Discussion The Immense Frustration of Hollowed Woods 2018

Beggar

Beggar

Pirate Master
The conventional wisdom surrounding looting is that it's completely random, no one can control what they get, and that hard work gets you nowhere.

That's mostly wrong.

Usually, you can give yourself the advantage by dumping massive amounts of time into trying to get the weapon you want. Usually, no matter how many Lost Swords you get on the way to finding the legendary you really want, you can still pull through in the end, because there's nothing stopping you from continuing on until you finally find success.

That is not the case with these new Hallowed Woods weapons.

This arbitrary time constraint on the availability of these new weapons is not exciting and it's definitely not fun. All it does is make for a maddeningly frustrating, anxiety-ridden experience that I, if I didn't know better, would think is deliberately designed to punish the game's most enthusiastic players.

One month is barely enough time for a dedicated player to secure a legendary weapon, and for a heaping portion of the players who do manage to pull it off, they'll be walking away with a Lost Sword of El Patron or a Silver Freeze while their friends have some of the rarest and most coveted weapons in the game.

Normally, that unlucky player could just keep looting, but now they'll have to wait an entire year to get the chance again.

I understand the benefit of hyping up Hollowed Woods and incentivizing players to battle The Watcher. I understand that people are foaming at the mouth over the idea of getting one of these new legendaries, and that this excitement translates into a bump in player activity. But achieving this excitement doesn't have to be done with a system that is this so punishing toward the people who participate in it.

I seriously doubt that a single thing about the new Hollowed Woods weapons will be changed, but for the sake of making this post a not-entirely negative one, I'll venture two suggestions for how to fix this:

1. Remove Lost Sword and Silver Freeze from The Watcher's loot pool. It is baffling to me that it's possible to get those from her.

2. Make Dark Whisper, Devil's Claw, Soul's Shadow, and The Soulweaver purchasable, but extremely expensive items from the gypsy vendor in Hollowed Woods. I'm talking prices in the several hundreds of Haunted Bones. Then, make Haunted Bones only acquirable from The Watcher so players are still incentivized to fight her. At least then, there would be some end in sight for a player hoping to get one of these powerful weapons.

If nothing else, I strongly encourage the TLOPO devs to at least consider the frustration I've expressed here so they can determine how to avoid inciting feelings like these in future content releases. This is not a purposeless rant - this is honest expression of frustration and feedback. Please try to consider it objectively.
 
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Beggar said:
The conventional wisdom surrounding looting is that it's completely random, no one can control what they get, and that hard work gets you nowhere.

That's mostly wrong.

Usually, you can give yourself the advantage by dumping massive amounts of time into trying to get the weapon you want. Usually, no matter how many Lost Swords you get on the way to finding the legendary you really want, you can still pull through in the end because there's nothing stopping you from continuing on until you finally find success.

That is not the case with these new Hallowed Woods weapons.

This arbitrary time constraint on the availability of these new weapons is not exciting and it's definitely not fun. All it does is make for a maddeningly frustrating, anxiety-ridden experience that I, if I didn't know better, would think is deliberately designed to punish the game's most dedicated players.

One month is barely enough time for a dedicated player to secure a legendary weapon, and for a heaping portion of the players who do manage to pull it off, they'll be walking away with a Lost Sword of El Patron or a Silver Freeze while their friends have some of the rarest and most coveted weapons in the game.

Normally, that unlucky player could just keep looting, but now they'll have to wait an entire year to get the chance again.

I understand the benefit of hyping up Hallowed Woods and incentivizing players to battle The Watcher. I understand that people are foaming at the mouth over the idea of getting one of these new legendaries, and that this excitement translates into a bump in player activity. But achieving this excitement doesn't have to be done with a system that is this so punishing toward the people who participate in it.

I seriously doubt a single thing about the new Hallowed Woods weapons will be changed, but for the sake of making this post a not-entirely negative one, I'll venture two suggestions for how to fix this:

1. Remove Lost Sword and Silver Freeze from The Water's loot pool. It is baffling to me that it's possible to get those from her.

2. Make Dark Whisper, Devil's Claw, Soul's Shadow, and The Soulweaver purchasable, but extremely expensive items from the gypsy vendor in Hallowed Woods. I'm talking prices in the several hundreds of Haunted Bones. Then, make Haunted Bones only acquirable from The Watcher so players are still incentivized to fight her. At least then, there would be some end in sight for a player hoping to get one of these powerful weapons.

If nothing else, I strongly encourage the TLOPO devs to at least consider the frustration I've espoused here so they can determine how to avoid inciting feelings like these in future content releases. This is not a purposeless rant - this is honest expression of frustration and feedback. Please try to consider it objectively.
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I agree with everything said here with the exception the 2nd suggestion.

I made the firm statement that NO LEGENDARY should be acquired within a LIMITED TIME. This was a mistake that Disney made as some of you will remember with Norrington's Spyglass from the Sink The Most Navy Ships contest back in POTCO. - Even though this is not as extreme of a case, since the chance will come around yearly... it causes the same damage.

As Beggar expressed, "-maddeningly frustrating, anxiety-ridden experience..." that I believe is a negative outlook that I've been hearing a lot.

I understand this situation is going to be difficult for the developers to find a solution to, but I do hope that we can acknowledge both parties [TLOPO Staff ideas & Community Struggles] and come together to find a beneficial solution for everyone that is not ignored or unreasonable.
 
Genuine community feedback is very honorable and I’m impressed by the cohesiveness of this post. While I respect the sentiment and your reasoning, I think I disagree that frustration is warranted. I do not think certain accomplishments in this game can be considered guaranteed - even something as simple as looting one specific legend you’ve been after. Sure, statistically, you’ll find it if you slave away constantly - and your point about HW is that you can’t do that - but in reality that statistic doesn’t come true for most people. Yes, there is a small niche of time-dedicated looters like yourself where looting time becomes closely proportional to loot gain, but for the general population that ideal simply does not exist, me included. Yes, loot is random, and yes, that makes legends rare. Yes, a seemingly arbitrary time-constrained bout at legends makes said legends even rarer. But no - there is no aim to punish. There is no secret overarching dev team master plan of making your lives miserable by restricting playtime. It’ll be mind-bogglingly aggravating each time someone loots Lost Sword or Silver Freeze from one of the HW bosses, but these HW legends are rare. That’s the point. It will be very hard to casually find one - it requires persistence - and that persistence can be mentally and physically draining. In the end, people can put as much time as they want in the game, and people can idolize the weapons as much as they want too, that’s their perogative. My mentality is this: loot for the weapons in HW, and when HW ends, your psyche can rest - because even if you wanted to loot for them, you can’t anymore, and that’s fine. I think seasonally available items keep the game cyclical instead of repetitive. I wholly respect your opinion and understand your grievances, so here’s my opinion!
 
Beggar said:
The conventional wisdom surrounding looting is that it's completely random, no one can control what they get, and that hard work gets you nowhere.

That's mostly wrong.

Usually, you can give yourself the advantage by dumping massive amounts of time into trying to get the weapon you want. Usually, no matter how many Lost Swords you get on the way to finding the legendary you really want, you can still pull through in the end, because there's nothing stopping you from continuing on until you finally find success.

That is not the case with these new Hollowed Woods weapons.

This arbitrary time constraint on the availability of these new weapons is not exciting and it's definitely not fun. All it does is make for a maddeningly frustrating, anxiety-ridden experience that I, if I didn't know better, would think is deliberately designed to punish the game's most enthusiastic players.

One month is barely enough time for a dedicated player to secure a legendary weapon, and for a heaping portion of the players who do manage to pull it off, they'll be walking away with a Lost Sword of El Patron or a Silver Freeze while their friends have some of the rarest and most coveted weapons in the game.

Normally, that unlucky player could just keep looting, but now they'll have to wait an entire year to get the chance again.

I understand the benefit of hyping up Hallowed Woods and incentivizing players to battle The Watcher. I understand that people are foaming at the mouth over the idea of getting one of these new legendaries, and that this excitement translates into a bump in player activity. But achieving this excitement doesn't have to be done with a system that is this so punishing toward the people who participate in it.

I seriously doubt that a single thing about the new Hollowed Woods weapons will be changed, but for the sake of making this post a not-entirely negative one, I'll venture two suggestions for how to fix this:

1. Remove Lost Sword and Silver Freeze from The Watcher's loot pool. It is baffling to me that it's possible to get those from her.

2. Make Dark Whisper, Devil's Claw, Soul's Shadow, and The Soulweaver purchasable, but extremely expensive items from the gypsy vendor in Hallowed Woods. I'm talking prices in the several hundreds of Haunted Bones. Then, make Haunted Bones only acquirable from The Watcher so players are still incentivized to fight her. At least then, there would be some end in sight for a player hoping to get one of these powerful weapons.

If nothing else, I strongly encourage the TLOPO devs to at least consider the frustration I've expressed here so they can determine how to avoid inciting feelings like these in future content releases. This is not a purposeless rant - this is honest expression of frustration and feedback. Please try to consider it objectively.
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I don't think its this dramatic of an issue. Yes, the time constraint is frustrating, but look at how many legendaries have been found already.

Beggar said:
This arbitrary time constraint on the availability of these new weapons is not exciting and it's definitely not fun. All it does is make for a maddeningly frustrating, anxiety-ridden experience that I, if I didn't know better, would think is deliberately designed to punish the game's most enthusiastic players.
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I think it is fun. The fact that hollowed woods appears only for a few months every year makes it exclusive and more exciting. However, I wouldn't be against increasing the watcher and dry rot's drop rates, i.e. removing lost sword and silver freeze from their loot drops, having a double loot week, etc.

I do agree with your suggestions on how to fix this. I strongly agree with the first one. Lost sword and silver freeze should not be possible to find at the watcher. As for the second suggestion, if these legendaries were purchasable I think they should cost around 2,000 haunted bones. This number is very large but still doable in a month.
 
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as someone who hasn't gotten a single legendary aside from lost sword and silver freeze in half a year i agree
Edit: On a more serious note, I feel like completionism was a big aspect to this game when there were only seven lootable legendaries. In edition, spots like gold room and south idol usually required more time to look for and get a legendary. Now that there are 21 lootable legendaries and 14 of them come from bosses, that's pretty much impossible. In edition, boss loot seems a lot more forgiving to people who don't put as much time in, which has been rough for someone who has pretty much been overlapped by 70% of the community in the past months.
 
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Beggar said:
The conventional wisdom surrounding looting is that it's completely random, no one can control what they get, and that hard work gets you nowhere.

That's mostly wrong.

Usually, you can give yourself the advantage by dumping massive amounts of time into trying to get the weapon you want. Usually, no matter how many Lost Swords you get on the way to finding the legendary you really want, you can still pull through in the end, because there's nothing stopping you from continuing on until you finally find success.

That is not the case with these new Hallowed Woods weapons.

This arbitrary time constraint on the availability of these new weapons is not exciting and it's definitely not fun. All it does is make for a maddeningly frustrating, anxiety-ridden experience that I, if I didn't know better, would think is deliberately designed to punish the game's most enthusiastic players.

One month is barely enough time for a dedicated player to secure a legendary weapon, and for a heaping portion of the players who do manage to pull it off, they'll be walking away with a Lost Sword of El Patron or a Silver Freeze while their friends have some of the rarest and most coveted weapons in the game.

Normally, that unlucky player could just keep looting, but now they'll have to wait an entire year to get the chance again.

I understand the benefit of hyping up Hallowed Woods and incentivizing players to battle The Watcher. I understand that people are foaming at the mouth over the idea of getting one of these new legendaries, and that this excitement translates into a bump in player activity. But achieving this excitement doesn't have to be done with a system that is this so punishing toward the people who participate in it.

I seriously doubt that a single thing about the new Hallowed Woods weapons will be changed, but for the sake of making this post a not-entirely negative one, I'll venture two suggestions for how to fix this:

1. Remove Lost Sword and Silver Freeze from The Watcher's loot pool. It is baffling to me that it's possible to get those from her.

2. Make Dark Whisper, Devil's Claw, Soul's Shadow, and The Soulweaver purchasable, but extremely expensive items from the gypsy vendor in Hallowed Woods. I'm talking prices in the several hundreds of Haunted Bones. Then, make Haunted Bones only acquirable from The Watcher so players are still incentivized to fight her. At least then, there would be some end in sight for a player hoping to get one of these powerful weapons.

If nothing else, I strongly encourage the TLOPO devs to at least consider the frustration I've expressed here so they can determine how to avoid inciting feelings like these in future content releases. This is not a purposeless rant - this is honest expression of frustration and feedback. Please try to consider it objectively.
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Beggar, no disrespect intended, but do you or your alts ever submit trouble reports in game? Being on as much as you, your contributions would be pretty substantial. Far more than mine.
 
Mark Murlock said:
Genuine community feedback is very honorable and I’m impressed by the cohesiveness of this post. While I respect the sentiment and your reasoning, I think I disagree that frustration is warranted. I do not think certain accomplishments in this game can be considered guaranteed - even something as simple as looting one specific legend you’ve been after. Sure, statistically, you’ll find it if you slave away constantly - and your point about HW is that you can’t do that - but in reality that statistic doesn’t come true for most people. Yes, there is a small niche of time-dedicated looters like yourself where looting time becomes closely proportional to loot gain, but for the general population that ideal simply does not exist, me included. Yes, loot is random, and yes, that makes legends rare. Yes, a seemingly arbitrary time-constrained bout at legends makes said legends even rarer. But no - there is no aim to punish. There is no secret overarching dev team master plan of making your lives miserable by restricting playtime. It’ll be mind-bogglingly aggravating each time someone loots Lost Sword or Silver Freeze from one of the HW bosses, but these HW legends are rare. That’s the point. It will be very hard to casually find one - it requires persistence - and that persistence can be mentally and physically draining. In the end, people can put as much time as they want in the game, and people can idolize the weapons as much as they want too, that’s their perogative. My mentality is this: loot for the weapons in HW, and when HW ends, your psyche can rest - because even if you wanted to loot for them, you can’t anymore, and that’s fine. I think seasonally available items keep the game cyclical instead of repetitive. I wholly respect your opinion and understand your grievances, so here’s my opinion!
Click to expand...

To clarify, I didn’t say that I thought there was a grand conspiracy to make the game worse for people who play it a lot. I said that if there was one, this would be a great way to enact it. It should go without saying that I don’t think the devs have ever deliberately made the game less fun.
 
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Bort Greasegorb said:
as someone who hasn't gotten a single legendary aside from lost sword and silver freeze in half a year i agree
Edit: On a more serious note, I feel like completionism was a big aspect to this game when there were only seven lootable legendaries. In edition, spots like gold room and south idol usually required more time to look for and get a legendary. Now that there are 21 lootable legendaries and 14 of them come from bosses, that's pretty much impossible. In edition, boss loot seems a lot more forgiving to people who don't put as much time in, which has been rough for someone who has pretty much been overlapped by 70% of the community in the past months.
Click to expand...
I'm personally fine with "ALL LEGENDARY"-style completionism going away. You can still completele particular "sets" in tlopo without running out of things to do. 7/7 or 4/4 are still accomplishments.
 
For someone like me, a student with a part time job, and president of multiple large clubs at school, the time sensitive aspect of the Hollowed Woods Legendaries its all that great. As someone I was farming with said "anyone with a life has an impossible chance of getting these new weapons".

I've been playing this game for about a year and a half, and I still have yet to get even SF/Patron. Mostly because my main character was unable to finish the RC quest causing me to become disinterested (but thats another story). The little time that I do have now a days to spend playing is no where near enough time to jam 5 hours a day into farming for commons.

Not to mention its the Holiday season and working in Retail and Present Shopping/Making doesn't combine well. When I get home from work I'm exhausted. Then I need to work on my art because personally I would like to go to college so I can eat in 5-10 years.

Anyways, what I'm saying is; we should have the opportunity to loot these weapons after the Woods have closed for the season. Something like giving Devil Root the new Devil's Claw would make sense, and allow more time to find these weapons.
 
Greyvicee said:
For someone like me, a student with a part time job, and president of multiple large clubs at school, the time sensitive aspect of the Hollowed Woods Legendaries its all that great. As someone I was farming with said "anyone with a life has an impossible chance of getting these new weapons".

I've been playing this game for about a year and a half, and I still have yet to get even SF/Patron. Mostly because my main character was unable to finish the RC quest causing me to become disinterested (but thats another story). The little time that I do have now a days to spend playing is no where near enough time to jam 5 hours a day into farming for commons.

Not to mention its the Holiday season and working in Retail and Present Shopping/Making doesn't combine well. When I get home from work I'm exhausted. Then I need to work on my art because personally I would like to go to college so I can eat in 5-10 years.

Anyways, what I'm saying is; we should have the opportunity to loot these weapons after the Woods have closed for the season. Something like giving Devil Root the new Devil's Claw would make sense, and allow more time to find these weapons.
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Wasn't very nice to people with finals, either.
 
Gona keep my opinion on this short and sweet, I haven't had much time at all for this event or the past event, so far all I have is the blunderbuss. I know these legendaries are suppose to be tied to events but some folks just dont have the time to knock out 4 legendaries in 2 months, I know i still dont have a legendary. They should get added to the normal cursed weapon loot pool, or maybe move the watcher to ravens cove and then move stumpy or what ever he is called to the Cuba near Tia or something like that. Just my opinion on it.
 
Greyvicee said:
For someone like me, a student with a part time job, and president of multiple large clubs at school, the time sensitive aspect of the Hollowed Woods Legendaries its all that great. As someone I was farming with said "anyone with a life has an impossible chance of getting these new weapons".

I've been playing this game for about a year and a half, and I still have yet to get even SF/Patron. Mostly because my main character was unable to finish the RC quest causing me to become disinterested (but thats another story). The little time that I do have now a days to spend playing is no where near enough time to jam 5 hours a day into farming for commons.

Not to mention its the Holiday season and working in Retail and Present Shopping/Making doesn't combine well. When I get home from work I'm exhausted. Then I need to work on my art because personally I would like to go to college so I can eat in 5-10 years.

Anyways, what I'm saying is; we should have the opportunity to loot these weapons after the Woods have closed for the season. Something like giving Devil Root the new Devil's Claw would make sense, and allow more time to find these weapons.
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I completely agree! Especially at this time of year when people have finals, getting ready for the holidays there is not enough time & it really is sad having bosses that are here for such a short time, even if we had 2 months... legendaries should be at bosses that are year round imo...
 
Grady Mcdonald said:
A month isnt close to enough time to get 4 legendarys, remove sf and patrons from their loot pools and give us double legendary chance for the month
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That's too much effort. Just give it to us when we pick up some free pig at the roast on Tort. For free.

I think they should have every single legendary available for free pickup, once a day from the holiday roast while it lasts.
So you can get whatever you can for a limited time. So, grinding at the pig once a day may get you all of the legendarys. I know grinding at the pig is immensely time consuming and a real pain, but you want it bad enough you'll put up with all the hard work. Make it real exciting and have them drop in at random.
But if not, then people will just have to go out and get them the regular way, or wait til the next year.
 
My initial takeaway from posts like this is usually "The Devs Will NEVER Make Everyone Happy."

However, I will says there's a legit point against making items only recoverable for a short time, but:

1) The dev's doubling the time The Hollowed Woods are open (again this year) has put a bit of a dent in that point.
2) Other games offer specific items or reward s ONLY available during special events. So this is nothing new nor limited to POTCO.

Not sure if the Devs are looking into this moving forward, but perhaps with the new islands coming or new areas in the future, other currency/vendors/legends would be added - specific to that area. Then you would have a rotating calendar, not just 2 months a year.
 
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