A Vault of Night - Proposed Change.

[GoldyGopher]

Two of my favorite quest in DDO is the “Vault of Night” and the “Plane of Night” quests that make up parts 5 and 6 of the Vault of Night or Dragon Vault series, I think it is a shame that the beautiful work of these quests are currently rotting away from lack of use. So I got to thinking about how I would rebuild that series.

Imagine if you would Barrow d’Kundarak not standing in his usual spot but rather he is moved off to Chactidae Falaknuma was standing. After Barrow tells his tale and the quest Vault of Night is bestowed you click on the wagon to be transferred to a Raid Adventure Zone, similar to the Gateway to Khyber, except bigger.

In the Gateway you find yourself before the “Vault of Night” Barrow’s vault and their blocking the entrance is Marek Malcanus. As you speak with Marek instead of sending your party on a set path (Tharask Arena, Prison of the Mind, Jungle of Khyber, and Haywire’s foundry) you party must complete each task and return to Marek with the a token found upon completion of the quests.

You can do these quests in any order, you can send as few as one individual into each quest or you can send the entire raid party, they just need to be completed.

Each of these quests are found in the remote section of the Gateway to Khyber so there is a fight there and potentially a fight back to marek. Imagine if you would the fight in Gateway to Khyber to get to the Jungles except it goes in four directions from the Vault of Night.

Each quest is in itself an individual entity, you only get XP and Favor for being in the quest when the quest is complete.

Upon completion of the four quests Marek allows entrance to the Vault of Night.

If the character with one of the tokens leaves the party (disconnects) the token is dropped. If the players leave the adventure zone the token is not dropped but the quest must be rerun the specific quest to re-get the token.

Upon completion of the Vault you are off to the Plane of Night. The party brings down the barriers and prepares for battle with Velah. The party is buffed and ready, the charge comes and then Velah does something unheard of, she takes flight. The party scatters for cover, arrows, bolts and spells fill the air as she swoops in, a ranger has been separated from the party. As she lands can the party rescue the separated ranger? Soon she takes to the sky again. Will Velah out live the party?

This is a raid and it should only have one level, Ultra. As the level cap goes up the difficulty in completing the raid should also go up. As an example instead of the Inevitable/Marut being a CR 15 (or whatever he is) he should be as tough as Slowamedies at the current level cap. The mobs should get new spells, weapons, and HP, and abilities. All that said the loot should go up as well, imagine a Kundarak Delving Suit that is “Prot +4” or the like.

This change does several things, it should reduce the time need to flag but keep the overall length of the quest to do able length of about two hours it also gives more high end content without creating new high end content, mind you that it is not that filling out the changes while the level cap goes up isn’t enough work for the developers.

That is a raid I would love to take on once a week, something I would look forward to.

[Angelus_dead]

You can do these quests in any order, you can send as few as one individual into each quest or you can send the entire raid party, they just need to be completed.
Way too complicated... and it works backwards by increasing the continuous time commitment to run the raid, instead of decreasing it. If they were going to spend that kind of serious developer effort revamping the VON raid, they should first boost it up to level 15-18 (increasing the power of monsters and most named loots to match).

The fairly simple change that they should do is change Marek from assigning VON1-4 in order to having him work like Zawabi does for the Demon Queen raid, and require a specific token (a wooden dagger signifying each member's allegiance to the Laughing Knives) before he'll assign you to VON5. That way players can run the VON1-4 missions in any order and build up credits for future raids, regardless of if they're still on the VON raid timer or not.

PS. Those tokens should also fit in collectible bags.

[Lithic]

It would be much better to elimate the reflagging of both DQ and VON instead, especially snce VON has a decently long preraid you must do first. For DQ, they could make ADQ2 connect to ADQ1 directly (Sort of like the titan raid), and just stick a copy of the genie right before you jump into adq2 to give you the story.

[GoldyGopher]

Way too complicated... and it works backwards by increasing the continuous time commitment to run the raid, instead of decreasing it. If they were going to spend that kind of serious developer effort revamping the VON raid, they should first boost it up to level 15-18 (increasing the power of monsters and most named loots to match).

The fairly simple change that they should do is change Marek from assigning VON1-4 in order to having him work like Zawabi does for the Demon Queen raid, and require a specific token (a wooden dagger signifying each member's allegiance to the Laughing Knives) before he'll assign you to VON5. That way players can run the VON1-4 missions in any order and build up credits for future raids, regardless of if they're still on the VON raid timer or not.

PS. Those tokens should also fit in collectible bags.

You are correct my model would require a longer CONTINOUS time commitment but hopefully a short overall time commitment. This model should require about two to three hours depending on the group and how many breaks taken.

I fail to see how it is way too complicated.

The flagging changes as it goes from everyone completing the flagging quests to your in the zone and the flagging quests need to be completed. Imagine sending Tom **** and Harry to do part one, Huey, Dewey and Louie to part two, Tigger, Pooh, Eyore, and owl to part three and Mickey and Minnie to part four. After they are all completed everyone comes back to Marek and turns in the tokens, if Mickey and Minnie are having problems than when Tom **** and Harry are done they can go assist the other groups.. Now it is not quite that easy as I have proposed making those adventures tougher, but it still faster in flagging than the current model. Yes we would need a Blue, Green, red and Yellow channels in Chat but that is pretty easy considering the upgrades the developers have hinted at already.


It would be much better to elimate the reflagging of both DQ and VON instead, especially snce VON has a decently long preraid you must do first. For DQ, they could make ADQ2 connect to ADQ1 directly (Sort of like the titan raid), and just stick a copy of the genie right before you jump into adq2 to give you the story.

I actually disagree here. The problem is how the flagging mechinism works rather than the time it takes. I would rework DQ similiar to the above model. Where the new desert zone contains the quests before the genie and yes just like you I would replace the 'second' DQ in DQ1 with the final portion of DQ2.

[Angelus_dead]

You are correct my model would require a longer CONTINOUS time commitment but hopefully a short overall time commitment. This model should require about two to three hours depending on the group and how many breaks taken
Yep, 2-3 hours would be bad.


I fail to see how it is way too complicated.
Because it's pretty involved and requires not only moving a lot of things around and changing the scripting between them, but also altering the difficulty of things. You're proposing that be done by devs who so far haven't been able to tweak Reaver's Fate raid to avoid spawn over 50 monsters total without making it possible for 50+ to build up at once.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

You are correct my model would require a longer CONTINOUS time commitment but hopefully a short overall time commitment. This model should require about two to three hours depending on the group and how many breaks taken.

Who wants to run for three hours straight to flag for a L10 quest. I don't think so. You expect that to be puggable? Sorry, no sale.

I agree with the others that said either change the vons to flag in any order (which even makes sense given the story line) or change both DQ & VONs to permaflag like all the rest of the raids.

[GoldyGopher]

Who wants to run for three hours straight to flag for a L10 quest. I don't think so. You expect that to be puggable? Sorry, no sale.

I agree with the others that said either change the vons to flag in any order (which even makes sense given the story line) or change both DQ & VONs to permaflag like all the rest of the raids.

I would like to add that these quests should be raised to the Level Cap, IE Ultra, and that the loot should be equavalent. (Kundarak Delving Suit with Prot +4)

[Lithic]

I would like to add that these quests should be raised to the Level Cap, IE Ultra, and that the loot should be equavalent. (Kundarak Delving Suit with Prot +4)

I like having lower level raids, and to change such a piece of DDO history would make me a sad panda

[Uska]

Ugh my head hurts from reading this way to complicated, it would be nice if they just did like the reaver we can just rerun 5-6 or even just 6 on timer or at least like the titan where we have to repair our pass to the raid.

[Uska]

I like having lower level raids, and to change such a piece of DDO history would make me a sad panda

I agree

[Uska]

I would like to add that these quests should be raised to the Level Cap, IE Ultra, and that the loot should be equavalent. (Kundarak Delving Suit with Prot +4)



Bad idea lower level players need raids to.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

I would like to add that these quests should be raised to the Level Cap, IE Ultra, and that the loot should be equavalent. (Kundarak Delving Suit with Prot +4)

Absolutely not. People have been asking for low level raids since I got here two years ago. People should be able to raid all he way up. This isn't wow where you collect pelts until you are L70, this is D&D where levelling is supposed to be the game and you should have interesting things to do all the way up.

[darkrune]

Not signed and here is why:

Development time should and MUST be spent on developing NEW content in order for the game to survive. This is not a DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!111!1 post so do not take it as such. If the developers continue to go back to past quests and place trees in them just to beautify the lower level quests that have no effect other than blocking a place where a character with a 40 jump can skip an "optional" or change a balance check from >6 to >40 for a lvl 11-14 quest (which at those levels is almost IMPOSSIBLE to get).

Basically every time a quest is "revamped" the playing difficulty increases for the level appropriate players as the developers seem to be irate that the level 16 toons fly through a von 5/6, dq1/2. Come on, unless you are level 9-11 von 5 should be done by splitting up and going 2/3 ways until you need the lever/rune room. All in all this raid should take less than 2 hrs start to finish for both parts (and that is slow). Dq1 should be done by splitting up at least 2 directions at a time and should be completed in less than 30 minutes. I just ran a DQ2 raid last week with zero clerics 3 casters 3 rangers and a rogue and got it done on elite in 5 minutes.

But the developers see all their hard work being turned into loot runs and get upset so boom comes the nerf bat and the titan's aggro is "revamped" so he runs around like a chicken with it's head chopped off bashing the ground and anyone in the room goes flying (cause who really invested in a 40+ balance). The islands get fixed so there is no longer running away from pillars in VON 6, the gnolls on the pillars become red-named in DQ2, the list goes on and on.

The only thing that they did to benefit the player base upon revisting a quest is to lower the spawn rate of elementals in the stormreaver which has led to more boredom in the quest so that the few servers that they have running the game can handle the load without bogging down causing extreme lag (again really helping the player base or conserving money by robbing peter to pay paul?)

So basically in my opinion, the only development time that should be spent on old quests is fixing known bugs ( Stormcleave anyone?), any exploits (the old harry doesnt like pets routine), and future development of NEW quests/named items/raids for all levels 1-20 so that we can EXPAND the player base not run off those of us that have been here since beta or just after release cause of lack of content.

But then again this is only my opinion and I cannot vouch for anyone other than those I talk to about this all the time,

Dark

[Hafeal]

Way too complicated... and it works backwards by increasing the continuous time commitment to run the raid, instead of decreasing it ... The fairly simple change that they should do is change Marek from assigning VON1-4 in order to having him work like Zawabi does for the Demon Queen raid, and require a specific token (a wooden dagger signifying each member's allegiance to the Laughing Knives) before he'll assign you to VON5. That way players can run the VON1-4 missions in any order and build up credits for future raids, regardless of if they're still on the VON raid timer or not.

PS. Those tokens should also fit in collectible bags.

I agree with the above. I do not agree with the following:


If they were going to spend that kind of serious developer effort revamping the VON raid, they should first boost it up to level 15-18 (increasing the power of monsters and most named loots to match).

As has been said, we need raids at all levels of play. You do not have to run the Vons for the challenge at 16 there are many other options. :)

[Angelus_dead]

As has been said, we need raids at all levels of play. You do not have to run the Vons for the challenge at 16 there are many other options. :)
No, no we do not. Why do you think low level raids are helpful or needed? Remember there is no such thing as a low-level player, only low-level characters.

[Angelus_dead]

Absolutely not. People have been asking for low level raids since I got here two years ago. People should be able to raid all he way up.
Yes, some people have been asking for them. But that doesn't mean they can or should get them.

The fact is, a "low level raid" is a contradiction in terms: a raid by its inherent nature is aimed at high-level (capped) characters. Here is the nature of a raid:
1. Larger than normal group size.
2. Lockout timer to prevent repetition within days.
3. Loot much better than otherwise available at that level.

Thinking about those three facts should show you how raids are automatically better for higher level characters. If you changed some of those aspects (such as removing the lockout timer and good loot) then it could function better for low-level characters (although still not great), but then it would hardly be a "raid" anymore.

[Rragnaar]

You can come up with ideas until you're blue in the face, but the Devs have stated that they will not be redoing any of the raids or raid flaggings for VON's or Demon Queen. There's no point in constantly saying I have a way that they could change this, because 1) it's not on their agenda, and 2) every minute they waste redoing an old quest is a minute not spent creating new ones.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

As has been said, we need raids at all levels of play. You do not have to run the Vons for the challenge at 16 there are many other options. :)

They need to switch at least VON and DQ to use the same mechanics as the special event quest. You know the one with Normal = Lvl6, Hard = Lvl 10 and Elite = Lvl16....

Not sure how this would work out for favour, because the VON's series is a whole hunk of chunk of House K favour...but I believe it would keep these raids relevant.

A'course that still doesnt change the flagging problem.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Yes, some people have been asking for them. But that doesn't mean they can or should get them.

The fact is, a "low level raid" is a contradiction in terms: a raid by its inherent nature is aimed at high-level (capped) characters. Here is the nature of a raid:
1. Larger than normal group size.
2. Lockout timer to prevent repetition within days.
3. Loot much better than otherwise available at that level.

Thinking about those three facts should show you how raids are automatically better for higher level characters. If you changed some of those aspects (such as removing the lockout timer and good loot) then it could function better for low-level characters (although still not great), but then it would hardly be a "raid" anymore.

None of those facts make it something that should only be available to capped chars. While you may like to grind on your capped chars forever, many of us do not. We want to play the game, at all levels, and as you put it, have "loot much better than otherwise available at that level".

By your logic we might as well just all pay power levelling services and start at L16 and for that matter, why have low level quests, lets just start every char at cap and just rewrite all the quests for cap.

[EKKM]

Yes, some people have been asking for them. But that doesn't mean they can or should get them.

The fact is, a "low level raid" is a contradiction in terms: a raid by its inherent nature is aimed at high-level (capped) characters. Here is the nature of a raid:
1. Larger than normal group size.
2. Lockout timer to prevent repetition within days.
3. Loot much better than otherwise available at that level.

Thinking about those three facts should show you how raids are automatically better for higher level characters. If you changed some of those aspects (such as removing the lockout timer and good loot) then it could function better for low-level characters (although still not great), but then it would hardly be a "raid" anymore.

I fail to see to see how any of those criteria indicate they are for higher level characters only. Anything that is in the game at higher levels can be added add lower levels. Also recent history has shown that attention to low level areas can be well received, look at 3 barrell cove and the slightly flawed crafting (which is supposed to be expanded and fixed soon).

I'm pretty biased on the issue as I have no capped characters and it will likely be awhile before I manage to.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

I fail to see to see how any of those criteria indicate they are for higher level characters only. Anything that is in the game at higher levels can be added add lower levels. Also recent history has shown that attention to low level areas can be well received, look at 3 barrell cove and the slightly flawed crafting (which is supposed to be expanded and fixed soon).

I'm pretty biased on the issue as I have no capped characters and it will likely be awhile before I manage to.

Some people assume that the only way to play this game is to pretend its WoW, power level to cap, and then grind and grind and grind.

[Grosbeak07]

Yes, some people have been asking for them. But that doesn't mean they can or should get them.

The fact is, a "low level raid" is a contradiction in terms: a raid by its inherent nature is aimed at high-level (capped) characters. Here is the nature of a raid:
1. Larger than normal group size.
2. Lockout timer to prevent repetition within days.
3. Loot much better than otherwise available at that level.

Thinking about those three facts should show you how raids are automatically better for higher level characters. If you changed some of those aspects (such as removing the lockout timer and good loot) then it could function better for low-level characters (although still not great), but then it would hardly be a "raid" anymore.

I disagree here, you can satisfy 1,2 and 3 and have it be a level 1 raid. I don't see how being a capped or high level character or not having one would make any difference. The raid is aimed at what ever levels the developers choose.

[gfunk]

I dont think that flagging is a real problem for Von. In a zerging group, it can be flagged in less than 45minutes, maybe approaching 30? Plus, a lvl 16 can solo flag for this raid. If you aren't at 16, then reflagging for this quest gives good xp (esp at hard and elite), which is reward enough imo.

I think the real problem is that the raid loot isnt very valuable for a lvl 16 character, especially compared to Shroud/Hound/Vision loot. At least in Titan there are some unique items like the belt of brute strength (saves a equipment slot) and the chattering ring (unique AC bonus) that will keep people coming back. But with Von loot, there are now serious limitations for high end use:

-The Sword of Shadow is now underpowered relative to greensteel,
-All the +6 items can be replaced with non-raid loot,
-The dragons eye is obsolete now that wiz VI+ and shroud items are around

The only thing most people would want now are the Delving suit and the Stonemeld plate (imo) due to the decent stats on these items, and because they have beautiful graphics. With the new armor from the Hound, I think the Delving suit will be going out of style as well. Not many people still use the stonemeld, maybe because DR5 isnt as significant as it used to be.

I've suggested before that one way to get people to run these quests would be to include ingredients as part of the end chest loot. At least this give people another option for raiding while they are on shroud timer.

There isn't anything for end reward I want out of this raid for any of my capped characters. That said, I will continue to run Von because I think it's a really fun raid.