Status Update 16th June 2017

[waiora]

Thanks for finally fixing the roaming issue, dont know why it had to take 8 months but thankfully its finally done.

As some will know im at the brink of just quiting this game, at the moment i just read patch notes and status updates.

You are asking about competition feedback, for starters, do away with the 14 day cycle, it is NO GOOD.
Some people only play weekend/holidays etc, they only get the same few competitions repetitively.
Offset the cycle so everyone can take part in everything.

There is no need for 50 competitions a day. Its no longer a competition system but rather a RNG grind for easy em$. Win what you can and move on. Hardly any competitions are won by expending 10 attempts.

Make the competition duration longer, so players have to participate more, or more players can participate. 2 Days is SHORT. most people can do 1 or 2 hunts in a 48 hour period. Even tho competitions are not necessarily won by hours spend, they do improve your chances. Give everyone a chance to compete, by extending the time a little. Maybe 3 days + per competition.

Do away with all the 20 rules for each competition,shooting something with a bow at 5m, with you left hand, while crouched, with no sights, from a stand, without a caller and only 1 eye open(its just a joke as en example) is NOT FUN. nor is it a part of hunting. These competitions are not popular and don't promote ethical hunting. Stick with 1 weapon, 1 piece of equipment, with some ethical shot or not.

It helps you sell item to partake in competitions and gives the player some sort of parameter that is ethical, to harvest the animal.

Total weight competitions and single hunt competitions need to be removed completely. They are not fair, and don't reflect anything competition is about, they are purely a grind or spawn rng.


MAKE ALL TROPHY COMPETITIONS MULTIPLAYER. There is no advantage for playing MP. So many people cry about MP comps, and how it benefits those who play as a team... ALL events comps are MP in the last year, and the same few people are always in the top 10. only 1 person can shoot any give animal. You only compete vs 1 player on a leader board. MP would even be a disadvantage for competitions that require multiple animals, because of attempts vs good spans ratio.

Anyway thats my 2c. At the end of my rope, the rework of competitions will ultimately keep me playing this or not.

[Violator31]

Welcome to Katarina. Looking forward to the stamp you will put on the game.
Thank you for the update.
As far as the comps inquiry; Most of the time I just flat out forget to look into them. When I do remember I just go to the ones that are going to be on the reserve I plan on playing. If they are weapon specific I might take a pass just because I don't want to use that particular weapon. Same with the elevated ones. I don't have as much time to get super competitive most of the time. I don't use many of the camping supplies so I am not dropping into a fresh spawn. Most of my hunting is looking for big tracks & tracking down the sound clues (when I can see them....nudge nudge, hint hint). I did, recently, remember to join a few comps & I was happy/shocked to get a 2nd in one and a 3rd in another. Seeing those numbers fluctuate in the prompts made it fun (and kept me awake longer than I should have been). So given as much as I don't partake very often, I think they are vital to the game (since I see so many others enjoy them so much).

I noticed Alena as changed her avatar again.

Nice catch.....this is interesting!!!

[Cogsy666]

Thanks for the update Good luck for the future Dennis, and welcome Kat.

[stancomputerhunter]

Thanks for the update. Welcome to Katarina.

To answer your question regarding competition entry.

I don't get in competitions for 3 reasons.

1. They start while I'm in bed, and that means others have a 6 to 8 hour head start. I understand, I get that time back on the back end, however, I'm in winding down the day mode, and getting ready for bed for half of that time. I'm really not interested in hunting from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. local time.

2. There is no result for individuals not in the top 20 unless you want to sit on the leader board at 2:00 a.m. local time. The reason to get in is to "compete". (I would certainly not get in to win a trophy or some em$..competition is the driver here) How does one know how they did, or if they ever get better, when they don't know how they finished? You keep gobs of data. I don't think it would be such a chore to keep complete competition results for a week or so, and then let them drop off.

3. When you have competitions divided into levels..like 0-100 harvests, 101-250 harvests, 251-500 harvests, and 501 to infinity, you place a huge disadvantage for those in the 501 to 1000 harvests. The first three levels have a max spread of 250, yet the fourth level has a spread from 501 to as much as 3500. Obviously, those with higher kills of a given species will have extremely better skills for tracking and spotting. Most hunters with a HS of 60000 and above have maxed out all skill levels on most animals, whereas a person like me, playing for less than 4 years, has much lower skill levels. Yet we are in the same group for competitions. After 5768 hours, I only have 4 species at 20/20 skill level. Luck of spawn is 50% of your result, and spotting is probably 40%, with tracking being 10%. (just my impression). Those with spotting levels of 20 will find trophy animals by elimination easier than those with level 12.

[DHRifleman]

Welcome Kat, looking forward to the ability of seeing TR's from SP hunts. Maybe we could even get back SP chat with those on our friends list.

As for comps, I join those that are on the map I will be hunting for our tournaments, and if the weapon fits in with my plans.
I tend to like the top score ones the best, and shy away from the ones where the more kills the better.
I do think the more comps the better since it gives the biggest variety, and increases the chance of more people entering something.
I also think all comps should be available in both MP & SP, and it would have me MP hunt much more than now which is very rarely.
Make it so the MP/SP status alternates for each comp as part of the rotation.

[Treedweller]

I play to have fun so I like to participate in simple competitions where a good animal can get rewarded. Some of my favorites are King of Whitetail and Buckshot Buck.
I don't bother with competitions featuring weird requirements, because hunting in unnatural ways is no fun to me. Having a trophy animal disqualified because of those rules is not fun either.
I also usually avoid competitions which require more than one animal, because those are grinding ones in my opinion. A trophy animal is no good unless you can hunt for many hours during those two long days. So most of the time it's... no!
That being said there are are days when it's hard to find a competition, while some days, mostly during weekends, there are several good competitions and it's hard to choose.

[whiteonyx2]

Thanks for the update and thanks for picking my name out of the "survey" pile now i will go and spent some Em's

About competitions; i play comps most of the time. I like some better than others, but there's something for everybody. I do think that the Em prices are a bit to low - and i think it would be more fun if there could be like 10 winners. Just like there allready are for some comps.

Welcome to Katarina.

Enjoy your midsommer holiday - and keep up the good work

[HD_Artworks]

Thatwas a good SU.
Welcome to the new staff Kat! Goodbye Dennis. Best wishes for you.

[TheSheWolf]

I think I prefer the "highest scoring" competitions. Not a fan of the longest distance ones (it's highly technical and some players have perfected it, some haven't, there's no chance to it at all); and I don't like the "total weight of all the X you can kill" as others have said, it's unrealistic/unethical to me. I also wish that the weapon-specific ones were more generalized--i.e. instead of ONLY this one particular weapon, perhaps all animals harvested with x, y and z weapons, or a certain type (shotgun, bow, etc). The tenpoint specific, muzzleloader specific, Blaser specific etc are just exclusive.

I try to be entered in competitions for any animal I'm hunting, in answer to "how often."

[TheColton]

Already mentioned some stuff in the rocky elk competition thread, but lets do it again on here. To me competitions are one of the main reasons why i play this game. There is nothing better than going on a long relaxed hunt and doing some competitions and missions. Not that i go after competition trophies in a competitive, working hard kinda way but i always activate them and take the right weapons with me. Its always a great feeling to place in the top 3 from time to time.

Competitions i like or would like to see:

Im a fan of the simple competitions that you can easily do while on a normal hunt. I like the simple highest score and highest weight ones, cause everyone can get lucky and get a trophy in a normal hunt. The best average out of three (score or weight) are a great thing too. You need to put a lil more effort into but it still doesnt feel like work. I also really like the competitions that require a specific weapon or weapon class. As waiora said there could be more of these, cause it could also be a reason for people to buy a specific weapon. What i like to see more are competions that include female animals like foxy lady. Also competitions for the lowest score or the lowest weight would be fun. Competitions that require a stand are okay too. They already take some of your freedom but they make sense especially for baitable animals.

Competitions i dont like:

Every longest distance competition is just stupid in a game like this with the already short render distance. There are always the same 3 to 5 people putting in the time to make weird distance setups and then shooting 50 arrows down a hill til they finally hit the leg of an animal and waiting another hour for it to die. This has nothing to do with hunting. I also dont participate in the "hunt as many animals as you can" competitions. You basically need to hunt 48 hours to compete in them. So these two competition types could be replaced with better ones. Im not saying that distance should never be rule, but if so there are better options like in the Telliams Will bison comp, or the 30m minimum distance for handguns in the new rocky elk competition. these are realistic scenarios where you dont have to set up a shooting down the hill range to higher the render distance.

Amount of competitions and competition rules:

There definitely shouldnt be less competitions. Its a great thing that there is always a competition running for every single animal in the game. That gives us players the highest possible freedom in choosing reserve, animals to hunt and in which corner of the reserve we want to go. The attempt limit also was a great addition to the game. I personally think it could be even less then 10 attempts, maybe 5. This way the time people have to play doesnt have such a big influence. I also like waioras idea to make the schedule more random. maybe add an 8th one to the schedule or let some of the comps for three days. this way you dont have the static schedule anymore where every competition is always on the same weekdays. it could also be completely random, i wouldnt mind that.

Community designed competitions:

I really loved it when u came up with the possibility to let us design the competitions for new animals in the game. I still like it, but it also includes some disappointments: I thought we would get comps for new animals much faster this way but that doesnt seem to be the case. Timbergold Trails is out for more than 6 months now and we only got the first competition pack this week. if it goes on like that we wont see feral goat and dall sheep competitions before summer 2018. You should take competition suggestions by the time you announce a new animal and bring them out right after the realease of it. Also people shouldnt design a whole competition pack cause there will always be some fillers in it while others have great single ideas but not the time to design 5. So you only should take the best five competitions out of all entries and make the coolest possible pack out of it.

Multiplayer:

There definitly should be real multiplayer competitions that need teams to take part and every team member has to contribute to the final score. The existing competitions and future competitions with the same design as we have now should definitely remain singleplayer only. My main reason for this isnt the fact that friends could help each other finding the trophy animals. The main reason for me is that it opens the backdoor for spawn mashing again through a second account. We all hated it back in the days when people in the top 3 of a comp had like 100 ten minute hunts to get that one trophy animal with the first call.The limited attempts ended this thing. With a second account you could easily do this again. And dont tell me people wouldnt do this. Almost everyone has a laptop besides his gaming pc these days so if there are only 10-15 people doin this, it could ruin the competition experience for many others.

Em$ rewards:

I personally dont care about them. Id rather have more competitions running than em$ rewards for the top 3. The lil gold, silver or bronze trophies in my account are worth much more than the 50 or 100 em$ i get for a win. So if money is the reason for thinking about thinning out the competitions and if ew cant afford to hand out that big amount of prize money anymore, then id rather take no em$ and a nice trophy instead of less competitions. With that being said, a trophy wall in the lodge would be a nice addition indeed.