deliciouswaffles

I'm going for the Brutes, on the hope that there will be a faction-specific boon that has something to do with training. I would be pretty disappointed to miss out on something like that.

Looks like the AC prize shop has been fixed! The Staff Tournament is still redirecting, though. :sad02: So, I guess that's still worth tickets/Editorial submissions.

Yeah, the AC update in today's news reminded me I still had points in both prize shops, and they still seem to be gone. As per the first reminder in the news, "They will go away on May 24th once Altador Cup sign-ups begin," so they probably should still be there. This may be a good thing to try to get into the Editorial about, in addition to submitting tickets, as that sometimes seems like a better way to get things addressed.

I imagine there will be at least two more rounds before we could see The Sway again. My guess is that the Thieves will be removed from the pool, and either they will be replaced with the Brutes or Awakened, or we'll get a random 3 of the 4 factions who haven't yet won. Then, the third skirmish would be the three remaining non-winners, and if it continues after that we could see previous winners back in the mix.

I've been theorizing for a bit now that these boon-skirmishes are something similar, to keep the battledome from becoming TOO stale, like the old one got to be between battle events.

I agree, it seems likely that TNT is trying to come up with a way to keep the BD going between plots/events. I sort of wish they would've waited until it was fully functional, though.

There is no progress bar, imho because we are fighting for the boons. TNT said the site-event war is over. So most likely we won't get war points for these skirmishes. During the war, a progress bar with achievements and all, makes sense. So that people can't just join a faction and then freeload on the battles of others. In something like a faction ranking battle, as one might call this, I am guessing that it's raw numbers against raw numbers and the faction with the best win-record will be awarded the boons next.

Yeah, TNT has already flat-out said that we definitely won't get any more points. If there was a bar, I was thinking it would probably serve as some sort of baseline level of participation, so that people couldn't join, play one battle, and get the boons. However, I think just putting up daily scores so we can see which factions are ahead might be motivating enough for some. The problem, at least for me, is that having no direction as to what's going on makes it tough to decide how much to endure.

A lot of this has been speculation, based on experience with other games as well as my time on Neo. I've been right or partly right on several parts of the war. (Scour the forums if you wish lol) I'm also thinking that perhaps, the next round of boon-battles, might have different factions listed. As though THOSE are perhaps random. Again, speculation and theory.

I would bet you're right on this, too, based on their reply to the disappointed Awakened member in the Editorial.

We just need to see what TNT does with this first one, and then more theorizing can take place.. UNLESS they FINALLY give us a straight answer as to how things are going to work. ;)

It'll be interesting to see what happens this time, since it will tell us if there's anything on the table other than the boons, and it will give us an idea of how much we need to participate to make sure we get the benefits of being on the winning team. The boons are all right, and I'd take one, but it's a lot less appealing if that's all it is. TNT seems to have taken some sort of vow of secrecy surrounding that obelisk.

This just isn't a very exciting feature. All we know about the battle is that the faction that wins will get access to boons. But there's nothing to keep you motivated: We don't have a cap to reach, updates on how the factions are stacking up against each other, or any sort of ranking system (like the AC) to push us, nor is there even an HP increase to create a sort of artificial "play until you can't win" endpoint. The occasional lag and glitchiness, as well as the lack of a power bar that allows the challengers to use powerful faerie abilities over and over, elevates the actual game play from "repetitive" to "frustrating." If TNT plans to keep this as a permanent feature, they might want to consider adding a progress bar to let us know if we've played enough, and possibly some sort of prize just for completing it that we receive whether the faction wins or not. (There also needs to be improvements to the BD, but those need to happen whether this continues or not.)

Take note: The timer has been fixed to show that we actually have only three more days (four total, including today) to battle.

With no guidelines as to how this works, I'm just going to assume that beating the hardest opponents on the hardest level benefits your faction the most, and then it goes down from there. Maybe TNT will give us some idea of what's going on in the news.

Just going down the line in the Rattling Cauldron, here's what I've seen so far:

Assuming it's not a 2p thing, I'm just wondering if the fights are going to go towards anything other than boons? Like, extra prize shop points or upgrading to a better trophy or something?

From the last Editorial: "The prize shop and your points are from the war and will not increase or vanish once the timer winds down." So, this event is entirely new, and won't influence points or trophies. Those are set. It's possible there will be other prizes than just the boons, though. I guess we'll find out in a couple of days.

Sounds like this will be a fairly straightforward battle round, with the winning faction receiving the option of selecting boons. I suppose it's possible there might be some other prizes, but I highly doubt the skirmishes will consist of anything but (probably a few days of) 1-player battling. From a programming perspective, 2-player would be a nightmare to track, I would think, not even to mention the outrage when players start throwing Poison Snowballs every battle to weed out the competition/inflate the cost of curing Hoochie Coochies. TNT would have had to put together a system of selecting pets with similar strengths to make it remotely fair, as well, which would still fail to account for differences in weapon sets and abilities.

My two big questions: Do we lose the regular challengers in the BD during these skirmishes, and will this all end come Altador Cup sign-ups?

 

3. I think the "Doing Your Part" bar was what counted towards your faction's points. Any battles after that didn't help your faction win, but they gave you, individually, more points.

Probably you're right, but why couldn't they tell us that? I personally don't have time or inclination to fight the same opponent hundreds of times when I might have been completely wasting my time. In previous plots, a cap for an opponent meant exactly that - no point fighting it again.

This was my main complaint about the event, as well. I wish TNT had just posted a FAQ to explain what the "Doing Your Part" bar meant for us in terms of points, if playing over the cap helped our factions/point totals, if achievements counted towards our points, etc. I would have played somewhat more if I'd known there was any point.

It could also be something more than the Sway's boons expiring, but still simple as the BD coming out of beta.

Another possibility: Maybe other factions will get access to boons, based on the order they finished in.

I'm using a very nice, very fast, 7-month-old laptop, and the victory screen is the only thing that doesn't work. Furthermore, it's a relatively recent issue that it doesn't work; it was fine from the release until some time in February. So I seriously doubt that it's a matter of processing speed or capacity. The solution for now seems to be "use Firefox," so the issue seems to be related to IE.

Edit: Actually, the one other thing I've found doesn't work in IE 9/10 is equipping weapons from the Stats page. I can unequip weapons from that page, though. Both of the operations that don't work seem to involve calling for information outside the BD (checking for/ displaying rewards, checking inventory for items that can be equipped).

Yes, this happens to me 100% of the time in IE 9 and IE 10. (It's only IE 8 that TNT stated wasn't supported, so that makes this a problem they should address before coming out of beta.) It does give me the Draw/Loss screens, though. I have a brand new laptop and have tried disabling ad blockers, etc. The strange thing is that this started being an issue shortly before the Obelisk War. It was fine in IE 9 when the BD beta started.

It looks like our answer is that they've been giving abilities to the Defenders of Neopia Series I opponents:

Pant Devil: Halitosis, Shade, Cranky

Ghost Lupe: Static Cling, Meditate, Cranky, Meh, An Icicle

Cave Chia: Halitosis, Bandage, Positive Thinking, Sear, Throw Pillows

Meuka: Shade, Cranky, An Icicle, Shhhhhhhh...

The Brain Tree: Shade, Meh, Shhhhhhhh...

Commander Garoo: Static Cling, Bandage, Cranky, Lens Flare, Shroud

Tekkitu the Witch Doctor: Halitosis, Meh, Sear, Shhhhhhhh..., Float

Meerca Henchman: Shade, Positive Thinking, An Icicle, Throw Pillows, Burrow

Giant Ghostkerchief: Bandage, Meh, Sear, Throw Pillows, Shroud, Tempest

Evil Sloth Clone: Static Cling, Meditate, Meh, Lens Flare

That's as far as I've gotten so far, but can confirm that none of the other 1-player opponents in the Rattling Cauldron or Pango Palladium were using abilities (Qasalan Mummy is broken for me).

Playing around in the Neocola Centre, here's what I've observed so far:

If it isn't over, TNT is actively trying to fake us out, already having mentioned tallying scores and posting that "the war has ended" message. Further, this is a bad time to start a full-on plot: The Festival of Neggs will run until mid-April, the Daily Dare will presumably happen after that (and run for at least 19 days, based on the shortest one they've had), and then the Altador Cup starts at the beginning of June. It wouldn't have been too tough to run plot steps along with The Festival of Neggs, but those other two events (especially the Altador Cup) would better stand alone. I would be much, much more surprised if it wasn't over. Nothing says "the war has ended" much better than a "the war has ended" pop-up.

One thing I still do think is possible is that there could be a proper plot, probably in the fall (definitely after the Altador Cup), based on the outcome of the war. I'm not saying I expect that, just that I could see that as a way of continuing with the Obelisk plot line. This particular event would still be over with the release of the prize shop, though, with any future Obelisk-related content being more like a sequel. Or it'll just be another Journey to the Lost Isle situation, where there's lots of build-up and then nothing much happens. (Though still of more consequence than that, if Tyrannia at least gets a redesign.) I could also see the opening of the prize shop corresponding to the official, non-beta release of the new BD.

There seem to be a lot of people who can't log in right now, and are being told their password is bad/account doesn't exist. I am logged in, and for me the site is horribly slow. So don't panic, it looks like a large scale database error of some sort.

What a neat holiday (that I have somehow managed never to have heard of, in all the years I've played). How many years has Neopia been celebrating the Festival of Neggs?

 

And for that matter, what time today did it actually start? Because when I sat down at the computer and saw it going, I only had about three hours or so to do everything there was to do today (which hardly seems fair).

The first was, I think, in 2010, making this year's the 4th Festival of Neggs. People can get full credit for finding today's Negg through tomorrow (so you have 1.5 days to get credit for finding the first Negg on release day, then 24 hours for each Negg after that.) The bonus plastic Neggs may reset at midnight, though. Not sure about that.

When I went in to fight Apathy at 1:02 Neopian time, he was at 722,158 HP. I think that's too high if this is timed on a 72 hour clock? At any rate, I'm not sure how we can defeat our enemy first if it's timed, which it was basically stated we could in TNT's board post on the bosses who were defeated.

Any time I had Apathy use Esophagor Stench against me, he took 1 HP of damage, no matter how much I dealt. For all I know, Esophagor Stench is supposed to reduce damage. I'm not sure if anyone has been able to full test it.

I expected that some of the elite battlers would defeat these opponents (they have in past wars, too, and the Neggbreaker), but am surprised that they disappeared for everyone upon defeat.

The 1000/1500/2000 on these guys refers to, I think, what their strength is, rather than their HP. That remains static as their HP drops.