Urjak
11-10-2011, 03:37 PM
First off: This is as well an overall complaint as a suggestion how that complaint might be fixed ... wasn't sure whether to put it here or under suggestions ... and ATTENTION long wall of text ;)
Dear Turbine!
After U11 I thought the changes you made in epic as well as non-epic raids where working towards a more tiered endgame. U12 proved my assumption wrong. It now seems that you are about to create a split DDO-community. One part consisting of about 1%-5% of players, with uber epic and what not gear, player skill, static groups, ... and the vast majority of players (95%-99%) which simply are not part of that uber epic community.
IMO it is common knowledge that for the harder epics/elite raids one MUST have greensteel equipment plus the occasional epic item. Now with U12 it seems that the Shroud is now also one of those raids where you need serious reflexes/player skill plus greensteel equipment (mainly hp, sp and conc opp) ... since newer players don't have them already, they most likely will never get them now. (As of today most raidleaders seem to require 400+ hp of all partymembers, many classes/builds won't have that without either gimping themselves, using tomes + litany, or well having a t3 gs hp item (which they can't get now doh!)
Every game there is in the world be it an MMO, multi/single-player computer game, pnp, sports, whatever suffers of player loss over time, thus every game needs to recruit new players to replace those who quit. Thus IMO new players MUST have the possibility to eventually catch up with those veterans and be able to do endgame quests at some point. Removing the Shroud from the list of pugable newbie friendly raids creates a gap that is only very hard to cross. Especially think of all the new players checking the forums and reading that the most important raid in this game (which drops the equipment mandatory for all actual endgame stuff) is no longer reliably doable by pugs will drive away lots of potential players!
IMO I would much rather see the U11-approach followed creating a more tiered endgame. Following a list of the current raids:
Non-epic Chronoscope:
Since this is almost never run at level, difficulty setting is not so much of an issue here IMO, though I still think it should be adjusted according to my suggestion further below
Power gain through raidloot: very low to low
Difficulty: easy
Suggestions: none
Tempest Spine:
This is more of a quest than a raid but I still included it here. Needs no real adjustment IMO.
Power gain through raidloot: ~none
Difficulty: easy
Suggestions: none
Non-epic Plane of Night aka VoN6:
The quality of this raid's loot varies greatly from totally useless to really usefull.
Power gain through raidloot: ~none to moderate +1 high (SOS)
Difficulty: at least on elite nowhere near what a level10 elite quest/raid should be like
Suggestions: raise the CR of this raid drastically to reflect its difficulty and raid loot quality
Non-epic Zawabi's Revenge aka ADQ2:
Considering this is a level12 raid, the difficulty and raid loot quality are very high.
Power gain through raidloot: low to moderate (torc, marilith chain, green blade)
Difficulty: at least on elite nowhere near what a level 12 elite quest/raid should be like
Suggestions: raise the CR of this raid drastically to reflect its difficulty and raid loot quality
The Titan Awakes aka Titan:
This raid is simply totally outdated. The flagging is terribly annoying and the loot simply worthless. Thus nearly never run at all nowadays (I see about 2 lfms/year a bit more recently due to bravery streak).
Power gain through raidloot: neglectable
Difficulty: easy to moderate (at level)
Suggestions:
.) Leave it be and consider it dead content
.) Remove it from the game altogether to avoid confusing newbies
.) Make a total overhaul: Increase the raid loot, difficulty, fix the wilderness area, adjust the CR
The Reavers Fate aka Reavers:
The difficulty as well as its loot quality (elite upgrades!) have been increased largely lately
Power gain through raidloot: low to ~moderate (Madstone Boots)
Difficulty: at least on elite too high for level 14
Suggestions: Slightly adjust its CR
Ascension Chamber aka Abbot:
Well this raid has always been difficult and probably will always be difficult. On the other hand it also has very nice gear (don't forget the recent elite upgrade ;) )
Power gain through raidloot: moderate
Difficulty: while seems not soooo bad at level 17, compared to vod/hox its definitely harder
Suggestions: Increase CR to 18
The Shroud:
With U12 this raid has been erased from the easily doable raids list, although it drops the most important gear desperately needed to do the harder endgame stuff.
Power gain through raidloot: high
Difficulty: even groups consisting of multi-TR level 20s wipe in here ... definitely no longer appropriate for CR17
Hound of Xoriat aka HoX:
Compared to the other Vale of Twilight pack raids, probably the easiest.
Power gain through raidloot: low to ~moderate
Difficulty: seems fitting for its CR maybe even a bit too easy
Suggestions: ~none
Vault of Destruction aka VoD:
IMO this raid has the nearly perfect balance. Normal is very doable, elite is very tough.
Power gain through raidloot: low to moderate
Difficulty: nearly perfect
Suggestions: none
Non-epic The Master Artificer aka MA:
Only did normal of this raid, so my experience is a bit limited here. Normal was quite doable, but since this raid is very tightly bound to LoB I have some suggestions for this one further below.
Power gain through raidloot: moderate to high (in combination with ingred from LoB ofc)
Difficulty: seems more like level 20-21 but not so far off
Suggestions: Actually a lot see further below
Tower of Despair aka ToD:
While this raid at first glance seems difficulty, at least on normal its not that bad, good fitting of loot to difficulty relation.
Power gain through raidloot: moderate
Difficulty: seems fitting for level20
Suggestions: none
Non-epic Lord of Blades aka LoB:
Well this is by far the most difficult raid in the game. IMO even normal is far more difficult than any other raid on epic. While the difficulty is totally fine with me, the CR should be adjusted accordingly.
Power gain through raidloot: moderate to high
Difficulty: at least on normal definitely not what a level20 quest/raid should feel like
Suggestions: raise the CR to reflect this raids difficulty
... Skipping the listing of the epic raids to shorten this up a bit ...
Suggestion:
Create a more tiered endgame, which should also be reflected by according CRs of the raids. Also IMO raid difficulties should be more tiered as well. While normal should be doable at level with an average pug, hard and elite should be lots of different (VoD is a very good example here where this is already the case), but IMO this should also be reflected by an increased CR at higher difficulties. That this is possible, game engine wise, you have already shown us with Devil Assault. I propose increasing the CR of raid for hard by 2, for elite by 4. Bravery Streak should thus also work differently on raids, allowing a player to be up to 4 levels above the raids base level.
The tiers of the endgame should work in a way so that players need to finish one tier to move on to the next. Here a suggestion of how I would implement this:
Tier 0 (pre-endgame => normal stuff, no real requirements):
normal quests up to level 17
Tempest Spine (change CR to 10/12/14)
Non-epic Chronoscope (change CR to 6/8/10)
Titan (in case it is left as it is now) - (change CR to 10/12/14)
Tier 1 (first tier of endgame, should be doable by the average pug containing level 18-20 non-TR toons without any special gear):
IQ+DD
Amrath
Non-epic VoN (CR changed to 16/18/20, difficulty (especially of VoN5) changed to match this new CR)
Non-epic ADQ1&2 (CR changed to 16/18/20, difficulty (especially of ADQ1) changed to match this new CR)
Reavers Fate (CR changed to 16/18/20, difficulty already matches that CR quite well IMO)
The Shroud (CR changed to 16/18/20, difficulty changed to match this new CR - especially nerf the blades a bit)
HoX (CR changed to 17/19/21, difficulty of this raid already matches this new CR quite well)
VoD (CR changed to 18/20/22, difficulty of this raid already matches this new CR quite well)
Tier 2 (made for level 20s, or TRed level 19-20s with greensteel and some other high level loot)
House P epics (Carnival) - (CR changed to 21, Big Top to 22, difficulty matches this already quite well, small problem might need a bit of toning down to be more in line of the other level 21 quests)
House D epics (Sentinels) - (CR changed to 21, difficulty reflects that already quite well)
House K epics (Red Fens) - (CR changed to 21, Into the Deeps 22, difficulty of the demon might need a bit of toning down, last stand might need a bit of increased challenge)
epic Chronoscope - (CR changed to 23, since U12 difficulty already reflects that quite well, maybe a very very slight debuff)
Tier 3 (made for TRed level 20s, with some gaming experience, knowledge of epic tactics, greensteel, raidloot, epic gear, ...):
epic VoN1-6 - (CR changed to 24, VoN5&6 stay at 25, difficulty of VoN1&2 needs to be increased (especially the exploits need to be handled) to reflect the new CR)
epic Sands - (CR changed to 24, ADQ1&2 stay at 25, difficulty already reflects that quite well)
Tier 4 (made for multi TRed level 20s, with heavy gaming experience, knowledge of epic tactics, greensteel, raidloot, epic gear to both ears):
Master Artificer (CR changed to 26/28/30, difficulty needs to be upped a lot to reflect this change)
Lord of Blades (CR changed to 26/28/30, difficulty already reflects this quite well)
Tier 5 (made for uber elitists multi completionists, with every possible gear (except T3 alchemical weapons), awesome static groups/guilds, ...)
epic Master Artificer (CR changed to 35, difficulty needs to be upped a lot to reflect this change)
epic Lord of Blades (CR changed to 35, difficulty already reflects that quite well i guess from forum posts, never tried on epic myself so far, some uber elitists might post if this needs to be upped as well)
As one can see the T5 of this list is still quite empty => a place where new content should be placed. IMO this tiered endgame would help players greatly in having an idea, which raids/quests are actually fitting for them and also they provide some kind of linear power gain aka first do Tier 0 then 1, then 2 and so on and finally at one point you will reach T5. ... Using this given plain from above there shouldn't be any major gaps and new players are still able to get into T5 endgame at some time. On the other hand endgame players still have stuff to do (well shroud is boring again for them, but alas with elite shroud having 3 chests + a chance on a large ingred as end reward make 2-3 sometimes 4 larges per run, so those elitists should be able to move on from shroud quite quickly.
So this has become a quite long post, but no idea how to rly shorten it up without skipping important stuff (already skipped epics analysis ;) ) ...
Dear Turbine!
After U11 I thought the changes you made in epic as well as non-epic raids where working towards a more tiered endgame. U12 proved my assumption wrong. It now seems that you are about to create a split DDO-community. One part consisting of about 1%-5% of players, with uber epic and what not gear, player skill, static groups, ... and the vast majority of players (95%-99%) which simply are not part of that uber epic community.
IMO it is common knowledge that for the harder epics/elite raids one MUST have greensteel equipment plus the occasional epic item. Now with U12 it seems that the Shroud is now also one of those raids where you need serious reflexes/player skill plus greensteel equipment (mainly hp, sp and conc opp) ... since newer players don't have them already, they most likely will never get them now. (As of today most raidleaders seem to require 400+ hp of all partymembers, many classes/builds won't have that without either gimping themselves, using tomes + litany, or well having a t3 gs hp item (which they can't get now doh!)
Every game there is in the world be it an MMO, multi/single-player computer game, pnp, sports, whatever suffers of player loss over time, thus every game needs to recruit new players to replace those who quit. Thus IMO new players MUST have the possibility to eventually catch up with those veterans and be able to do endgame quests at some point. Removing the Shroud from the list of pugable newbie friendly raids creates a gap that is only very hard to cross. Especially think of all the new players checking the forums and reading that the most important raid in this game (which drops the equipment mandatory for all actual endgame stuff) is no longer reliably doable by pugs will drive away lots of potential players!
IMO I would much rather see the U11-approach followed creating a more tiered endgame. Following a list of the current raids:
Non-epic Chronoscope:
Since this is almost never run at level, difficulty setting is not so much of an issue here IMO, though I still think it should be adjusted according to my suggestion further below
Power gain through raidloot: very low to low
Difficulty: easy
Suggestions: none
Tempest Spine:
This is more of a quest than a raid but I still included it here. Needs no real adjustment IMO.
Power gain through raidloot: ~none
Difficulty: easy
Suggestions: none
Non-epic Plane of Night aka VoN6:
The quality of this raid's loot varies greatly from totally useless to really usefull.
Power gain through raidloot: ~none to moderate +1 high (SOS)
Difficulty: at least on elite nowhere near what a level10 elite quest/raid should be like
Suggestions: raise the CR of this raid drastically to reflect its difficulty and raid loot quality
Non-epic Zawabi's Revenge aka ADQ2:
Considering this is a level12 raid, the difficulty and raid loot quality are very high.
Power gain through raidloot: low to moderate (torc, marilith chain, green blade)
Difficulty: at least on elite nowhere near what a level 12 elite quest/raid should be like
Suggestions: raise the CR of this raid drastically to reflect its difficulty and raid loot quality
The Titan Awakes aka Titan:
This raid is simply totally outdated. The flagging is terribly annoying and the loot simply worthless. Thus nearly never run at all nowadays (I see about 2 lfms/year a bit more recently due to bravery streak).
Power gain through raidloot: neglectable
Difficulty: easy to moderate (at level)
Suggestions:
.) Leave it be and consider it dead content
.) Remove it from the game altogether to avoid confusing newbies
.) Make a total overhaul: Increase the raid loot, difficulty, fix the wilderness area, adjust the CR
The Reavers Fate aka Reavers:
The difficulty as well as its loot quality (elite upgrades!) have been increased largely lately
Power gain through raidloot: low to ~moderate (Madstone Boots)
Difficulty: at least on elite too high for level 14
Suggestions: Slightly adjust its CR
Ascension Chamber aka Abbot:
Well this raid has always been difficult and probably will always be difficult. On the other hand it also has very nice gear (don't forget the recent elite upgrade ;) )
Power gain through raidloot: moderate
Difficulty: while seems not soooo bad at level 17, compared to vod/hox its definitely harder
Suggestions: Increase CR to 18
The Shroud:
With U12 this raid has been erased from the easily doable raids list, although it drops the most important gear desperately needed to do the harder endgame stuff.
Power gain through raidloot: high
Difficulty: even groups consisting of multi-TR level 20s wipe in here ... definitely no longer appropriate for CR17
Hound of Xoriat aka HoX:
Compared to the other Vale of Twilight pack raids, probably the easiest.
Power gain through raidloot: low to ~moderate
Difficulty: seems fitting for its CR maybe even a bit too easy
Suggestions: ~none
Vault of Destruction aka VoD:
IMO this raid has the nearly perfect balance. Normal is very doable, elite is very tough.
Power gain through raidloot: low to moderate
Difficulty: nearly perfect
Suggestions: none
Non-epic The Master Artificer aka MA:
Only did normal of this raid, so my experience is a bit limited here. Normal was quite doable, but since this raid is very tightly bound to LoB I have some suggestions for this one further below.
Power gain through raidloot: moderate to high (in combination with ingred from LoB ofc)
Difficulty: seems more like level 20-21 but not so far off
Suggestions: Actually a lot see further below
Tower of Despair aka ToD:
While this raid at first glance seems difficulty, at least on normal its not that bad, good fitting of loot to difficulty relation.
Power gain through raidloot: moderate
Difficulty: seems fitting for level20
Suggestions: none
Non-epic Lord of Blades aka LoB:
Well this is by far the most difficult raid in the game. IMO even normal is far more difficult than any other raid on epic. While the difficulty is totally fine with me, the CR should be adjusted accordingly.
Power gain through raidloot: moderate to high
Difficulty: at least on normal definitely not what a level20 quest/raid should feel like
Suggestions: raise the CR to reflect this raids difficulty
... Skipping the listing of the epic raids to shorten this up a bit ...
Suggestion:
Create a more tiered endgame, which should also be reflected by according CRs of the raids. Also IMO raid difficulties should be more tiered as well. While normal should be doable at level with an average pug, hard and elite should be lots of different (VoD is a very good example here where this is already the case), but IMO this should also be reflected by an increased CR at higher difficulties. That this is possible, game engine wise, you have already shown us with Devil Assault. I propose increasing the CR of raid for hard by 2, for elite by 4. Bravery Streak should thus also work differently on raids, allowing a player to be up to 4 levels above the raids base level.
The tiers of the endgame should work in a way so that players need to finish one tier to move on to the next. Here a suggestion of how I would implement this:
Tier 0 (pre-endgame => normal stuff, no real requirements):
normal quests up to level 17
Tempest Spine (change CR to 10/12/14)
Non-epic Chronoscope (change CR to 6/8/10)
Titan (in case it is left as it is now) - (change CR to 10/12/14)
Tier 1 (first tier of endgame, should be doable by the average pug containing level 18-20 non-TR toons without any special gear):
IQ+DD
Amrath
Non-epic VoN (CR changed to 16/18/20, difficulty (especially of VoN5) changed to match this new CR)
Non-epic ADQ1&2 (CR changed to 16/18/20, difficulty (especially of ADQ1) changed to match this new CR)
Reavers Fate (CR changed to 16/18/20, difficulty already matches that CR quite well IMO)
The Shroud (CR changed to 16/18/20, difficulty changed to match this new CR - especially nerf the blades a bit)
HoX (CR changed to 17/19/21, difficulty of this raid already matches this new CR quite well)
VoD (CR changed to 18/20/22, difficulty of this raid already matches this new CR quite well)
Tier 2 (made for level 20s, or TRed level 19-20s with greensteel and some other high level loot)
House P epics (Carnival) - (CR changed to 21, Big Top to 22, difficulty matches this already quite well, small problem might need a bit of toning down to be more in line of the other level 21 quests)
House D epics (Sentinels) - (CR changed to 21, difficulty reflects that already quite well)
House K epics (Red Fens) - (CR changed to 21, Into the Deeps 22, difficulty of the demon might need a bit of toning down, last stand might need a bit of increased challenge)
epic Chronoscope - (CR changed to 23, since U12 difficulty already reflects that quite well, maybe a very very slight debuff)
Tier 3 (made for TRed level 20s, with some gaming experience, knowledge of epic tactics, greensteel, raidloot, epic gear, ...):
epic VoN1-6 - (CR changed to 24, VoN5&6 stay at 25, difficulty of VoN1&2 needs to be increased (especially the exploits need to be handled) to reflect the new CR)
epic Sands - (CR changed to 24, ADQ1&2 stay at 25, difficulty already reflects that quite well)
Tier 4 (made for multi TRed level 20s, with heavy gaming experience, knowledge of epic tactics, greensteel, raidloot, epic gear to both ears):
Master Artificer (CR changed to 26/28/30, difficulty needs to be upped a lot to reflect this change)
Lord of Blades (CR changed to 26/28/30, difficulty already reflects this quite well)
Tier 5 (made for uber elitists multi completionists, with every possible gear (except T3 alchemical weapons), awesome static groups/guilds, ...)
epic Master Artificer (CR changed to 35, difficulty needs to be upped a lot to reflect this change)
epic Lord of Blades (CR changed to 35, difficulty already reflects that quite well i guess from forum posts, never tried on epic myself so far, some uber elitists might post if this needs to be upped as well)
As one can see the T5 of this list is still quite empty => a place where new content should be placed. IMO this tiered endgame would help players greatly in having an idea, which raids/quests are actually fitting for them and also they provide some kind of linear power gain aka first do Tier 0 then 1, then 2 and so on and finally at one point you will reach T5. ... Using this given plain from above there shouldn't be any major gaps and new players are still able to get into T5 endgame at some time. On the other hand endgame players still have stuff to do (well shroud is boring again for them, but alas with elite shroud having 3 chests + a chance on a large ingred as end reward make 2-3 sometimes 4 larges per run, so those elitists should be able to move on from shroud quite quickly.
So this has become a quite long post, but no idea how to rly shorten it up without skipping important stuff (already skipped epics analysis ;) ) ...