Addressing the Hecate shaped elephant in the room
I feel like we all know where this is going
Hecate essence is… to put it simply… not sustainable in its current iteration. It’s too RNG dependent and such inconsistency makes it either an absolute cakewalk or an irritating probability nightmare. With the possible implementation of Hecate shards as well, the demand and need for essence will skyrocket as players will want to change their magics to be able to mutate into the correct ancients and losts they want, however, if nothing changes with how the essence manifests in the game environment, that could seriously damage AO’s reputation and replay value as the game could be deemed quite literally “too grindy” and gatekept, creating a cascade of negative effects, such as a drastically raised PvP entry bar, a more divided community through sweats who’ve grinded and got lucky and casual players who aren’t as fortunate, and much more. This topic is a proposal to try and fix Vetex’s narrative of keeping the hunt for Hecate essence as a “miserable” experience while ensuring that it remains fair and balanced for the playerbase.
The problem with 1/12
Hecate’s current mechanic is that it has a 1/12 chance to spawn on a randomly generated island in the far reaches. It cannot spawn on pre-set islands like volcanoes or siren rocks. On paper this seems fine, but in practicality, the fact that Hecate essence is a non-guaranteed spawn on specifically just randomly generated islands presents a very troublesome predicament. Siren rocks and volcanoes seem to be part of the same spawn pool as islands are, and thus when they appear, they are seen as nothing more than dead weight and wastes of time in the far reaches, which is a flaw in its own right, though not the main point of discussion for this topic. This means that the generation of Islands is made artificially more scarce by these vectors, which makes Hecate essence thus significantly rarer to find, and that’s not accounting for the types of islands which can spawn. Some islands are literally too tall or big to feasibly explore, and if the essence spawns on an island like this, pretty much all players will never actually see or use it due to how impractical it would be to scale every massive island in the far reaches. This added layer of nuance exponentially increases the difficulty to find Hecate essence, and thus, makes the initial 1/12 chance feel a lot less forgiving.
What’s the big fix?
Vetex has openly stated that he wants Hecate essence to be an intentionally grindy and insufferable experience (While that’s an absolute affront to how actual game content should be made, given that games are supposed to be fun, I digress). This mentality means that we cannot make a simple, one and done change such as a pity system or “island notification” function. It still needs to have a degree of “bullshittery” to it that will allow this change to satisfy both the player’s needs and the developer’s vision. My proposal is simple, and while it does lean more into a “pity” based change, it’s far less consistent and set in stone, though it does drastically help improve the player’s chances.
Hecate Essence remains an exclusive far reaches+ phenomenon that spawns only on randomly generated islands. Volcanoes and Siren rocks adding an added layer of randomness in the equation for this example actually help preserve the initial vision that Vetex wants. However, the math behind Hecate’s manifestation is changed in a way that makes it far more likely to appear the longer someone looks for it.
Hecate, in terms of percentages, is currently roughly and 8% chance to spawn on a randomly generated island. This change will make it so this value starts significantly lower, being a pitiful 2% that effectively means almost nothing will appear on the first island, and gradually increasing by 2.5% per island, capping at a 50% chance to appear. This retains the “miserable grind” aspect of the feature while rewarding the patient and persistent with far better spawn rates.
In order to force players to explore the first island, the chances of Hecate spawning will not increase unless the player walks on and explores a generated island for at least 10 seconds. Once an ingame variable has verified the player explored a given island for 10 seconds, the percentage increases. The percentage can never decrease unless the player dies or leaves the server, ensuring that islands which are too difficult to explore are not punishments but rather optional means of boosting chances or being avoided.
Some final thoughts on this
It’s not a perfect fix, I’ll admit. There’s probably a few issues with this that I don’t see, and I’d appreciate your guy’s feedback on this change. I want to satisfy both parties in a way that creates a (mostly) harmonious compromise to ensure that AO’s future grinds will remain difficult but not disappointing. Hecate essence deserves to feel less like a gamble and more like a well earned prize after a true odyssey. Thanks for reading
