Housing gauntlets fundamentally ruin the monstrology experience
I have recently become addicted to Monstrology. In the past 2 weeks or so, I have filled out the tomes for Krokotopia, Marleybone, Mooshu, Celestia, Zafaria, Avalon, Azteca, Polaris, Mirage, Empyrea, Grizzleheim, and Wysteria, along with nearly finishing Dragonspyre, Khrysalis, and Karamelle, and have thoroughly enjoyed my experience with the system.
I even enjoy the more annoying gimmicks of Monstrology, like how the Wordless Woodsmen in Khrysalis is locked behind Rank 15 Gardening (unless you collect its animus in the Khrysalis prequest), or how some mobs only spawn with 3 or more players present in an instance (looking at you Vitamin Bear in Karamelle, Painted Spider in Khrysalis, and 2 variants of Insulated-Bat Bot in Empyrea), or even how some mobs only have a chance of spawning in an instance, making you run the instance multiple times in hopes of finding the mob you want (this mainly happens in Karamelle). I like the hunt.
But the housing gauntlet system takes the hunt too far.
For those unfamiliar, whenever you enter a housing gauntlet, the gauntlet's difficulty is determined by the level of the lowest player present in the instance to stop players from using gauntlets to get massive amounts of xp or gear too early. (It's worth noting the one-shot gauntlets can have their tier set before going in, but those are another can of worms). Each gauntlet's difficulty has the same enemies, just with different ranks and occasionally different cheats. The issue here is that in Monstrology, every single variant of enemy has it's own Monstrology entry. So, if you want to complete the Monstrology tome, you have to run through every single housing gauntlet (8 in total) on all 5 tiers.
Not only does this mean you have to find someone with each gauntlet or buy the gauntlets yourself, but you also need to find 4 other wizards with levels that meet the other tier requirements. As an example, if I wanted to collect all the Monstrology entries for the Midnight Sun Pagoda Gauntlet, I would need to find 4 other wizards of level 1, 20, 40, and 60, and then run through the gauntlet with every single one of those wizards, on top of finding someone who owns the Midnight Sun Pagoda Gauntlet and is willing to let me use it, or buying the gauntlet myself. And this process has to be repeated for 8 different gauntlets.
You either need to be well-connected in the community, have thousands of empowers to pay for use of a gauntlet, or pay hundreds of dollars in order to buy all the gauntlets yourself. And, of course, have a myriad of different wizards of different level ranges as mentioned earlier.
The system is simply and fundamentally unfair to the player. Because of this, I will be quitting Monstrology until change is made.
Some proposed potential changes: - Make only the highest tier version extractable (This would of course be hurtful to those who went through the spiritual pain I described above. Perhaps the other entries could be kept as legacy for those who got them, but hidden from the Monstrology tome for those who haven't) - Make extracting one tier reveal all tier variants - Make extracting any tier reveal and single, condensed Monstrology entry (Same problem as first proposal) - Allow players to join Gauntlets via Castle Tours after 3-month period of the Gauntlet being released (Would not fix the issue with one-shot gauntlets, but would be a start) - Make Baddle of the Bands and Tanglewood Terror one-shot gauntlets droppable from bosses (The gear from both of these except maybe the max tier Baddle boots is outdated in the meta, so making them droppable would be unlikely to hurt KI's income)
Re: Housing gauntlets fundamentally ruin the monstrology experience
AlextheWizard53 on Jul 18, 2021 wrote:
I have recently become addicted to Monstrology. In the past 2 weeks or so, I have filled out the tomes for Krokotopia, Marleybone, Mooshu, Celestia, Zafaria, Avalon, Azteca, Polaris, Mirage, Empyrea, Grizzleheim, and Wysteria, along with nearly finishing Dragonspyre, Khrysalis, and Karamelle, and have thoroughly enjoyed my experience with the system.
I even enjoy the more annoying gimmicks of Monstrology, like how the Wordless Woodsmen in Khrysalis is locked behind Rank 15 Gardening (unless you collect its animus in the Khrysalis prequest), or how some mobs only spawn with 3 or more players present in an instance (looking at you Vitamin Bear in Karamelle, Painted Spider in Khrysalis, and 2 variants of Insulated-Bat Bot in Empyrea), or even how some mobs only have a chance of spawning in an instance, making you run the instance multiple times in hopes of finding the mob you want (this mainly happens in Karamelle). I like the hunt.
But the housing gauntlet system takes the hunt too far.
For those unfamiliar, whenever you enter a housing gauntlet, the gauntlet's difficulty is determined by the level of the lowest player present in the instance to stop players from using gauntlets to get massive amounts of xp or gear too early. (It's worth noting the one-shot gauntlets can have their tier set before going in, but those are another can of worms). Each gauntlet's difficulty has the same enemies, just with different ranks and occasionally different cheats. The issue here is that in Monstrology, every single variant of enemy has it's own Monstrology entry. So, if you want to complete the Monstrology tome, you have to run through every single housing gauntlet (8 in total) on all 5 tiers.
Not only does this mean you have to find someone with each gauntlet or buy the gauntlets yourself, but you also need to find 4 other wizards with levels that meet the other tier requirements. As an example, if I wanted to collect all the Monstrology entries for the Midnight Sun Pagoda Gauntlet, I would need to find 4 other wizards of level 1, 20, 40, and 60, and then run through the gauntlet with every single one of those wizards, on top of finding someone who owns the Midnight Sun Pagoda Gauntlet and is willing to let me use it, or buying the gauntlet myself. And this process has to be repeated for 8 different gauntlets.
You either need to be well-connected in the community, have thousands of empowers to pay for use of a gauntlet, or pay hundreds of dollars in order to buy all the gauntlets yourself. And, of course, have a myriad of different wizards of different level ranges as mentioned earlier.
The system is simply and fundamentally unfair to the player. Because of this, I will be quitting Monstrology until change is made.
Some proposed potential changes: - Make only the highest tier version extractable (This would of course be hurtful to those who went through the spiritual pain I described above. Perhaps the other entries could be kept as legacy for those who got them, but hidden from the Monstrology tome for those who haven't) - Make extracting one tier reveal all tier variants - Make extracting any tier reveal and single, condensed Monstrology entry (Same problem as first proposal) - Allow players to join Gauntlets via Castle Tours after 3-month period of the Gauntlet being released (Would not fix the issue with one-shot gauntlets, but would be a start) - Make Baddle of the Bands and Tanglewood Terror one-shot gauntlets droppable from bosses (The gear from both of these except maybe the max tier Baddle boots is outdated in the meta, so making them droppable would be unlikely to hurt KI's income)
Agreed. I have a similar, but slightly different problem. I love Monstrology for the purpose of gathering and collecting House Guests (I can brag that my collection may very well be one of the largest in the entire playerbase), and I am annoyed when collecting House Guests from Gauntlets for these exact reasons. Not because I care about collecting all the different tiers, but because when I do go into a different tier, it counts towards an entirely different list. That's wasted time, especially given the multiple other things many of us have to do in our home lives.
I would like to propose a solution that combines some of the ideas Alex the Wizard suggested, which will require some explanation. Take Brulee Sucre in the Grand Tourney Arena, for example. I would like to propose that, no matter which tier of Brulee Sucre is extracted, the Animus would go into a single count. However, when different tiers of Brulee Sucre are defeated, their individual text appears in the Monstrology tome. In the case of Summon Treasure Cards, a Summon Brulee Sucre tier card would be created based on the Wizard's level, with the most appropriate tier being created based on the Level of the Wizard that is making it.
Brulee Sucre's different tiers would have a shared Animus bar while still preserving the entries and Summon Cards of each individual tier. That would further enhance the Monstrology experience by removing the frustration we experience with things like Gauntlets, making it easier for players like myself to create Summon Cards and House Guests while still being able to do the dungeon with those of other levels.
Re: Housing gauntlets fundamentally ruin the monstrology experience
Lookit Light on Jul 19, 2021 wrote:
Agreed. I have a similar, but slightly different problem. I love Monstrology for the purpose of gathering and collecting House Guests (I can brag that my collection may very well be one of the largest in the entire playerbase), and I am annoyed when collecting House Guests from Gauntlets for these exact reasons. Not because I care about collecting all the different tiers, but because when I do go into a different tier, it counts towards an entirely different list. That's wasted time, especially given the multiple other things many of us have to do in our home lives.
I would like to propose a solution that combines some of the ideas Alex the Wizard suggested, which will require some explanation. Take Brulee Sucre in the Grand Tourney Arena, for example. I would like to propose that, no matter which tier of Brulee Sucre is extracted, the Animus would go into a single count. However, when different tiers of Brulee Sucre are defeated, their individual text appears in the Monstrology tome. In the case of Summon Treasure Cards, a Summon Brulee Sucre tier card would be created based on the Wizard's level, with the most appropriate tier being created based on the Level of the Wizard that is making it.
Brulee Sucre's different tiers would have a shared Animus bar while still preserving the entries and Summon Cards of each individual tier. That would further enhance the Monstrology experience by removing the frustration we experience with things like Gauntlets, making it easier for players like myself to create Summon Cards and House Guests while still being able to do the dungeon with those of other levels.
If you funnel all tiers into one animus, couldn't a max level find a low level character, run the gauntlet on the lowest tier, and then craft the animus summon on their max, thus creating a max tier summon from low tier runs? While I like the idea of simplifying the housing gauntlet system, I think it's a little too overpowered.
Re: Housing gauntlets fundamentally ruin the monstrology experience
Another solution is to have entries outside of the max tier of a gauntlet be "bonus extracts". They would still be in the monstrology tome, but wouldn't count towards the max of each category. That way, people who already got these "bonus extracts" could still flex, while those who are looking to complete the Monstrology Tome don't have to deal with the Housing Gauntlet nightmare.
Re: Housing gauntlets fundamentally ruin the monstrology experience
Scale the amount of Animus drops based on the level of the creature? Tier one creature would drop normal animus, but if you fight the tier 5 creature it drops 5x as much?
