Feedback thread for Unchained Halls of Eternal Frost, Caravan Raiders Hideout

[Keeco]

Yeah...thanks for the replies.

Scorpion Caves -

The big problem here is the barriers - did you know that on the Archer if the charmed person is close to the barrier and a player that died during the encounter rezes and runs back to the other side of the barrier, the charmed person will go through the barrier and attack the person? Then...the charmed person is stuck outside of the encounter. Either make it a door or fix the barrier.

Other than that...enrage timers need to be a bit longer if you want non-T3 groups to be able to do these instances.

[LunaticAsylumLA]

I really have no interest in the Unchained versions (HM) of old levelling instances, so my question concerns only the Normal Mode encounters.
Have Caravan Raiders Hideout, NM and Halls of Eternal Frost, NM been messed up and destroyed like Amphitheater of Karutonia, NM (which people keep asking to be reverted to the initial state in the normal mode)?
I have no time to check that right now, but I might peek in the game if no trash monsters were removed from the NM instances and encounters were left unchanged or made much harder for our levelling characters.
I really have high hopes because CirithGorgor said that there is now consistency with HM, hopefully in challenge, making them much harder to complete even in NM. Is that right, CirithGorgor?

P.S. Fix Xibaluku, HM and Iron Tower, HM!!! . Bosses still need a fix for the bugged health!

[Kurt2013]

@Lunatic:
Look at post #42.
I can't judge if this is good or bad in this case, since i never got a normal group since the revamp. But i did not like the amphi changes (a bit like the George Lucas effect, which should be avoided if possible).
Oh, and i am available for these normal modes, whenever i have time on Crom

@Cirith-Gorgar:
I was curious about this, because even with the consistency argument (which can work towards keeping the normal versions untouched too), it is a weighing...you weigh the risk of annoying people who like the old stuff, the chance to make things worse and the respect for designers who came before you (or worked with you, in case of the Lucas effect) against the chance the make things better (e.g. fix things from scratch), putting your own stamp in it and as you say consistency while adding something new.

I am going to test it, since i have a lot of chars with undone quests there (unchained is no option for f2p anyway). I rather liked the design and atmosphere of all the instances pre-revamp, so a bit curious what changed and how grave it is (the changes in amphi were partly good, partly bad (mostly bad though) and what puzzled me the most was that they appeared completely unnecessary.

From a technical point i can imagine some good reasons for this consistency (especially when you see it as a matter of selected difficulty), but from a designers pov i find it a bit of a wasted opportunity, since as with amphi you could view it as "revisited" content, giving the impression of time progression and depending maybe on prior character actions. And as with the Lucas effect, new does not mean better necessary (but there were some bugs in halls and caves, though i always liked the hideout).

But in any case it is good to know what to expect from future revamps...(i REALLY miss mithrelles belt, the black ring circle dagger and still don't understand why with revamping so many things have to get lost forever). I hope you avoided the Lucas effect with the latest unchained versions (dead mans isle unchained for example is avoiding it, by sucessfully scaling loot and difficulty).

[Evitq]

Mystical Caches can drop from some of the bosses (atleast 1 per new dungeon).
It very easy to update drop chances for specific items/item types using the cache system and it might be that we will want to change the internal calculations for generating loot from the mystical caches to increase the armour/weapon etc... drop rate, but I don't want to make a snap decision on that.

Ok I did see someone get an epic from a blue box. If the drop rates are that low, it might be better to redo it and give each person in the group one (same popup the rare trophies are). Having a 1 in 6 chance to win an item that has a low chance of dropping an epic (while the bosses drop nothing) is going to turn people off from running them over and over again - or grinding them out as it were.

[CirithGorgor]

Scorpion Caves -

The big problem here is the barriers - did you know that on the Archer if the charmed person is close to the barrier and a player that died during the encounter rezes and runs back to the other side of the barrier, the charmed person will go through the barrier and attack the person? Then...the charmed person is stuck outside of the encounter. Either make it a door or fix the barrier.

Other than that...enrage timers need to be a bit longer if you want non-T3 groups to be able to do these instances.

Hmm yeah that sucks and no I didn't know so thanks for the info. It should only happen if the person outside happens to be on the aggro list, which might happen through healing /group buffs. Changing the barrier to a door will actually not help as from a functionality stance these are actually exactly the same. As you might no from some of the older bosses NPCs (which a charmed player is considered to be) don't know about dynamic collision, its a limitation of the engine unfortunately.

I will look at some of the enrage timers, but the intention is that bosses are harder than some others, this is to somewhat limit the ease of acquiring the better items which will largely come from completing the mastery quest.

[CirithGorgor]

Have Caravan Raiders Hideout, NM and Halls of Eternal Frost, NM been messed up and destroyed like Amphitheater of Karutonia, NM (which people keep asking to be reverted to the initial state in the normal mode)?

The encounters are thematically the same in the leveling / level 80 entry level versions of the dungeons. Mechanics in the encounters are similar to those in Unchained mode but some mechanics have been removed and other toned down significantly.
The intention was not necessarily to make them harder (though it may be a biproduct, in our internal testing we had no trouble beating them so I don't believe the dificulty has been significantly raised) but was to make them more fun to do and try and encourage more social interactions within the groups.

[letsdance]

As long as the loot system fails like it does now, maybe it would be better to give each player a epic box from last boss, and just reduce drop chance. Because there's a chance these boxes will be ninjaed because the loot system is fubar. That's just going to upset people etc.

[CirithGorgor]

@Cirith-Gorgar:
I was curious about this, because even with the consistency argument (which can work towards keeping the normal versions untouched too), it is a weighing...you weigh the risk of annoying people who like the old stuff, the chance to make things worse and the respect for designers who came before you (or worked with you, in case of the Lucas effect) against the chance the make things better (e.g. fix things from scratch), putting your own stamp in it and as you say consistency while adding something new.

It is inevitable when something is changed that someone somewhere will not like it, we have to make a decision on whether there will be more people who like the changes than those that do not. In this case the bugs effecting halls of eternal frost and scorpion caves made this an easy decision. In the case of the caravan raider's the dungeon had never conveyed its intended theme, as a rather humorous example our primary quest giver was previously talking about hideously dressed enemies, while said enemies wore the exact same clothing as him (obviously not intended, right). With regards to the previous designers all designers know that design should be an iterative process, in the case of an MMO this process can and does continue after launch.

Anyway this is heading slightly off topic.

[CirithGorgor]

As long as the loot system fails like it does now, maybe it would be better to give each player a epic box from last boss, and just reduce drop chance. Because there's a chance these boxes will be ninjaed because the loot system is fubar. That's just going to upset people etc.

Well there are 3 epic boxes guaranteed via the quest system for completing the mastery quest

[madureunos]

3 epic boxes that might have nothing but a potion.

Here's my feedback: HAVE LOOT DROP. cause it doesn't.

Cleared 2 full instances and NOTHING has dropped except a 2hr potion and some really, really bad blue gear. I've only seen 1 purple necklace in global since this all began and it wasn't even something i would wear on my worst toon.

16H cooldown for worthless blue gear seems really ridiculous.

All of this would have been great 3 years ago. It all now seems totally a waste of time.
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EDIT: I like the caches & chests idea, just not that their empty or have nothing worth while. I like the instances, just not that their fruitless. The purple cache drop rate seems to be less than 5% chance.