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NEW FEATURE: Path of Valor [PoV] is now LIVE!


holymolly
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Oh, good. The next nail in my ''no, actually you can't catch them all''-coffin. ;)

I mean, come on... I'm doing okay-ish in D3, I'm a paying player. And it's pretty much +/-0 every month if I pay koban for the Path of Attraction, get the Mythic Girl and pay for some refills for Orgy Days to get some of the girls that I've missed during my first two years. I don't really know where to get those additional koban from. And, no, I don't buy ridiculously overpriced bundles.

Looks like I have to decide between the monthly Mythic Girl and the Paths of Valor. Since I've already missed out on 5 of the 12 Mythics and revivals aren't a thing anymore, I'll probably choose the latter.

Bah... the awakenings were already pretty much a P2W move from Kinkoid. And it seems like they want to explore that path further. Seems to me like we have a slight disagreement regarding the question who should be able to ''win'' their game (in my opinion: every paying player) and what kind of advantages spending additional money should give (in my opinion: just reaching the endgame faster). The whole exclusiveness shtick is, pardon my French, bullshit³. It's time to get rid of this nonsense. A lot of players were already peeved after several important updates this year. An additional koban pit probably won't help with pacifying them.

If this new feature gets implemented, I'll really consider going F2P. If I can't win, why bother p(l)aying? Newsflash: I can get the girls' pictures for free somewhere in the internet. I'm buying my monthly Gold Card primarily to support the Devs. Because I like the world they've created and the sometimes hilarious story and all the little parodies... kicking me in the ass in return isn't really the reaction that I'm expecting. ;)

Edited by Moonlynx
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I already said sometimes in the past that I am merciless in case like this one, and today it will be no exception.

I thought for a bit about the ways that will give Lust Potions and then figured those while thinking to the way I usually play the game.

Result: given the total number of Lust Potions I will probably gain most of the times in a 14 days period, practically for me it will be as the Path of Valor is not in the game. In other words, given my play style and strategy (which I have neither the time nor the disposition to change), most of the times in the arc of a single Path of Valor I will gain so few Lust Potions, and thus so few rewards, that practically in my game the presence of Path of Valor will make no difference.

This is the reason why I say that, unless the feature gets some heavy changes in comparison to what has been said up to now, IMHO this will be the most worthless feature ever implemented in this game.

As a side note, a question popped up in my mind while writing this post. The point is, in this new feature progress practically is entirely made by upgrading in some way the harem girls. Given that many high level players have nearly all girls in the game, and all of them already with full affection and near (and now, in some cases, already over) level 500, this means that, especially until large quantities of all the gems types won't be avaliable, they will have only little "girl upgrading margin". So the question is: how are these players supposed to gather a decent progress in this new feature?

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My idea about.

One VERY GOOD thing KK can do is to have potions not reset for each Path. Maybe just on a yearly base. If you don't complete the Path that time, you can continue when sorted out again.

In such way the bonuses will be collateral as a normal gameplay flux. Play and forget, that is. If someone want to spend, he can easily collect the whole sum of prizes so far for that Path.

By this logic, the koban cost will be reasonable. The way it look so far, I have to spend 3000 kobans each 2 weeks. I think no one will be prone to spend around 50 euro a month just for this single feature alone. But maybe you can spend 50 for the entirety of Path events in a year, considering this thing deliver more than a single shot offer (so, each Path cost 10 euro... 6 paths to unlock mean 60 euro of yearly income from that player, that's  reasonable).

People like @Bomba are obviously frightened you have another timing/resource to manage. That change will make this feature a "pay if you want for", not "you want to pay for", and that's surely more alluring. Keeping potions will make this a more relaxed feature like Stairway is.

Edited by lepidocter
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24 minutes ago, lepidocter said:

My idea about.

One VERY GOOD thing KK can do is to have potions not reset for each Path. Maybe just on a yearly base. If you don't complete the Path that time, you can continue when sorted out again.

In such way the bonuses will be collateral as a normal gameplay flux. Play and forget, that is. If someone want to spend, he can easily collect the whole sum of prizes so far for that Path.

By this logic, the koban cost will be reasonable. The way it look so far, I have to spend 3000 kobans each 2 weeks. I think no one will be prone to spend around 50 euro a month just for this single feature alone. But maybe you can spend 50 for the entirety of Path events in a year, considering this thing deliver more than a single shot offer (so, each Path cost 10 euro... 6 paths to unlock mean 60 euro of yearly income from that player, that's  reasonable).

People like @Bomba are obviously frightened you have another timing/resource to manage. That change will make this feature a "pay if you want for", not "you want to pay for", and that's surely more alluring. Keeping potions will make this a more relaxed feature like Stairway is.

It's not so much another resource and more like another type of points like Mojo or points in League. You just get them for completing some sort of tasks. But instead of calling them something like "Love points" or "Valor points" or "Allure points" they decided to call them potions. It's really confusing. But bad communication is Kinkoid's trademark, so in that regard the name seems perfect.

As for me, it's more about a sheer amount of things you have to keep track of. It was already too much. And now it's another one. And yeah, it's not much, those point would probably be easily gained from the normal playing. But that's like dropping a giant pack(hay) on the back of a camel and then adding few straws on top and watching which one will break is back. It's a straw, but we already packing hay at our limit. Every straw might be the last one.

But in terms of kobans it's different. What offered here is actually a mandatory koban spending because of XP at least. So in that regard it's not a straw and more akin to adding another heavy load on our backs. Which we can't endure really. And I know that they also manage gay harem game, so they might think that a heavy load on the back is a good thing, but we need to assure them that it's not the case for this game.

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@Bomba

well, you had to believe me: at my level you cannot obtain such potions as consequence of normal gameplay. Levelling up, for example, is a great cost to me. To mitigate, I have to synchro levelling up to any extra advantage I can find (for example an EXP daily contest). Not speaking I have to plan in advance what gems to collect and what girl to advance that moment. If the plan is correct. If I'm lacking that kind of gem (I'm already in Grey shortage) I have to skip the entire Path: promoting other girls will cost me more than I'll get.

So, a more relaxed conduit is welcome. I'm quite ssure you don't stress about Devotion. Is just there, and you simply click when you want for. If the Path will be like Club Champions, you simply play and collect rewards. Wanna more rewards? Pay. But regulars come in as a consequence of being in the game, not as a consequence of a Master in Time and Resource Management.

You're right on the subject of "potions": damn, this is not a fantasy farming game!

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3 minutes ago, lepidocter said:

@Bomba

well, you had to believe me: at my level you cannot obtain such potions as consequence of normal gameplay. Levelling up, for example, is a great cost to me. To mitigate, I have to synchro levelling up to any extra advantage I can find (for example an EXP daily contest). Not speaking I have to plan in advance what gems to collect and what girl to advance that moment. If the plan is correct. If I'm lacking that kind of gem (I'm already in Grey shortage) I have to skip the entire Path: promoting other girls will cost me more than I'll get.

So, a more relaxed conduit is welcome. I'm quite ssure you don't stress about Devotion. Is just there, and you simply click when you want for. If the Path will be like Club Champions, you simply play and collect rewards. Wanna more rewards? Pay. But regulars come in as a consequence of being in the game, not as a consequence of a Master in Time and Resource Management.

You're right on the subject of "potions": damn, this is not a fantasy farming game!

It's an event that lasts 14 days. At least one suitable contest should come up during that time. You need to get 2300 points to make it worth your while(Girl+mythic booster). So it''s 9 girls leveled up to 250 level. No gems required. It's doable. At least for now and with those numbers.

It's bad and horrible event which I despise, but in terms of getting it done by normally playing it's actually the case. You will need planning to get to the last tier(6500 currently) and full rewards, but that's a different matter. My main concerns are:

  • It's essentially another Season and PoA when we already have those events.
  • The fact that XP is on the paid path.
  • Another "exclusive" girl is on the paid path.
  • Another instance of resource management. We already have enough of those.
  • They will fuck up its implementation. Somehow. Like always. Like those points which go above the limit and don't count. Like it's currently for some daily contests. And they will not bother to fix it for a very long time. And of course we will need a script for this event to have an understandable layout and good UI, because Kinkoid doesn't do it at all.
  • We're getting pummeled with those "new features" without any breathing room.
  • And last but not least is that they lied in the Awakening announcement that we will be able to get gems in Path of Valor. You can only get them if you pay kobans.
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I do have to agree that this looks a bit too much like Path of Attraction. Unless that event format is getting retired and replaced by something else, this feels a bit redundant. 

Now, I don't like the paid kobon paths, especially at this price point. Even as a D3 player, I don't have enough kobons to participate in every event as it stands and unlocking the paid path is coming instead of participating in other events. This means that I need to have a very good understanding of what kind of value I'm getting. So let's look at what we actually get for those 3600 kobons (presuambly 600 nubons):

  • 1 girl
  • 675 gems
  • 104k xp
  • 1 sandalwood
  • 2 epic pachinko orbs
  • 22 combativity 
  • 82,500 Book XP 

Many of those are directly purchasable with kobons. Forgive me for using nubons as that's what I'm familiar with, but 82,500 in books is approximately 7.5 market refreshes which is worth 52.5 nubons, 22 combativity is 1.1 refills which is 38.5 nubons, and 1 sandalwood costs 90 nubons. That's 181 Nubons worth of content. The others, however, are more subjective. Your feeling on their value may differ substantially from mine, but I'm going to take a stab at putting a kobon price tag on them.

Technically Epic Pachinko spins are purchasable with kobons but only newbies who don't know better pay full price for those. I'm going to put these at 15 kobons per spin. 

The gems currently have no good way of directly purchasing with kobons. Technically you can use combativity refreshes to farm villains, but this is very inefficient and you wouldn't do it just for the gem income. Overall, I feel that 10 gems = 1 nubon is about the right price point right now with gems being new and us having a huge backlog of girls in need of them. So that's worth 67.5 nubons.

The 100k experience is actually completely different depending on whether it overlaps Legendary Contests or not. When it's not overlapping LC this is basically just an Alban's Travel Memoirs that take effect instantly. With the recent awakening change, player level is less important so it's harder to justify the memoirs, but you can activate these for an easy daily contest win so they'll win you at least 25 nubons and the XP itself is worth at least something so I'm going to put this at 100 nubons. During a Legendary Contest, though, could easily help you place higher on day 1. Due to the uncertainty of LC placements the value of this is very difficult to estimate; worst case scenario it doesn't change the outcome and it's not worth anything additional, best case scenario it lets you win hundreds of extra gems and lets you win a bunch of mythic x6 orbs the next day (which you otherwise might not be eligible for if you didn't already get the girl). Due to the uncertainty it's hard to say how much this is worth; it might not actually change your placement on Day 1 and you might not place that well on Day 2, it all depends on who else you get bracketed with. As a result, I want to conservatively put the value of this at 150 nubons when overlapping LC.

So my estimate is that this is worth about 380 nubons or 430 when overlapping Legendary Contests. So my take is that unlocking the second path is only worthwhile if you want the girl. And if the girl is one that appeals to you, then yes this makes sense. 

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This new feature is just dreadful. With the XP rewards in the bonus path, LC will now be won by those who can afford to open the bonus path. The koban spending is already stretched. Even top 15 D3 players will have to choose between LC/PoV girls or a mythic girl. This is also assuming that the bonus path will take kobans. KK may put this under paywall like Seasons when it goes live. Test server has no payment option. That's why Seasons 2nd path takes kobans. It may be the same for PoV. If so, f2p players will have no reasons to play anymore.

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You keep adding new things that we have to spend on but you don't increase our spending budget. Many players already felt pushed too far by Mythic Days and Path of Attraction, and now we have this to contend with as well. You should take the Seasons approach and make both girls obtainable on the free route, but make it much faster on the paid one. After all the recent nerfs, telling the players they need to spend more is not the move right now.

That's the same issue that's plaguing affection items, by the way. The amount required shot up like 400% after mythic girls were added, but the amount given out only increased by like 1% from KC. You can't just endlessly give players more tasks to do and not give them any means to actually do them.

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11 hours ago, Observer_X said:

this new feature progress practically is entirely made by upgrading in some way the harem girls.

11 hours ago, Observer_X said:

So the question is: how are these players supposed to gather a decent progress in this new feature?

No, leveling up (more on that below) is just one out of many different possible Objectives for PoV (similar to all the different possible objectives for Daily Contests). It won't be this particular task every time. Other types of Objectives in the pool from which PoV will pick one each time were already confirmed including in this thread, but I'll repost just this part to illustrate:
PoV Feedback 002.png

The idea as Rosso described it during the recent GH QA is that the Objectives are things that players would normally do anyway. And since there's only one Objective throughout the event, unlike PoA which requires more timing and management due to various different Tasks that must be done in a specific order, whenever you do the thing that matches the current Objective for the ongoing PoV, you get points (well Potions), without any playing restriction.

And this lasts for 14 days apiece. So for instance if you're lucky/rich/veteran/and/or enough to have your entire Harem maxed out on Levels when a PoV begins with "Level up your Harem" as the Objective, you can still adjust by making a priority of leveling up any new girl you acquire during that event. And most players are very far from having maxed out Harems (even by the old standard, let alone with the new Level 750 cap).

Some Objectives will be easier than others depending on each player's situation, resources and strategy at the time, but all in all it's no more difficult or demanding than Daily Contests. You could think of it as a two-weeks long single-task PoA, basically.

-----------------------
Feedback: it really should say "leveling up" instead of "upgrading" your Harem, here:
PoV Feedback 001.png

Upgrading a girl = Giving her Affection to unlock her Stars
Leveling up a girl = Giving her Books (and/or Gems) to increase her Level

This particular objective happens to have the second requirement I've listed above: giving your girls Levels. So phrasing it as "upgrading your Harem" is misleading (especially if another objective exists pertaining to actually upgrading girls, as in unlocking their Affection Stars).

 

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il y a 15 minutes, DvDivXXX a dit :

Feedback: it really should say "leveling up" instead of "upgrading" your Harem, here:

It's not a single objective; it's 7 different objectives, all related to "upgrading" (or "improving", in a more generic sense) the harem. That includes leveling up indeed, but also gaining stars ("Upgrading"/affection), and Awakening.

So "Upgrading" seems more correct to me than "Leveling up", because "Leveling up" is very specific (Whereas "Upgrading" can be understood both as "Gaining stars" and as a more generic term). Something like "Improving" your Harem might be better, because it's more generic, and can't be confused with "Gaining stars". But I'm fine with "Upgrading" as well (Also, 5 out of 7 objectives are actually about "Upgrading" the girls, i.e. gain stars).

Edit: if you're unsure, you have the detailed list of actual current objectives on the (!) mark, with points associated with each task

Edited by Liliat
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2 minutes ago, Liliat said:

It's not a single objective; it's 7 different objectives, all related to "upgrading" (or "improving", in a more generic sense) the harem. That includes leveling up indeed, but also gaining stars ("Upgrading"/affection), and Awakening.

So "Upgrading" seems more correct to me than "Leveling up", because "Leveling up" is very specific (Whereas "Upgrading" can be understood both as "Gaining stars" and as a more generic term). Something like "Improving" your Harem might be better, because it's more generic, and can't be confused with "Gaining stars". But I'm fine with "Upgrading" as well (Also, 5 out of 7 objectives are actually about "Upgrading" the girls, i.e. gain stars).

I feel like the upgrade tasks should offer more potions f.e. upgrade a mythic girl star is 12 potions.. that honestly worth nothing imo (level up a random girl to lvl 100 offers more than fully upgrading a mythic that´s just disproportionate imho)

 

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18 minutes ago, Liliat said:

Edit: if you're unsure, you have the detailed list of actual current objectives on the (!) mark, with points associated with each task

I hadn't noticed that, and it helps a lot, thank you. So yes, in that context "upgrading your Harem" works better. Still something like "improving your Harem" or "training your Harem" maybe would avoid using a term that already means one specific thing, for what turns out to be a whole list of things including that one but also others.

Good to know, at least.

And yeah, I definitely agree with Holy about the amount of Potions. For starters, it still uses rarity as a metric which has always been a mistake imho, since rarity is largely backwards in this game. Upgrading a Mythic doesn't quite cost just 20% more than upgrading a Legendary, so rewarding it with just 20% more Potions seems very off.

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3 ore fa, holymolly ha scritto:

I feel like the upgrade tasks should offer more potions f.e. upgrade a mythic girl star is 12 potions.. that honestly worth nothing imo (level up a random girl to lvl 100 offers more than fully upgrading a mythic that´s just disproportionate imho)

 

Exactly this. the affection part of this group of tasks screams for some kind of rebalancing.

Upgrading one star common girls takes 180 affection points, that gives out 4 potions of lust. Upgrading a common girl from her 4th to her 5th star cost 4500 affection points, and that still gives out 4 potions of lust. The same cost (4500) lets you upgrade a mythic girl from 0 to her first star, and gives you 12 potions of lust. Upgrading again that mythic girl will cost you 11250/28125/56250/112500/225000 affection points, and all of these come with the same 12 potions of lust.

Edited by Antimon
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I think the idea of getting more potions for higher star values makes sense, but I do worry if that first star ends up being worth less than 4 potions for newer players.

Regarding it being less effective to gain rewards by upgrading higher rarity girls, people will upgrade higher rarity girls as a priority normally,  so that balances out a bit. I expect this to work out mostly fine. Will have to see the Koban paid path rewards live, before I decide to spend or not.

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13 ore fa, Zteev ha scritto:

I think the idea of getting more potions for higher star values makes sense, but I do worry if that first star ends up being worth less than 4 potions for newer players.

Regarding it being less effective to gain rewards by upgrading higher rarity girls, people will upgrade higher rarity girls as a priority normally,  so that balances out a bit. I expect this to work out mostly fine. Will have to see the Koban paid path rewards live, before I decide to spend or not.

Of course. I have never even taken in consideration the possibility of them reducing the lower rarity girls' upgrade rewards.

That said, I don't feel like this format is particularly friendly towards new players. At least, this batch of tasks doesn't feel easily approachable by a new-ish player.

My opinion could be biased by the fact that my test server account is extremely low and neglected, I must say. BUT, in order to obtain all the shards for the girl(s), you have to collect 2100 potions of lust. Considering that awakenings start to give out points from lvl 200 milestone (that is... a weird starting point? I think that the intended mechanic was "10 points for awakenings that actually cost gems", so from lvl250 milestone. We'll see), the easiest and cheapest way to reach the 2100 potions needed is to level up 21 girls from level 0 to level 100, and I'm not seeing myself able to do that.

But then again, my test server account is super neglected, and the path of valor lasts 2 weeks, so this whole situation could be way simpler than what I'm figuring now

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As a level 363 player, I currently ain`t got enough kobans to be able to participate in all events. For instance I have to ignore MD, LD, ED and KC.

This new mandatory spent koban event, due to the XP in the paid path, comes at the expense of spending kobans in other events like OD and/or POA. 

Also like others have expressed, each new feature makes the game less casual and takes more time and requires advance mathematics/strategy. 

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Why is everyone so focused on the XP portion? Gems make the additional XP obsolete (to a degree). I would even guess that people can now sandbag and avoid getting into the 400+ group of death for the daily and legendary contests. Are those additional 30 stats from the market per level so important for PvP? My gut feeling says no.

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16 minutes ago, 430i said:

Why is everyone so focused on the XP portion? Gems make the additional XP obsolete (to a degree). I would even guess that people can now sandbag and avoid getting into the 400+ group of death for the daily and legendary contests. Are those additional 30 stats from the market per level so important for PvP? My gut feeling says no.

it's not that importnat yet, i would say, but eventually it will make the difference between level 400 and 500 - btw. it's not just market stats but also equipments. I wouldnt advise to stay under 400 but to level up like you did before awakening

Edited by blaa
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6 minutes ago, 430i said:

Why is everyone so focused on the XP portion? Gems make the additional XP obsolete (to a degree). I would even guess that people can now sandbag and avoid getting into the 400+ group of death for the daily and legendary contests. Are those additional 30 stats from the market per level so important for PvP? My gut feeling says no.

Exp is important to get to level 500 because you get better stats on the items as well as buying more stats in market.
Staying below the 400+ group on purpose is a bad idea for free and pay to play players because better to take advantage of the higher level girls to level up now before those free to play higher level players get enough gems to level up their girls.

I have a mess around test server account i do that on but lose kobans stock pilling daily missions.season exp and league fights for legendary contest day 1 but just do that to troll people only playing on test server gets me access to legendary contest girl affection scenes early just in case i don't get her on the main server day 1

It makes it harder to get the league girl if you miss out on a week of league fights to demote on purpose.

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il y a 51 minutes, 430i a dit :

Why is everyone so focused on the XP portion? Gems make the additional XP obsolete (to a degree).

I was thinking the same initially, but girls only account for ~33% of your power (When their level is equivalent to your player level). So even if you have a lvl 750 team with a lvl 350 account, that's still "only" 50% of your total power. And since your level affects the market stats (33%) and equipment level (33%), it is still very much valuable in terms of overall power.

So, Player XP remains very important; it's still your main source of power. Then comes girls level, and finally number of girls (For passive bonuses). So, at low/mid level, the extra XP is very important (Maybe at 400+ or 450+ it makes less of a difference, because levels are so expensive, and they provide a smaller % bonus overall. And of course, at lvl 500, it doesn't matter anymore :D )

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Yeah, XP is extremely important (until it becomes a negative score that means nothing except you're still able to score points in contests and tasks that require gaining XP, once you've reached the level cap). I actually have another thing XP-related that's been bugging me for a while and I'll post about it soon.

XP in the paid path was a rookie mistake when Seasons were first designed. By popular demand, Kinkoid backpedaled on it. I fail to see how locking XP behind a fairly big new biweekly koban sink would be more justifiable now.

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  • DvDivXXX changed the title to NEW FEATURE: Path of Valor [PoV] is now LIVE!
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