I understand that there is a lot of feedback here about the animations in the new 9.3 update which slows down the Explore mode and GaPs. The result of this decreases the rewards per hour considerably.
I agree that it would be great to be able to toggle the animations between battles on or off.
Alternatively, if that isn’t possible - what about increasing rewards so that it does equal out to the same or more than what it was before 9.3?
For example:
3x the Gold rewards in the side questions from 10,000 gold to 30,000 gold.
3x the rewards from GaPs and so on.
This way even though the time it takes to complete an Explore run is slower, the rewards players get is more than before so it is an overall improvement.
At the moment there are also no planned changes to the rewards. The gold was increased in the beta, but there have been no adjustments to the rewards. Other than we also included Shiny dust where we didn’t previously.
I should note, the battles are not x3 times slower. So, even if there was room to change the rewards, the increase would not be that high.
Playing on Nintendo Switch 1, the biggest wait has always been the loading sequence into battles. I can usually get about 25 battles in a 15-minute GAP (previously; haven’t tested with 9.3 yet), despite that the actual in-battle time is maybe just 10-15 seconds.
To do the math, that breaks down approximately as:
25 battles in 15 minutes = 36 seconds from start of one battle to start of next
maybe ~15 seconds per battle = ~20 seconds between battles (navigating menus + loading screens)
My run of GaP pre-9.3 was usually 1 pvp battle for gnome pet, then start E12 at about 13:30 minutes left. That’s enough for 4 E12 runs and most of time not enough for 5th run, so a total of 24 to less than 30 battles. I play on PC.
I’ll try E12 and E16 at next vault weekend and see how it will run.
Now I’ve run some E12 and E16 battles in GaP in 9.3. In time of about 13:30, I can run about 25 battles of E12, or 20 battles of E16. Compared to about 28 to 30 battles of E12 pre-9.3, animations do slow things a bit, but the impact isn’t as major as it’s feared. To me, at least.
My “not-very-scientific” testing of GaP earlier tonight? I’m thinking that a full cycle of GaP on Explore-1 (4 battles + miniboss) is taking me an extra 20 seconds or so on account of all the animations.
Rather than try to play with the percentages by which the nerf hammer hits GaP rewards if you “go too fast”, how about leaving things as they are… but force-toggle those animations to “off” during a GaP. Much like how we have code to prevent Merchant/Angel/Daemon/Genie from showing up during GaP.
Having the GaP timer in a very visible place on the Explore screen is a plus. Losing all that time watching the same animation for the 8161st time is not.
In a 15-min GAP at Explore1 level, I was able to do 61 battles (compared to 62 or 63 previously). Those in north america should be able to do ~70 due to proximity of game servers.
The issue is at E16, where you wait for the next battle animation, then have to wait for every side-quest animation. So my suggestion is to make the next battle and side quests animations occur at the same time (at all explore levels), not sequentially.
One excellent change was the inclusion of the timer on the explore page. Well done.
From the EU, I was able to do ~74 Explore level 1 battles in 15 minutes (now ~66 with the new animations). Playing on PC, using a mouse. And just from judging my own ability to move the cursor and click buttons, it’s definitely possible to do even more.
I’d like to suggest adding a new difficulty mode: enemy level 1 or 5, no Mythstones, difficulty 0.
It might be possible to make up for some of the delay caused by the added animations
