Agree - "grab gatherables as you run past them" is literally the example we've used internally as "probably ok!" I consider anything that touches combat at all to be off limits, and that would include even giving you a single stim - you're just metagaming at that point and not picking a favorite pet flavor.

I don't think we consider "sub 3" a hard and fast rule at all - we could always tune a particular fight to have a different time to beat if we needed to. We do like the idea of always having an aspirational goal time for players to reach for, though!

I would say "extremely low probability" on this one. We currently think of Neutral Behemoths as more of a stepping stone into the different tiers of fights, but that might change over time!

To your first question, let me copypasta this from another question:

We're currently working on a new structure for basic hunts -- imagine persistent, drop-in/drop-out multiplayer islands for Slayers to go to with multiple (and continually spawning) behemoths.

So yes, we're currently working to turn islands into persistent spaces you can roam around and beat stuff up over a longer period of time. Part of that process will surely be bringing in our smaller critters, special events, and maybe even questgivers -- TBD which of those will be in their initial release. We're in the prototyping phase of this and always looking to hear what sounds fun in this department!

I'm not sure if this hits exactlyyy what you're speaking to (I think "open world" can probably mean a lot of things to different people), but I can mention this:

We're currently working on a new structure for basic hunts -- imagine persistent, drop-in/drop-out multiplayer islands for Slayers to go to with multiple (and continually spawning) behemoths.

I think this would be really cool! I think as we look beyond Escalations into new hunt experiences something like this will definitely be on our list for consideration.

We're also currently working on prototypes for drop-in/drop-out islands that could contain activities for larger groups, a la public events!

It's likely that Pets will live pretty exclusively in the Cosmetic side of things. That doesn't necessarily mean that they might not have interactions - I'd guess a "Rare" pet might just follow you around, but a "Legendary" pet might have some fun actions or even a utility function on islands. No concrete plans for the latter specifically in development today, but I don't see why we wouldn't explore that at some point!

This doesn't mean that we might not look at combat pets at some point, however -- I'd guess that might take the form of a "Beastmaster" type weapon, if I had to guess. We wouldn't want to add required pet gameplay for all slayers all the time. I think that would be too much.

Awesome run, congrats!
These bugged times have been removed. We're learning every day about what situations are causing them and fixing bugs to keep them from happening again.

Thanks for bearing with our growing pains here!

Hey, I know that Curiosaur already hit up this thread, but just wanted to chime in, too!

Performance is something we're continually working on and is a huge focus of the team. We'll keep working on it until we don't have to! We have really ambitious targets for console performance right now and we're making progress towards them every day.

Definitely agree on the teamwork front - we're digging into a major revision to some of the challenges and objectives that we present to players, and part of that will likely involve being more generous with when we give players credit (it stinks when I deal a ton of part damage but somebody else gets the break). Rewarding successful co-op play is always our goal.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

We definitely have heard the feedback that our icy boy isn't an encounter that players love yet. We have some changes we're testing internally that will hopefully make fighting him more fun -- I'd expect to see them in a patch or two.

yes

Hey, great post! Thanks very much for your thoughts.

We're actually in-development for a mode that incorporates a lot of the mechanics you're giving voice to. We agree that a marathon-style mode would be a great addition to the game, and I personally believe it can sit alongside Trials in a complimentary way. I definitely recognize that a Time Trials style mode is not for everybody, and personally think a mode like we're talking about in this thread will be more relevant for greater percentage of players.

To give you an idea of what's going on behind the scenes, Trials was a great endeavor for the team because while building it, we were also building a lot of technology and content frameworks to enable us to start building mode. I think Trials should stay as a mode meant to reward and challenge high-end mechanical mastery, which has been a huge player request since the earliest stages of our closed Alpha. This *new* mode will have it's own rewards and challenges, a...

Totally agree! Lots of great analysis here. We actually just checked in a change that should address this, which is going into testing and should land in one of our upcoming patches.

The TLDR of the fix is, in addition to some tuning adjustments, we'll be guaranteeing that you receive the common for simply breaking the associated part. Your rares and epics will be dropped in addition to this baseline, at generally the same rates as you see today. We'll keep an eye on the hitboxes and see if we need a followup change after this one.

Hopefully when the change rolls out, you'll see an improvement to the targeted farming experience. I need those Shrowd Legs myself for my Hunger, so I'll be looking forward to it as well!

I'm glad to see Kakyoin is in charge, as he should be.

"I reject!"

We've considered giving you some options of things to buy with excess Hunt Pass currency that you accumulate after completing the hunt pass (be it cores, hard to grind bonus vanity stuff for the truly hardcore, etc) -- share your feelings on this idea, if you could - I'd love to know how it strikes you and the kinds of rewards you'd hope to see in such a system!

Hi! There are a couple of changes coming in the 0.8.0 patch that should address some of these issues:

- More of a focus on high tier behemoths for crafting high tier gear (eg: orb requirements shifted to heroic arcstones, etc)

- We agree this quest felt rough, particuarly on the heels of Moyra's quest and the requirements have been reworked

Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming!

The inspect menu had some serious issues that were causing problems as we push to console, and had to go into retirement to be rebuilt. We know it's a useful feature, and hope to have it back in action before long.

Hey! This is a great question.

As Xeliph called out elsewhere in the comments, this is partially to encourage queue health. If you had to exclusively farm a single behemoth for 100 hunts to max out their weapon, queues would get massively fragmented, and that problem would only get exacerbated as more behemoths were added to the game. Patrols are a balance against that.

Additionally, we think it would be somewhat fatiguing to fight a single behemoth 100 times in a row. We find that most people like a little more variety in their hunts.

We CERTAINLY want to make sure you've fought a Behemoth a bunch in order to build and max their gear. The whole premise of the game is building gear out of the parts of behemoths you've slain. We picked several keystone levels (+1, +6, +10) to require a variety of parts to make sure you've beaten the behemoth a number of times at each threshold of difficulty.

Maybe the balance is off? Perhaps we should require some par...

Current plans indicate yes, but things can obviously always change when it comes to schedules.