Ranking for FA?

[truelinor]

I guess I don't understand the rankings for the Fellowship Adventures. I know if you place within a certain number your fellowship gets ranking points added, but what I don't understand is (and this comes from reading on the "'New Fellowship Adventures feedback" thread) why people don't think going straight through the FA is a good thing?

OK, I feel I'm not explaining myself right. Let me start over. I was thinking I wouldn't mind having three strategies for the FA depending on how we as a fellowship were feeling - our available time and effort for the prizes, and other different factors. Here are the three strategies and what I want to know is, if you can tell me if there is anything wrong (or maybe not "wrong" but adverse?) with doing the Fellowship Adventure any of these ways?

First:
Going straight through the FA, only one path and not even worrying about the Pit at all. This path has the advantage of giving us a few extra days to work on our cities, something I find I would like more time to do.
Second:
Clearing both the first and second stages, then taking one path for the third and picking up a couple (or all) of the higher point way points. Doing what we can in the Pit. This would be a kind of relaxed (for my fellowship) FA with the benefit of placing relatively high in our world.
Third:
Clearing all three stages of all way points and then going all out for the Pit. This would be pretty hard for us, but the object would be to place as high as possible.

 

[Darielle]

I've done the FA all three ways, and all have their advantages/disadvantages as you have pointed out. When I did the third option, we placed 5th in the FA. This time we're doing the first option (mostly ... a few are still going for some points in the pit) and we're at 80th place or thereabouts currently. I doubt we'll finish in the top 100, but the only prize we'd get for doing so is ranking points and a 2 hour time instant ... not enough to worry about. We all decided to relax this time. Some of us (like me) were having trouble finding room and spent most of our teleports on the last FA. We just took it easy this time.

There's nothing wrong in any of these methods, as far as I can see.

 

[truelinor]

So why, when people mention it, do others get concerned for the ranking? Is it all that important?

 

[SimplyNoble]

My fellowship loves to strategize and work as a team to take first pace on the server and as high in word rankings as we can. We don't gain anything for it really we just have a blast doing it. Importance is all relative.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

So why, when people mention it, do others get concerned for the ranking? Is it all that important?

Simply because to some people, the personal and fellowship rankings are the most important things in the game. It is how they show they are "better" than everyone else and that they "beat" them in a game that is not a PvP game.

 

[SimplyNoble]

Simply because to some people, the personal and fellowship rankings are the most important things in the game. It is how they show they are "better" than everyone else and that they "beat" them in a game that is not a PvP game.

I think you answered the wrong person. Like I said we just have a good time with it.

 

[Kekune]

So why, when people mention it, do others get concerned for the ranking? Is it all that important?

Just like your city or fellowship ranking, it's only important if you care about it.

Some groups, as mentioned above, really want to "win." Others are trying to gain overall ranking points. Others are really just seeing how far they can go, more as a team challenge.

It truly is whatever you make of it.

 

[Henroo]

To me fellowship score is a challenge. I knew before the FA started that my Khel fellowship was capable of finishing if we merely went straight through, only doing 1 path in each stage. In fact, it would have been easy to only do this. I set the goal of finishing all 3 stages *AND* finishing in the top 50. Which is a bit of a challenge, since we are only the 304th fellowship based on scores. It meant that we had to do extra waypoints in stage 1 and 2. I had to balance how much extra time we could afford to spend in early stages, doing extra waypoints for extra points vrs when it was time to move on. We did not do full completions of stage 1 or 2, but we did get some of the other 2 path's waypoints done. It is working so far. We have reached the flag in stage 3 and are now doing the other path's tri-color waypoints because they are the most valuable targets. Frankly, the rewards of being top 50 do not justify the extra effort involved. But we communicate much more during a fellowship adventure than we do when one is not going on. And most of the players in my FS seem to enjoy it. Plus it is way more of a challenge to my leadership skills to finish the FA and be top 50 than it would be to merely finish. So it might be one of those situations where the journey is just as rewarding as the destination.

 

[samidodamage]

Others are really just seeing how far they can go, more as a team challenge.

it might be one of those situations where the journey is just as rewarding as the destination.

^^This.
My casual play FS has done either method #1 or #3 since the FA was first introduced. We were ranked (?140-150?) in Elcy when they first came out and we did #3 for the first year+ except for 1. We ranked in the top 20 for all but that 1, finally getting a 7th place finish (?summer 2019 I think) and just burned out on them. We loved the way it brought our group together, and it was loads of fun for us. We also really enjoyed the challenge of being able to do so well against much higher ranked FS's just by being well coordinated. After the 7th place finish, it became 'been there, done that' and we just stopped: did the easiest path to the top, got the prizes, threw extras in the pits, didn't care. That continued until the one this past August. The one path per stage (esp on stage 1) was a very tedious, 'hurry up and wait' situation because it was hard to make sure everyone who wanted the prizes got a badge placed. We went back to doing all 3 paths, all 3 stages for that one mainly to reduce the tedium and saw the possibility of getting a top 10 rank again and went for it mainly so newer members could get the Memorial of Heroes bldg for their city. We ended up 9th. This time, we tried 3 paths/3 stages, but had some players with less room than in August, so we just planned to eliminate the tedium of 1 path/stage. We saw that we're running lower on blacksmiths and necklaces so on Stage 3 we cleared the green path and stopped after the 2nd multicolored points (+ one more dot, I think) on the blue and/or orange and went to the pits this evening. The pits are the most tedious, boring part of the FA, but here we are, much sooner than we'd like. They're more fun when it ends on a weekend since more of our members can play at the end. Now, we're in 11th spot, lol! It'll depend on how we do tomorrow and how many of us will be able to be around on Monday, but we're pretty sure we'll finish in the top 20. We might eke out a top 10, but we won't stress it even if we drop out of the top 20. Only the top 20 spots get a building and only the top 10 get the buildings you can only get in the FA. We don't care about the ranking points. We're now ranked in the top 40 on Elcy. We care so little about rank I can't even remember when the last time was I looked at that or what exactly it was, but pretty sure it was 30-something, lol!

 

[Darielle]

I think you answered the wrong person. Like I said we just have a good time with it.

I think you're confused; Enevhar was speaking to truelinor.

 

[DeletedUser20539]

My fellowship loves to strategize and work as a team to take first pace on the server and as high in word rankings as we can. We don't gain anything for it really we just have a blast doing it. Importance is all relative.

I tend to agree with you SimplyNoble. My FS is usually in the Top 10. We work hard to get there and even harder to stay there. But it's a full team effort and that makes is fun. We strive to do a little better each time.

 

[mucksterme]

I think a big part of it is how advanced your FS is. If you have mostly low level cities, getting one path in all three stages can be a huge challenge.
But when you are in an advanced FS, then striving for high rank becomes the challenge.
I'm in an FS where everybody sees challenges as fun. If all we cared about was the prizes we'd probably have one path in every stage finished by day two. As it is we tend to have every path in stage one finished the first day.
We have people who love doing the math figuring just what and how many waypoints we should hit in Stage 3 before going to the pit.
Many of our players teleport out factories to put in slum cities to make badges.
We try to get as far up the ranking board as possible. Not for the prizes or points, but because we like the challenge.

The FA before this one we had a vote and everybody said they wanted to have a laid back FA. We were all kind of burnt out from events and just wanted to take it easy.
Despite ourselves we still ended up at #11. And that is only because some people said they wanted a black lotus so we held back.

So as to the question about whether the points are worth it.
I doubt that any FS that is capable of hitting the top ten really cares about the points.

 

[truelinor]

Many of our players teleport out factories to put in slum cities to make badges.

LOL! I never thought of it as "slum cities" before!

I doubt that any FS that is capable of hitting the top ten really cares about the points.

Not sure what you mean by this.

Thank you everyone for your comments. I found them very enlightening and appreciate you picking your brains, so to speak.

 

[mucksterme]

Not sure what you mean by this.

I may be wrong, and maybe it is different on other servers.
But it seems like any FS that can hit top 5 in the spire is ranked high enough that 15000 points isn't going to affect them much.

 

[SimplyNoble]

I think you're confused; Enevhar was speaking to truelinor.

LOL you're right sorry. People often call me Simply in the fellowship and I misread the post.

 

[Darielle]

LOL you're right sorry. People often call me Simply in the fellowship and I misread the post.

That's understandable!

 

[ChiefObie]

IMO, FAs are a lot of work with very little reward. If rankings is your thing, then perhaps that's reward enough.

 

[truelinor]

Thanks again everyone and one more question, if I may? Do you (archmages or mages or whoever's in charge of the FA in your fellowship) send out a message to all the members beforehand to try to gauge where the members are and how much they will be able or willing to participate before the FA starts?

 

[Kekune]

Thanks again everyone and one more question, if I may? Do you (archmages or mages or whoever's in charge of the FA in your fellowship) send out a message to all the members beforehand to try to gauge where the members are and how much they will be able or willing to participate before the FA starts?

Yup. Always good to know where the group stands on a group activity.

 

[samidodamage]

Thanks again everyone and one more question, if I may? Do you (archmages or mages or whoever's in charge of the FA in your fellowship) send out a message to all the members beforehand to try to gauge where the members are and how much they will be able or willing to participate before the FA starts?

Yep. And messages with a link to the spreadsheet I'm using to track inventory. And messages throughout the FA asking for inventory updates. And messages providing guidance on what badge types we need the most. And messages with strategies like only going through a certain point on a particular path or in the early days doing one path to the flag by inserting on one path to a multicolored switchpoint, then a different path the rest of the way. Messages are safer because they don't get lost in the very active chat window (though I put them there, too, if appropriate).
Now, you didn't ask if those messages are read, responded to, and/or followed, so I won't address that I have, in the past, described coordinating an FA as being very similar to herding cats...