R.I.P. dungeons

[netsike]

October 2015, 4.7 patch is happening. First I was happy, because the raid nerf finally made it possible for non-pro guilds and players to get better gear. But at this time I didn't play, so I didn't know how it will affect AoC.

Now that I'm online more often, I see: people don't do dungeons anymore and it's just getting worse.

Let me tell you an example: Friday evening, around 9-10PM EU time. A lot of players are online, but the global is completely dead, there is NOTHING going on except 1-2 mona runs. I'm trying to fill my UC group, but I don't get a single tell. I just couldn't believe that there is nothing happening, so I started to check instances... and guess what I've seen: 3x T4 raid, 1XT3,5 and 1xT3. Let's say, all raids are full, then that's 120 players. Allright, let's wait a bit then, probably after the raids are done, ppl will be more active...but no, it didn't happen. Probably everyone went offline after the raid...

Funcom screwed it up once again... I have a lot of thoughts about the current state of the game, I try to collect a few of them:
- People come online to raid: I can understand the players, who are there for a long time now and getting bored of dungeons, but come on! Don't tell me, that doing raids for the 100th time is more entertaining!
- New players are NOT motivated to do any dungeons: the only thing they have to do is to join a guild, getting dragged through T4 and gear up. Well done! I know more and more players, who have T4 gear but just have experience in mona runs...
- More and more bad players: a lot of ppl have NO idea how to play their classes! Healers don't heal, tanks can't tank and the better gear ppl have, the more dumb they are! Example: Yag group, I have to beg for the full T4 BS to use SF on the group and what do I get as an answer: I'm a total idiot, because it's totally unnecessary to remove it, it can be outhealed... Another: UC dungeon, looking for DPS, a DT joins. But it turns out, that the heal is bad, so I relog to my ToS and ask the DT politely if he could be the offtank. Then he starts calling me an idiot, cause HE CAN'T TANK, HE JOINED AS A DPS!!! I could say a thousand examples... I know, there are bad players in every game, but so many in such a low populated game? I can't believe it!
- Why nerf T4 so much? It became so boring and so easy, except General Sheng and Entity it turned to a "tank and spank" raid! Zodiac and The Emperor is just a joke! Before I sweat blood to keep the tanks alive at the Emperor and even like that, tanks were dying like flies, it was a fun and challenging fight, where ppl needed to concentrate, they needed good gear and skill... and now, it's sooo easy, that at the first time when I was playing after the nerf, I felt stupid, that I've put on my sage gear for more protection and heal rating...

Allright, now you could tell me: "if you want something challenging, go and do T5 and T6"! First of all: what for? Please someone tell me, why do ppl need T5 and T6 gear? Is there any content, where you need it? Is there any dungeon or an area, which is so hard, that you can just survive with this gear? Second: I've never done these raids, but I can't believe it's so hard as it should be, there are too many ppl running around with T5 and T6 stuff.

I'm waiting for such a long time for some new content (which is NOT a new raid...), or some new UC dungeons, but I don't think it will ever come. It's so sad to see such a good game getting worse and worse, thanks to Funcom, who just proved, they have the work force to do new content (-> Conan Exiles), but why bother with such an old game. As it seems like, AoC will always stay the "stable" for the "cows" (= AoC subscribers) and Funcom will continue milking these ppl as long as they can.

Once again I returned to my favourite game and once again I will leave soon... Sorry for the QQing, I just wanted to share my thoughts with you, maybe I'm not the only one who feels this way...

[Shax84]

Warnings were given on TL, that the nerfs was too severe, Funcom did not listen. In relative to power of gear for effort in T4, and weaponry in T3.5 it is definitely most value for least effort. I can clearly see why that nobody bothers with unchaineds any more since the loot is extremely random and duplicates are given. At least in raids you know which boss drops what and ultimately the item can be bought with tokens.

The only motivation for doing instances now are achievements and rare relics for the 4h blue buff potions.

[Rathothis]

October 2015, 4.7 patch is happening. First I was happy, because the raid nerf finally made it possible for non-pro guilds and players to get better gear. But at this time I didn't play, so I didn't know how it will affect AoC.

Now that I'm online more often, I see: people don't do dungeons anymore and it's just getting worse.

Sadly I have to agree. As you point out, there is no real incentive anymore for doing dungeons, for two reasons: First, the nerfs to T3.5 and T4 were pretty significant. As noted by Shax, a number of players made Funcom aware of the fact that the nerfs were pretty drastic, but FC went ahead nevertheless. Secondly, there simply are no tangible incentives for doing dungeons, as T3.5 / T4 gear is easily accessible via PUGs.

The two potential solutions to this problem are (i) either to lower the difficulty of all dungeons to Monastery / KK level, or to (ii) provide more meaningful rewards for completing harder dungeons:

(i) is a bad idea as DS/UC and the harder Khitai dungeons are some of the best content which AoC has to offer;
(ii) has been raised in a number of threads, like this one. Unfortunately, there seems to be nothing even close to a consensus on having better rewards for the harder dungeons, with quite a lot pushback from raiders.

[Greyloins]

It was a mistake in the first place to have such similar item budgets between Khitai sets, unchained sets, and Dragonspine sets. For the most part, people not in competent guilds haven't been interested in completing Excavator loops, as many classes actually get superior gear from Grasslands or KK.

I'm not surprised this is happening, especially since I think our aging population is getting tired of running the same dungeons year after year on alt after alt.

[Lehudib]

Well, I never liked funcom making these boss into loot piñata, but I had to admit it made ppl can raid. When I was in pug raids there is tons of ppl who even dont know such basic things or even strats, ie) res up at melee phase in zaal, who even not capable to solve 12 man puzzle in zodi, ppl keep dying in ice storm, seeing runners almost comes to door even they are limping badly now, someone almost no dpsing the boss (like 200 dps as bs) in zodi-gosh, its glad their timer finally gone.
My point is, raid consist of 24 ppl, so unless someone doing extremely severe mistakes that might massacre, raid goes on. But, in k6 dungeons, one making stupid thing then it likely go wipe.
In these few weeks while I'm join-or forming- few dungeons I suffered so much from over-retarded things, like starting tank even before flame's boss retribution buff goes off (by putting sand on hearth fire, you know) and blaming heal and rogues..wth? In Ai, activating catapult while we clearing adds after we didnt succeed to kept engineer alive and there had much mobs standing.. someone keep fail to use tw on yag, and so on.. that make ppl also disencourage to doing thing except raid xD
Well.. so my opinion is, even funcom didnt nerfed raids these ppl are keep playin, and their retardness make ppl wipe in raid, and ppl who can play cant play from them

[Ernests]

So long as players can so easy get powerful gear from WB and raids lower than T5/T6, dungeons will be just a content that peoples do few times only out of curiosity and then forget about it forever.
In my opinion, there is only one reasonable solution, renew interest in the dungeons under crafting revamp.

[Yawgmoth-VDN]

what makes the unchained dungeons uninteresting is also the fact that the quest reward for completing them is totally unreliable and just luck based. in my guild we've been doing those dungeons repeatedly for quite a while, then we all got bored of getting those stupid potions as reward.
at least, in a raid you know what you get, and more or less you have an upper limit on the number of times you have to repeat it to get what you want.

[netsike]

what makes the unchained dungeons uninteresting is also the fact that the quest reward for completing them is totally unreliable and just luck based. in my guild we've been doing those dungeons repeatedly for quite a while, then we all got bored of getting those stupid potions as reward.
at least, in a raid you know what you get, and more or less you have an upper limit on the number of times you have to repeat it to get what you want.

The UC epic gear is actually quite good for most of the classes, but yes, the fact that it's luck based made it unpopular. Too bad, because I like these runs.

[Ernests]

The UC epic gear is actually quite good for most of the classes

I didn't find there's nothing special for full T4 demo. The only interesting thing is Ring of Ancient Python, that may be appropriate used in T5/T6 raids to survival. But I really can repeat unchained runs hundreds of times and never get this ring

[GeneralFear]

Every lfg for uc dungeon I see calls for AAs, gear and experience. I interpret this to be experience with the dungeon, which I usually don't have, and don't know how to get since I'm not gonna get intoa group without it.