Embers Adrift turns into a mostly solo RPG at lvl 30

[Crank]

My Marshal is currently level 37. I've been playing the game a lot lately (at least 40 hours last week). I play US East coast times. I've spent a majority of my time leveling up through my 30s as the only person online within +/-5 levels of me. It's been very common for me to be the only online player in the 30s. I'm in Bag Runs(biggest or second biggest guild) and there are several amazing high-level players who frequently help lower-level players. Level 40-50 guildmates have at least allowed me to experience dungeons like FD1 & FD2, they help with quests, and help me get some rare gear that I'm looking for, but it trivializes the content. I think Embers Adrift is a good game and I enjoy solo or small group adventures, but the thought of never getting to main tank a dungeon with people at my own level is a huge turn off and demotivates me from wanting to continue.

I know the level compression was very controversial and isn't happening anymore, but it would have helped me and others in my situation. I'd rather be running dungeons like Forgotten Depths with an appropriate level group where leveling takes longer vs soloing/duoing 1c and 2c mobs for hours on end in the current state of the game. I could level to 50 no problem with how the game is today, but it's not the experience a lot of players are looking for. Anyway, I understand the level compression was disliked by many for valid reasons so it makes sense they aren't going forward with it.

I just hope this game can figure out a way to retain new players into their 30s and beyond.

A few suggestions I have:

- Lean more heavily into alchemy. It makes combat so much more exciting. Give it to players earlier and allow us to use it way more often. If that'd make us too powerful, then buff some mobs a bit to compensate.
- Improve the solo experience for defenders. It feels significantly slower to gain experience as a solo defender, which probably explains why there are so few of us at 30+ where the groups really start to dry up. I spend so much time waiting for health to regenerate. Does the health regen stat even work? Part of the problem might be the obnoxiously long time we have to sit in combat status after killing a mob.
- Add a trading post. The gear progression for me right now feels very bad. Most of the good gear is locked behind full group content, which makes sense. Most of the time my only options for getting upgrades is by depending on 50s for help or they just give it to me. Neither feel great. I want to earn it! I'd prefer to get a same level group and get it for myself, but that's not happening with zero players online in my level range. At least with a trading post I can use gold I've earned.

I still like the game enough that I'm going to keep playing even if I'm solo/duo most of the time, but I may drop the sub and only play as my 28 berserker who is a lot more enjoyable to play in the current state of the game.

 

[csthao]

Wait until your reach level 30 on your zerker, that's when they really shine.

 

[nautilus]

My Marshal is currently level 37. I've been playing the game a lot lately (at least 40 hours last week). I play US East coast times. I've spent a majority of my time leveling up through my 30s as the only person online within +/-5 levels of me. It's been very common for me to be the only online player in the 30s. I'm in Bag Runs(biggest or second biggest guild) and there are several amazing high-level players who frequently help lower-level players. Level 40-50 guildmates have at least allowed me to experience dungeons like FD1 & FD2, they help with quests, and help me get some rare gear that I'm looking for, but it trivializes the content. I think Embers Adrift is a good game and I enjoy solo or small group adventures, but the thought of never getting to main tank a dungeon with people at my own level is a huge turn off and demotivates me from wanting to continue.

I know the level compression was very controversial and isn't happening anymore, but it would have helped me and others in my situation. I'd rather be running dungeons like Forgotten Depths with an appropriate level group where leveling takes longer vs soloing/duoing 1c and 2c mobs for hours on end in the current state of the game. I could level to 50 no problem with how the game is today, but it's not the experience a lot of players are looking for. Anyway, I understand the level compression was disliked by many for valid reasons so it makes sense they aren't going forward with it.

I just hope this game can figure out a way to retain new players into their 30s and beyond.

A few suggestions I have:

- Lean more heavily into alchemy. It makes combat so much more exciting. Give it to players earlier and allow us to use it way more often. If that'd make us too powerful, then buff some mobs a bit to compensate.
- Improve the solo experience for defenders. It feels significantly slower to gain experience as a solo defender, which probably explains why there are so few of us at 30+ where the groups really start to dry up. I spend so much time waiting for health to regenerate. Does the health regen stat even work? Part of the problem might be the obnoxiously long time we have to sit in combat status after killing a mob.
- Add a trading post. The gear progression for me right now feels very bad. Most of the good gear is locked behind full group content, which makes sense. Most of the time my only options for getting upgrades is by depending on 50s for help or they just give it to me. Neither feel great. I want to earn it! I'd prefer to get a same level group and get it for myself, but that's not happening with zero players online in my level range. At least with a trading post I can use gold I've earned.
- Devs should support the Embers Adrift wiki. Wikis are invaluable to many players especially new ones. I think there are a lot of players in the community that would start helping or contribute even more if it had your support. I'm hesitant because I'm afraid any of my time-consuming efforts could be wiped out in a single update to the game.

I still like the game enough that I'm going to keep playing even if I'm solo/duo most of the time, but I may drop the sub and only play as my 28 berserker who is a lot more enjoyable to play in the current state of the game.

It's a shame people won't get to experience the game like we did when we all were learning the game 1-50 and not everything was fully documented or being 'helped' out by 50s. It is way more fun doing things level-appropriate without bumper rails up to save the day but what can you do at this point. Population spiked before Alchemy but seems to have taken a turn for the worse again.

 

[Elloa]

- Devs should support the Embers Adrift wiki. Wikis are invaluable to many players especially new ones. I think there are a lot of players in the community that would start helping or contribute even more if it had your support. I'm hesitant because I'm afraid any of my time-consuming efforts could be wiped out in a single update to the game.

Heya Crank, thank you for feedback - I have read all of your post but I want to specifically answer to this point. What are you thinking off when you are asking for the devs to support the Wiki?
In my opinion, we are already supporting the wiki, by promoting it, speaking about it and sharing link into introduction posts. Atleast that's what I'm doing. But I imagine that's not what you are talking about. Can you explain please what you are thinking of?

 

[nautilus]

Heya Crank, thank you for feedback - I have read all of your post but I want to specifically answer to this point. What are you thinking off when you are asking for the devs to support the Wiki?
In my opinion, we are already supporting the wiki, by promoting it, speaking about it and sharing link into introduction posts. Atleast that's what I'm doing. But I imagine that's not what you are talking about. Can you explain please what you are thinking of?

Yeah, I am curious as to what a player would want from the studio in terms of wiki. Do we honestly want every every single item and drop categorized and published from the database directly into a website? Every secret and all lore uncovered?

 

[Crank]

Please forget I mentioned anything about the wiki. I don't want that to be the focal point of my post.

 

[Yarpen Zig]

Great feedback, Crank. I hope you get to experience more Embers dungeons as main tank, it's quite exhilerating with a good cooperative team.

Soloing definitely is rough on tanks, especially when your gear is configured with grouping primarily in mind. If you lean more into positional and mauls you can make it much more efficient. That said, obtaining specific gear is easier said than done especially when considering how rare the vast majority of mauls are. (which are also gated behind group content and almost always the rare drop) Storing multiple sets of gear and swapping between them is an entirely different matter that often proves so cumbersome that it's not worth it. I think it would help if we were able to swap at banks between at least 2 sets of gear akin to Diablo 3.

I hope one day we'll be able to have Seasons periodically in Embers Adrift so we can all experience the leveling process in relative sync once in a blupiter. I know that's probably a pie in the sky idea but seasons really feel like the only way to address issues that have plagued MMOs with a focus on the overal level experience over the endgame loop for decades. Games like this require a significant quanity of people logged in within each level band in every time zone to prevent group formation issues from overshadowing all of the other great things about it.

Unfortunately if you miss the initial wave of players or some of the waves following content releases you'll join during a lull and endlessly be playing catch up with the wave that preceded you. The next big wave of players will probably be following the release of epics, FD3 or Dryfoot Fortress. That will give us a big carrot to wave at the thousands of people who shelved the game from lvl 20 to 30 and on. Looking forward to it!

 

[MarcusFromOz]

I've levelled my knight to 34 predominantly in a duo with a warlord.
I have done some solo though also so get what you are saying.

The brookhollow maul got me through most of that, I can't imagine doing it without that.
Stacked lots of 2H damage and positional also.
The knight having 2 self heals makes a huge difference.

I think the marshall and jugg should have some sort of self heal skill.
But then again, all tanks should have an interrupt skill also, would be a lot of fun.

The fear of making the game too easy is certainly counterproductive sometimes.

 

[Crank]

Thank you for your replies to my post so far. This is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. The devs can't just make players appear for me. I am strongly considering not playing my Marshal again until that next wave of players comes for whatever reason. The sad thing is, I was part of a wave in March, met some great players, but took a 1-week vacation and fell several levels behind. I figured I play just as much or more than most others so I should be able to catch up. However, I can't because of the incredible amount of time I'm forced into soloing, which is why I brought up the suggestion about improving the solo experience for defenders. I was hesitant to suggest that because it's more treating the symptoms than fixing the problem, but when I log on and there is only 10-20 people total and nobody within 5 levels above or below me, then I would still like to be able to play my Marshal and feel like I'm making decent progress that's worth my time. I suppose I could try putting together a completely separate build using mauls and positional, but I'd probably be starting from scratch with gear since I've been so focused on using polearms with parry/riposte.

With that said, I want to emphasize that I don't want to solo all the time and I don't want solo to be super easy or the most efficient way to get XP. I just thought it worth suggesting that when forced into soloing the experience of a Marshal/Defender should be a bit better or on par with other classes.

 

[Yarpen Zig]

I am strongly considering not playing my Marshal again until that next wave of players comes for whatever reason. The sad thing is, I was part of a wave in March, met some great players, but took a 1-week vacation and fell several levels behind. I figured I play just as much or more than most others so I should be able to catch up. However, I can't because of the incredible amount of time I'm forced into soloing, which is why I brought up the suggestion about improving the solo experience for defenders.

This has happened to me a few different times over the last year. I'll have a reliable healer for a few levels for the tight 3ish hours most evenings I can to commit to doing dungeons. Eventually I'll miss some nights playing due to IRL and I'll come back to not having consistent heals. They'll either catch another wave with a tank that has more availability or shelve the game entirely because they spent a couple evenings tankless due to me playing D&D instead.

Like you, I don't really enjoy doing content overleveled. I also don't enjoy soloing as this game truly shines best in group environments. Unfortunately, the higher level you get, the more challenging it is to sync up with players that play a similar pace. When the stars don't align, your options are to solo, gather, play an alt, or do something semi-afk so you can keep an eye on /world chat for groups forming. There used to be a way made by a clever community member to see the groups forming in /world chat via Discord but unfortunately that has long been shelved. I'd like to leave the game up and AFK from time to time to be able to keep an eye on groups forming but the short AFK timer combined with the power hungry login screen I can't really justify leaving the game up in that way.

It's a tough problem to solve. I think the unfortunate reality is that the only solution to these issues is time. Time for the devs to make the game better and more sticky to those that try it and time for the devs to make content that will bring people back. I personally was excited for level compression as I thought it was a clever solution to smoothing out some of the more fraustrating gaps in content through the leveling experience.

I wish Stormhaven would slap an "Early Access" sticker on the game and take the flexibility to massively overhaul the game as they see fit that comes with it. When they feel like the game is complete they can hype up a first Season and slap a V1 sticker on it. Until then they're going to be nitpicked to death at a granular level by the Discord community for better or for worse.

Zig

 

[Undone]

I wish Stormhaven would slap an "Early Access" sticker on the game and take the flexibility to massively overhaul the game as they see fit that comes with it. When they feel like the game is complete they can hype up a first Season and slap a V1 sticker on it. Until then they're going to be nitpicked to death at a granular level by the Discord community for better or for worse.

If we had a do-over that is likely what I would want to do (not speaking for the company here, just me personally). But I think it would be a pretty hard pill to swallow for most if we changed from "launched" to "early-access" now. We went B2P, we added a free trial, I'm not sure what else we can do to buy that flexibility at this point.

 

[Yarpen Zig]

If we had a do-over that is likely what I would want to do (not speaking for the company here, just me personally). But I think it would be a pretty hard pill to swallow for most if we changed from "launched" to "early-access" now. We went B2P, we added a free trial, I'm not sure what else we can do to buy that flexibility at this point.

You all have gone above and beyond to remove the barrier to entry to play the game with B2P and FTP. You're probably right that it's too late to slap an early access sticker on it. Especially if you agree that the game is closer to feature complete than it is to the "early access" state that it was released in. After mail, auction house and a few more months of content releases I believe we'll be in a much better state!

 

[Undone]

I know the level compression was very controversial and isn't happening anymore, but it would have helped me and others in my situation. I'd rather be running dungeons like Forgotten Depths with an appropriate level group where leveling takes longer vs soloing/duoing 1c and 2c mobs for hours on end in the current state of the game. I could level to 50 no problem with how the game is today, but it's not the experience a lot of players are looking for. Anyway, I understand the level compression was disliked by many for valid reasons so it makes sense they aren't going forward with it.

The two primary issues with level compression in my eyes is:
a) Players crave dopamine hits so extending the time within each level would be a net negative for a game that is already viewed as "taking too long". Which in itself is already problematic given that the focus of our game was always on "the journey" so our design ideas are immediately at odds with what players desire.
b) Players who have gained a great deal of knowledge about the game through playing would have to recalibrate everything they have learned up until this point - which could be enough to make them throw in the towel. With such a small community I don't think we can afford to take that risk right now.
Hopefully in the future we can add some sort of "mini-expansion" which would allow us to compress everyone while adding new content at levels above that. i.e. compress everyone to the 1-30 range while simultaneously adding new higher level content from 30-50.

- Lean more heavily into alchemy. It makes combat so much more exciting. Give it to players earlier and allow us to use it way more often. If that'd make us too powerful, then buff some mobs a bit to compensate.

What do you view as the limiting factor here? Is it the essence cost, the cooldown, or both? And if both what percent would you attribute to each?

- Improve the solo experience for defenders. It feels significantly slower to gain experience as a solo defender, which probably explains why there are so few of us at 30+ where the groups really start to dry up. I spend so much time waiting for health to regenerate. Does the health regen stat even work? Part of the problem might be the obnoxiously long time we have to sit in combat status after killing a mob.

Health regen works out of combat. Although, that is not the entire story. The sword below your nameplate indicate if you are in combat or not. Any time you take a hit, land a hit, or are in the vicinity of one of these actions your combat timer gets refreshed. It takes 15 seconds after one of these actions to go from fully "in combat" to fully "out of combat" and the swords to go away. In the interim however, your regen rate is interpolated between the in combat and out of combat value. In other words: regen should start taking effect shortly after combat ends, and will increase in effectiveness until the in combat flag (swords) go away, at which point you begin accumulating a fully rested bonus which is applied as long as you put your weapons away. This fully rested bonus increments up to a limit but was calibrated to maintain a decent recovery time for high level tanks who have the most hp.

What sort of recovery times are you typically looking at while soloing? Are you using food/drink consumables? Health potions? What sorts of recovery times do you think would be more acceptable?

- Add a trading post. The gear progression for me right now feels very bad. Most of the good gear is locked behind full group content, which makes sense. Most of the time my only options for getting upgrades is by depending on 50s for help or they just give it to me. Neither feel great. I want to earn it! I'd prefer to get a same level group and get it for myself, but that's not happening with zero players online in my level range. At least with a trading post I can use gold I've earned.

Mail is being added at the end of this month and it is the first step towards some sort of trading house. We're still working on designs of what that might look like and playing a bit of a "wait and see" game with how mail impacts player-to-player trade but it's certainly something we are heavily considering.

I still like the game enough that I'm going to keep playing even if I'm solo/duo most of the time, but I may drop the sub and only play as my 28 berserker who is a lot more enjoyable to play in the current state of the game.

We appreciate you sticking around with us!

 

[Crank]

What do you view as the limiting factor here? Is it the essence cost, the cooldown, or both? And if both what percent would you attribute to each?

I think the alchemy cooldowns are fine. It's the essence cost or the limited amount of essence we can store. I only have 200 max ee right now. Having 250 ee would be noticeably better, I'm sure. Even so right now I feel alchemy is mostly meant to be used in emergency situations only. For example, I did a few UC solo loops and I started getting lown on ee. I continued to do more solo loops without using alchemy unless I thought I might die. Those next couple of solo loops just weren't as much fun for me. I love alchemy so much with the special effects, the glowy lights, the sounds lol. It feels good and I'd like to have those feelings as much as possible! Also, the choices I'm making in my head during combat are much more interesting when I have alchemy available and I'm not so worried about running out. I don't want to have unlimited alchemy, but being able to use it some amount more would be really nice. I don't know what the right amount is without making us too powerful though.

What sort of recovery times are you typically looking at while soloing? Are you using food/drink consumables? Health potions? What sorts of recovery times do you think would be more acceptable?

I'm really sorry, but I can't give specifics on times for how long I'm recovering between fights and what I think would be more acceptable. I could do testing and provide you my numbers, but I don't have them now to give and would still like to respond without delay. One thing I constantly observe is after a couple of fights my health will be around half and my stam will be almost empty. My health regen is 3x or more higher than my stam regen, but my stam recovers to full while I still have to wait many more seconds for half of my health to be recovered. That is why I feel something isn't working properly with health regen. I use the best crafted consumables I have at all times including smoked meat, tea, health potions, but I do run out sometimes and have to switch to vendor consumables.

I think this is why defenders have a rougher time soloing than other classes. Strikers can use all their damaging abilities to quickly kill mobs before losing much of their own health. So they are mostly only waiting on stam regen. Supporters can heal themselves so they are only waiting on stam regen. Defenders however have to just sit there and wait it out through the super slow health regen. It's gotten to the point where the only way I can handle it is by putting up YT videos on a second monitor and then I pay attention to that while my health slowly fills back up.

We appreciate you sticking around with us!

Of course! I played a couple of months in early 2023 and then didn't come back until this March. After coming back I was very impressed by all the additions and improvements to the game. I think you all are doing an amazing job and I can't wait to see what's coming the rest of 2024.

 

[Undone]

I'm really sorry, but I can't give specifics on times for how long I'm recovering between fights and what I think would be more acceptable. I could do testing and provide you my numbers, but I don't have them now to give and would still like to respond without delay. One thing I constantly observe is after a couple of fights my health will be around half and my stam will be almost empty. My health regen is 3x or more higher than my stam regen, but my stam recovers to full while I still have to wait many more seconds for half of my health to be recovered. That is why I feel something isn't working properly with health regen. I use the best crafted consumables I have at all times including smoked meat, tea, health potions, but I do run out sometimes and have to switch to vendor consumables.

I think this is why defenders have a rougher time soloing than other classes. Strikers can use all their damaging abilities to quickly kill mobs before losing much of their own health. So they are mostly only waiting on stam regen. Supporters can heal themselves so they are only waiting on stam regen. Defenders however have to just sit there and wait it out through the super slow health regen. It's gotten to the point where the only way I can handle it is by putting up YT videos on a second monitor and then I pay attention to that while my health slowly fills back up.

No need to apologize! But yes, providing some rough estimates would help us figure out if something weird is going on or if it's just how we designed it and things should be improved.

 

[Yarpen Zig]

I think this is why defenders have a rougher time soloing than other classes. Strikers can use all their damaging abilities to quickly kill mobs before losing much of their own health. So they are mostly only waiting on stam regen. Supporters can heal themselves so they are only waiting on stam regen. Defenders however have to just sit there and wait it out through the super slow health regen. It's gotten to the point where the only way I can handle it is by putting up YT videos on a second monitor and then I pay attention to that while my health slowly fills back up.

100% this is the reason solo on tank feels slow. You can overcompensate with positional gear and a maul to approach solo fights with the same mentality as a striker (kill as fast as possible). Otherwise, you're stuck sitting around waiting for hp to top up while strikers or supporters are only bottlenecked by stam regen.

 

[Mynno]

Perhaps for the defender classes only they have a hit point regen that regens at the same rate as the stamina regen rate. As it is Tanks already take a repair armor tax that the other classes don't feel as much due to them tanking and taking the hits. This would at least allow the tanks to be able to solo a little better and it should not affect the group dynamic that much since it really only comes into play once combat has ended.

Edit: After thinking about it for a while I am assuming that the decision was made to regain hit points slowly to stay in line with the games from the past so players in the group had time to chat between kills and bond. It worked very well back in the day but now that we have software "discord" that allows us to talk to each other as we play in real time, I am not sure this mechanic is needed as much to get the players talking to each other and bonding. Also having the health regen the same as the stamina might be a bit too much due to the tanks ability to wear heavy armors and have more AC to negate damage so maybe it should be like a 50% increase in health regen for defenders only.

 

[Keiban]

I love alchemy so much with the special effects, the glowy lights, the sounds lol. It feels good and I'd like to have those feelings as much as possible!

But is this really because alchemy is such a great concept or rather that your normal skills feel underwhelming?

I very rarely used alchemy on my berserker when in a group because it makes such a little difference with damage skills in the overall kill time for a mob. When you need to hit a 3-chev like 8 times with a skill, times 4 strikers, plus a bit from a tank, it makes next to no difference if 1 skill does double damage, has a little dot or whatever. Even if it only cost 1 EE it would probably still not be worth to spam them as you'd probably spend more time making back your EE then you saved using them.
They basically only make sense in emergency situations or when you want to solo a hard named. For these i use like 2-3 alchemy skills, the rest are never used.

 

[MarcusFromOz]

From my solo/duo tanks perspective

1. I would separate Alchemy 1 and Alchemy 2 cooldowns.
I very much try to avoid using Alchemy 2 because I don't want my Alchemy 1 skill to be unavailable for the next fight.

2. I would give defenders a "shout" skill that doubles health regen.
The fights over, you use it, sit down and healing is 100% faster (and this should stack with any health regen bonus from gear).
When they are soloing they can choose to have this on their toolbar or not.
When they are grouping its assumed that it won't be on the toolbar.

 

[Crank]

No need to apologize! But yes, providing some rough estimates would help us figure out if something weird is going on or if it's just how we designed it and things should be improved.

Also, I do think it's worth sharing that if I only wait for my stam to regen in between fights similar to what a striker or supporter would do, then I can sometimes kill a good number of mobs before having to sit and wait the 1-2 minutes. However, the number of mobs I can kill before being forced to wait for health regen varies wildly depending on many factors. I try to stick to only dark blue mobs which don't hit me that hard, but often times whites and the occasional yellow are mixed in, which increase my downtime by a lot. Even blues can be quite hard on me when they have nasty buffs or debuffs.

I do like the idea that Marcus is suggesting where all defenders get some skill that increases health regen when out of combat. Something like that may need a minute or two cooldown so it's not too OP.

Other ideas are to increase the base health regen of defenders, add health regen to more defender specific gear, and/or make health regen itself more effective.

I feel like going into detail so much about soloing is straying a bit from my original problem, which is I don't want to be soloing all the time. I would much rather be in groups. However, I believe small changes like making the solo experience less miserable for defenders will keep a few more players around for longer when the population plummets. If it's easier for the people who really enjoy the game to make it through the slow times, then hopefully online player counts will stop going down to crazy low numbers like 10 or 20, which makes it almost impossible to find groups.