably most of us, has a reduced window of opportunity compared to a US player, not even taking work and other things into account. We'll miss the beginning and the end of each contest.

[Observer_X]

16 hours ago, Chthugha said:

In that case they would chose a reset time which is great for both the Americas and Europe. Those are the two biggest markets.

And I've been wondering for two and a half years why the hell they didn't. The only answer I have found is that probably Kinkoid considers Asia a better market than Europe, although I don't understand why, unless they do their calculations based solely on a simple population factor, which I personally wouldn't deem as particularly clever.