So as we all know now the potential kill rate of Bewitched Woods VH slaughters all forms of buster quest.

This only works if you get a good loop going in the map and stick together.

I just had a weird game where everyone seemed to know the route and it was actually pretty good because the loop had no falspawn grid spaces at all. We stuck together, got a PSE burst and everything.

Then with about 10 minutes to go, the other parties (there were at least two full parties when we joined) just suddenly decided to abandon the entirely supernatural loop we had going and start spreading out to the far corners of the map and into all the falspawn grid positions to absolutely devastate our kill rate.

What is this? Why would people do this? Were they just so far ahead in their leagues that they were guaranteed victory so they privately agreed to sabotage others in their game?

I like to keep Hanlon's Razor in mind at all times ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity") but it was such a sudden and silent change from capable to woeful that I'm really struggling to understand how it could be anything other than deliberate.

People, don't do this! It's a horrible thing to do to the people in your MPA whose leads will disappear from the extreme loss in kill rate!

Half the time I go in there. Try to join a party or even just keep up with the group and kill they circle a few times then dip out to kill the boss. Usually leaving me in there by myself. People don't communicate in there so intentions are usually unknown. Or they get tired and go off and do their own thing.

That happens every time I go there, it’s a strangely antisocial game for an MMO, no one wants to stay and work together. It makes it so much harder to kill anything when everyone splits up.

I placed third for League and it was a hard fought battle to even keep third, I was only six enemies away from fourth. First and second were ahead by over a thousand.

Maybe they run with a dedicated group?

New grievance: Don't set up camp for a PSE Burst in a falspawn area. That one I do attribute to incompetence. It's funny that I switched to Gettemhult's outfit yesterday, this kind of nonsense really helps understand his Episode 1 pre-Chapter 8 mindset.

I'm going to finish 4th or 5th this time. I had to change games twice in the last 15 minutes because of how awful the MPAs were, and while the last game was great there wasn't enough time left to catch up.

I haven't checked yet, but I think I got stuck with the same party of three tryhards as the last three league windows now. Why is it always the same group? Whether I start with 20 or 50 minutes left, there they freaking are. And if I even get one bad MPA I'm instantly limited to 10 SG for my efforts because of it. Is there some way to blacklist them? I want to compete on a level playing field.

ARKS League is meant to be a nice injection of SG. It's just making me miserable to always be a sliver behind the extreme falloff of the reward. 4th place awarding 10 SG is an act of cruelty. I remember hoping it'd be an improvement on always finishing in 21st-39th on weekly TA rankings. If only.

My last run this guy came out of nowhere, practically dead last for the first twenty minutes then he shot up to second place. No idea how he did it but there was no way to catch up to him.

Pretty much the only way to get lots of kills quickly is a fast-killing PSE Burst. In a supernatural tile, of course. I shouldn't have to clarify that, but today has been an eye-opener.

Edit: Pretty funny that immediately after a league MPA that depressed me by wasting a PSE Burst on falspawn, I decide to do the weekly TA for my usual 10 SG and the game abducts me just and immediately gives me another falspawn PSE Burst. I mean come on.

@Miraglyth said in ARKS League: Don't do this!!:

What is this? Why would people do this?

They're imbeciles, wish it was possible to kick people in a MPA trolling

Ya I don't run with the League. I usually just skip the event and just buy my SG if need be if I ever need more for some reason, provided I ran out of stocks from Buster and Casino exchange.

@Milk said in ARKS League: Don't do this!!:

That happens every time I go there, it’s a strangely antisocial game for an MMO, no one wants to stay and work together. It makes it so much harder to kill anything when everyone splits up.

I placed third for League and it was a hard fought battle to even keep third, I was only six enemies away from fourth. First and second were ahead by over a thousand.

Trying to shoehorn "cooperation" never really works. Granted, i don't even care where i end up so i probably will make my own solo instance of it, but this just proves that you should make your own groups to farm these things more efficiently. Why blame other people? Aren't all of you in a guild or whatever they are called? Take people who agree with your methods and farm to your hearts content.

@Yggranya said in ARKS League: Don't do this!!:

@Milk said in ARKS League: Don't do this!!:

That happens every time I go there, it’s a strangely antisocial game for an MMO, no one wants to stay and work together. It makes it so much harder to kill anything when everyone splits up.

I placed third for League and it was a hard fought battle to even keep third, I was only six enemies away from fourth. First and second were ahead by over a thousand.

Trying to shoehorn "cooperation" never really works. Granted, i don't even care where i end up so i probably will make my own solo instance of it, but this just proves that you should make your own groups to farm these things more efficiently. Why blame other people? Aren't all of you in a guild or whatever they are called? Take people who agree with your methods and farm to your hearts content.

What’s the point of farming the area if everyone splits up and only a third of us are fighting the miniboss? It makes no sense, it takes a lot longer and people end up dying a lot. My guild isn’t always on and I do like that cooperative play like any MMO encourages. I see it plenty in other content in the game, even Ultimate, but it’s always sadly missing in the spooky woods so I cut back on going there without my group.

@Milk Heh, "cooperation". At higher levels that is useful, but lower level versions (like VH for faster farming) is just a zerg festival where everyone just gangs up on them and nukes them till they die. People won't die because the enemies don't even have a chance to do anything. If they have a chance, people die as they don't see anything with all the effects going on.

I was lucky to get a reasonably good MPA this time. We got super unlucky on the only PSE Burst since it got a Cross Burst instantly and then proceeded to get three distinct level 7 boosts that never reached level 8. That put me a fair amount ahead of that party of tryhards, six from the same alliance (because of course I'd be stuck in the same league as them for the fourth time in the last five leagues) but we slowed down quite a bit after that so I expected they'd retain their usual impressive pace and doom me to 7th.

But... it seems like they just stopped! I've no idea why and I was so desperate to keep killing that I don't know when (maybe with around 5 minutes left?) but it means this depressing streak of finishing marginally behind one co-ordinating group of 3-6 players is finally over.

As an aside 2nd place was in my MPA. I literally won and got 50 SG more than someone else did because I joined a game a couple of seconds before them. The only recourse available to them (if they'd even noticed; I didn't until I saw the list afterwards) would have been to burn time changing game and hoping for one that was sufficiently better to overtake me. This is starting to seem like a rather bizarre form of competition?

@Yggranya said in ARKS League: Don't do this!!:

Aren't all of you in a guild or whatever they are called?

Is this supposed to be a contest on who gets the most kills or who has the most ambitious alliance? It's always been advertised as the former.

Really the core of my recent woes has been that I keep getting lumped into the same league as the same co-ordinated group. They literally have been in four of my last five leagues. I hoped ARKS League would be an escape from my misery of always finishing 21st to 39th in the weekly TA rankings where 21st and below gives 10 SG (and to exemplify that, right now I am 28th) and always behind the same group of players who must be drowning in all the SG they get from it every week.

But instead I've been getting placed with a group that is conveniently at least the size of the number of positions that give more than 10 SG. Over and over and over. So it's just felt like a miniature version of TA. And to make it feel worse, Discord and this forum keep showing me people who easily win their leagues for repeat hits of 100 SG with way fewer points lol. It just... doesn't feel like it's working right, you know?

@Yggranya

Ah I see, I was doing SH. Only a third of us were on the dark falz bosses and it was death after death. I ran out of moons, pretty depressing stuff. The rest of the people on the map were attacking golems somewhere. It’s just a bummer when that happens because you can see those players getting discouraged, they ended up leaving.

@Milk That's what you get when you design something to simply kill the player (and honestly, it's REALLY easy to kill the player). Some people get discouraged and other will get encouraged to mock those who got discouraged. Pumping enemies full of health and damage is easy, so it gets used often to up the "difficulty". I can already tell that episode 6 enemies are going to be even worse, which is in line with the usual japanese game designing. I admit that game developers recycling old crap is the norm, but still...