Am I delusional about Tome leveling?
So in light of coming back to DBD after a 3 month stop (college, life threatening medical emergencies, etc., life got in the way basically) I was welcomed to a glorious thing called the Rift and the Archives.
Archives: fantastic! Finally storytelling that goes deeper than the 'casual' stories we had from the start. Loving this idea.
Rift: oh dear, 2am math, grammar and typos here we go... leveling through the rift is done through completing challenges that are completed during a match, I like that. There is also a reward system which I will use with Tomes interchangeably, badically a limited timed event (or so to speak) with special items and such, nice, not complaining on that particular part. A Tome is 70 days long before whatever happens then, per Tome there is 70 tiers in a Tome, for rewards. To level up to the next tier requires a flat rate of 10 Rift Fragments, okay sounds easy. Lets break that down further into how to get 1 Rift Fragment; a single Rift Fragment is a total of 800xp from any means. So for 1 tier level, we take 10 Rift Fragments multiplied by our 800 xp requirement which comes out to 8,000xp total. Alright, now to the grand scheme here: 70 tiers multiplied by 8,000xp comes to be a whopping 560,000xp for an entire Tome (if I have all my terminology correct).
According to a post I saw on here by a moderator, the average xp gained per match is average 500. And of course we are talking about "on average", what we want for technical and statically correct data is the mean value across the board how much xp is gained per match, but we aren't given that so allow me to express me concern further: to get 560,000xp at a rate of exactly 500xp per match comes out to be 1,120 matches. Now take our known time limit 70 days divided by our total matches "on average" of 1,120. We are left with a daily quota of 16 matches a day. 16 matches a day (for the 500xp requirement) takes a LOT of time once you take into account matchmaking which can extend this process dramatically. On average I know a normal/decent match for me last around the range of 7 to 12 minutes on either side. My matchmaking is quite slow a lot of the time, I came back from an extended time away so i am climbing back towards red ranks on both sides quite slowly due to various variables (including the matchmaking process). If I take my person time per match plus an average of 4 minutes per matchmaking (including ready up in a lobby once found), and that's being generous as I often have to wait beyond a 10 minute interval, I sit with Eclipse open and just program away or watch videos waiting on this process. To meet the said daily quota comes out to be 16 matches multiplied by 10 minutes per match one average plus another 4 minutes per matchmaking on low waiting time. That comes in at a 164 minutes, or 2 hours and 44 minutes, per day to must meet the daily quota with expectations to reach tier 70. 2 hours and 44 minutes per day for 70 days comes out to be 11,480 minutes, or 191 hours and 20 minutes.. hours.
As a person in a society, with a college attendance that consumes most of my time and soon to be a part time job to add, I can reasonably say this is a HEAVILY predatory system that favors those who have ample time to play non stop or also (from what I read as I typed all this) a possible monetary option to use auric cells to skip ahead. I shouldn't have to comment on that, and i won't but as someone who has played since before Nurse was released, I can say this entire Tome thing is a stretch from the original game and how it could've gone in ways. The Tome feature just seems like a weird heavy burden on those of us who don't want to, or don't have the literal means to particpiate legitimately whether it be financially or because time constraints.
Idk though, maybe it's just me who sees the extreme incapability of the casual player to legitimately play this game and it's new features at a normal/casual speed with or without outside, systematic events that prolong the time it takes, and forces monetary extortion if you will. I' can say I'm certainly overwhelmed as this feels like this favors those that can "output a little more" time or money than the casual player whom can only play minimally or so.
I digress for now, what do you all think on all of this? I'd love to hear what anyone has to say on this addition!
Comments
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I just wish dailys gave rift shards hell 2 or 3 would be enough
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No, you're correct; you need a lot of free time to do this in time. In order to fully complete it you have to play around 10 matches a day in order to get that tome level (around 10 rift shards) which can vary drastically based on a number of different factors. Sure the archives exist, but they only provide a couple levels of help, assuming you do every challenge (which not everyone will do). It's honestly designed to make you spend more money on a battlepass that already costs $10 in a game that is collectively $118 before the cosmetic shop.
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You're forgetting two important things - (a) you earn about half of your Rift fragments from completing challenges, and (b) you earn xp while you're playing matches to complete challenges.
So the total time to complete the Rift will probably end up being closer to 100 hours than 200. Personally, I'm guessing around the 120 mark. Which is still a fair way above the devs' original estimate of 70-80, but not so catastrophic as some people's inflated estimates would have us believe.
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The issue is the later levels will have far more difficult challenges. I have no delusions that I will be able to come close to full clearing level 4 from what has been leaked. I suspect level 3 will also have a few challenges that I will be unable to finish.
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I don't see that as an issue as far as earning xp goes. It took me about 18 hours of gameplay to finish level 1 of the tome. I've played about twice that since then just in ordinary games. The way I see it, all that will change in level 4 is I'll be spending a higher proportion of my game time working to complete challenges, instead of completing them all in the first day or two and then playing normally for the next few weeks. I still get the same amount of Rift Fragments from it in the end, they'll just be a bit more spread out.
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This is an issue when concerning how many Rift fragments a casual player could expect from the archives. For every one of the difficult master challenges they fail to do that's another 5 fragments the player has to pump more time into to make up for it.
All of the challenges in the 4th level are master challenges. Failure to complete it in one round means that you're no closer to completing it than when you started. A player can easily be stuck early on in the 4th level (I suspect at the blind rescue 2 times above and 5 hooks in basement below). Getting stuck means they can't even attempt the later challenges for rift fragments.
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I'm reserving judgement on level 4 until it actually comes out and we see how difficult the challenges are going to be in practice. It may be that they turn out to be easier in practice than in theory.
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That is still absolutely catastrophic, though.
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I mean, you can try to accomplish the challenges now to test.
Actively try to hook 5 people in the basement and see how it goes. Or flashlight save twice in a round.
Granted it will be a lot easier to do right now since you wont be fighting other survivors for the same objectives nor would you be playing against people who know that you're trying to complete an objective and plan against it.
The biggest problem with the plunderer challenge in this tier wasn't finding all the chests in a single round. It was the other survivors that were also searching through chests trying to complete challenges.
It would also be extremely obvious to survivors when you're trying to get multiple hooks in the basement. They might even DC to be a jerk and prevent you from doing so.
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The other reason I'm reserving judgement is because it hasn't even been confirmed that we're going to have to do any of those challenges - in fact, it's been explicitly stated that they're subject to change prior to release. I just don't see the sense in getting preemptively worked up over something that might not even happen.
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When they said it was subject to change I don't know if they meant change for the next tome or if they meant change from the ptb to the the live version.
It seems pretty weird that they would just suddenly change the challenges that are already there especially considering the minor bug they had already revealed that they're in the system
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They've said it several times since the Archives went live, after people saw the level 4 challenges and started freaking out. Apparently the ones in the system are placeholders only, and they're not final until the official release.
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Fair enough.
We have changed some daily rituals before like Amanda's old daily ritual so I guess it's not completely out of the question.
I don't know I'm just a cynical pos
However if things that were on the ptb and the placeholders are accurate we do basically know every Challenge for all the levels
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You should be able to do it ok provided you try for 20 tiers per tome. You'll just need to make sure you completely finish each challenge and reach 20,40,60,70 mark.
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We do indeed. I'm still holding out hope that even in the worst case scenario, if they release the challenges and they are way too hard and no one can do them, at least they'll listen to our feedback for the next one.
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That's fair. But getting worked up about the future challenges is the best way to make sure that they change them prior to release. Because as it stands I don't think completing all those objectives is something that a casual player could be reasonably be expected to complete.
There are several things that would help and changing the difficulty of the challenges is one of them. Getting the same amount of rift fragments for much more difficult objectives is also off-putting and will inevitably slow down fragment gain.
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It's just another scam/greedy tool in the modern age of gaming. I didnt buy the pass and there was nothing good worth getting anyways. Devs have made it loud and clear, they have very little interest in fixing the base game and want to spend all their time making more content for us to buy. Its geniuse really. Why fix the game when you can make your players buy more perks instead?
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no one's even accounting the queue times that we're dealing with currently. I swear my queue's are about half as long as my matches.
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