Abbot tiles are too easy now

[scoobmx]

They need to be changed back to U13.0

[goodspeed]

people run abbot?

[DarkAlchemist]

Nevermind.

[HAL]

Don't feed the troll.

[Chette]

I do find it strange that although the abbots HP increases by an extraordinary amount from normal -> hard and from hard -> elite, that the puzzles themselves don't become any harder.

It seems as if the design basis for making a quest more difficult is to simply make the boring part of the raid, the part where you mostly stand and fight/throw spells, a lot longer, instead of making it actually take more thought and coordination. That sort of raid planning to me says, I want DDO players to have more DPS/gear/potions, but not necessary get any smarter.

Abbot is one of my favourite raids because it requires thought and coordination, not standing in one spot and swinging your weapon for 5 minutes. I wish the great raid planning that went into formulating the puzzles would be carried through, to distinguish them between the difficulties.

[Kareena]

I like them easy >.>

[HatsuharuZ]

Having never been able to complet Abbot even once, I am GLAD they fixed tiles. That and inferno often causes fails/wipes often.

[Chette]

If Abbot is not being completed regularly by groups, it is likely due to a lack of a few experienced people for key roles with the puzzles.

This should be fixed by making the raid easier to learn, by making the puzzles scale properly on normal-hard-elite, not by making it easier across the board.

Make the puzzles fairly easy for people who don't know the raid well on normal, but have the loot drops fairly low. This is for people who are learning, or just want a completion.

Challenging puzzles on hard, with moderate loot drops and seal chances.

Hard puzzles on elite, with much higher loot drops, and 30-40% chance of seals. For very experienced players only.

[Matuse]

It seems as if the design basis for making a quest more difficult is to simply make the boring part of the raid, the part where you mostly stand and fight/throw spells, a lot longer,

Go stand in asteroids for FORTY MINUTES waiting for goggles to complete, and then come back and regale us with your stories about how exciting it is, compared to the boring abbot beatdown.

[Ovrad]

It seems as if the design basis for making a quest more difficult is to simply make the boring part of the raid, the part where you mostly stand and fight/throw spells, a lot longer, instead of making it actually take more thought and coordination. That sort of raid planning to me says, I want DDO players to have more DPS/gear/potions, but not necessary get any smarter.

I'd like you to elaborate a bit more on how upping the chance of failure for a puzzle that takes from 10 to 30 mins, while 80% of the group is afk because they have nothing else to do, 'makes players smarter'. Yes, long boss beat-downs aren't that exciting, I agree, but at least you're doing something, other than checking your mail or youtube videos.

[Alternative]

nothing to see here, move along

[Jaid314]

If Abbot is not being completed regularly by groups, it is likely due to a lack of a few experienced people for key roles with the puzzles.

This should be fixed by making the raid easier to learn, by making the puzzles scale properly on normal-hard-elite, not by making it easier across the board.

Make the puzzles fairly easy for people who don't know the raid well on normal, but have the loot drops fairly low. This is for people who are learning, or just want a completion.

Challenging puzzles on hard, with moderate loot drops and seal chances.

Hard puzzles on elite, with much higher loot drops, and 30-40% chance of seals. For very experienced players only.

i shudder to imagine what abbot would be like with even *lower* loot drop rates than it already has. my default assumption when going in is that the raid will be skunked. i'd say more often than not, i have been right.

then, another 25% of the time, whatever is in the chest is something that nobody really needs. the other 25% of the time, it's something that half the raid needs, but there's only one of them. on very rare occasions, there will actually be more than 1 name item in the chest, with about a 50/50 chance for either of them being useless or needed by everyone.

the drop rate sucks hard enough already. please don't make it even worse.

[Candela90]

/signed

Now I can just close my eyes and use wings on my fvs. There is more than 80% chances Ill survive.

[Gremmlynn]

I do find it strange that although the abbots HP increases by an extraordinary amount from normal -> hard and from hard -> elite, that the puzzles themselves don't become any harder.

It seems as if the design basis for making a quest more difficult is to simply make the boring part of the raid, the part where you mostly stand and fight/throw spells, a lot longer, instead of making it actually take more thought and coordination. That sort of raid planning to me says, I want DDO players to have more DPS/gear/potions, but not necessary get any smarter.

Why would they want smarter players? If this were a spectator sport and better smarter players meant selling more tickets I could see it. But it's not, so why would they care one way or the other. Setting bars high just frustrates those who can't get over them.

[slugstone]

I do find it strange that although the abbots HP increases by an extraordinary amount from normal -> hard and from hard -> elite, that the puzzles themselves don't become any harder.

It seems as if the design basis for making a quest more difficult is to simply make the boring part of the raid, the part where you mostly stand and fight/throw spells, a lot longer, instead of making it actually take more thought and coordination. That sort of raid planning to me says, I want DDO players to have more DPS/gear/potions, but not necessary get any smarter.

Abbot is one of my favourite raids because it requires thought and coordination, not standing in one spot and swinging your weapon for 5 minutes. I wish the great raid planning that went into formulating the puzzles would be carried through, to distinguish them between the difficulties.


When I do abbot I spend at least 30 minutes pikeing waiting for recall and reform. I am sure glad your ... nevermind I am going back to bed.

[gerardIII]

If Abbot is not being completed regularly by groups, it is likely due to a lack of a few experienced people for key roles with the puzzles.

This should be fixed by making the raid easier to learn, by making the puzzles scale properly on normal-hard-elite, not by making it easier across the board.

Make the puzzles fairly easy for people who don't know the raid well on normal, but have the loot drops fairly low. This is for people who are learning, or just want a completion.

Challenging puzzles on hard, with moderate loot drops and seal chances.

Hard puzzles on elite, with much higher loot drops, and 30-40% chance of seals. For very experienced players only.

I'd rather have it too easy than too hard, i.e. no blue tiles.

[Esserbe]

Go stand in asteroids for FORTY MINUTES waiting for goggles to complete, and then come back and regale us with your stories about how exciting it is, compared to the boring abbot beatdown.

Agreed, I find the Abbot beatdown much more interesting due to his special moves rather than waiting for the rest to finish or fail their puzzles.

[Phemt81]

Don't feed the troll.

You suggesting to close the ddo forums? :confused:

[Razcar]

Go stand in asteroids for FORTY MINUTES waiting for goggles to complete, and then come back and regale us with your stories about how exciting it is, compared to the boring abbot beatdown.
This is my main beef with Abbot and why I don't run it, even though I like console-style DDO gameplay. (I don't play many casters either, so not much there for me.) I hate to wait around. Even more boring than waiting around in Titan could be sometimes.

[Ap0k]

Only read title and OP...and LOL'd

[ElrosOronar]

Pffft, 5 statics in one row on Elite tiles now? Na, that's not easy enough.

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

people run abbot?

I've never even bothered to flag for it. Partly because the number of posts about someone actually liking abbot I could count on my fingers. Partly because no one in my guild ever so much as mentions abbot. Partly because IMO the loot isn't worth all the headache.

Mostly because it sounds like Turbine needs to scrap it and rebuild it from the ground up.

[Chette]

Go stand in asteroids for FORTY MINUTES waiting for goggles to complete, and then come back and regale us with your stories about how exciting it is, compared to the boring abbot beatdown.

So make asteroids longer :)

Puzzles should be hard, they shouldn't just be a time consuming distraction from getting to show off your ubar DPS.

[Kmnh]

So make asteroids longer :)

Puzzles should be hard, they shouldn't just be a time consuming distraction from getting to show off your ubar DPS.

This is a really good idea!

Make asteroids duration scale with difficulty and put the fun tiles puzzle back into the game.

[danotmano1998]

Awesome!

So they do a stealth change and "revert" the puzzles back to the way they were originally intended and everyone complains because they are nearly impossible to complete.

Then they see their mistake and change it back so it's actually doable, and inevitably you get the:
"It's too easy, fix it" post. Really?

:rolleyes:

[Ravoc-DDO]

I'm glad tiles got easier again. Now the raid doesn't fall due to that single puzzle.

[drewrayder]

I've never even bothered to flag for it. Partly because the number of posts about someone actually liking abbot I could count on my fingers. Partly because no one in my guild ever so much as mentions abbot. Partly because IMO the loot isn't worth all the headache.

Mostly because it sounds like Turbine needs to scrap it and rebuild it from the ground up.

LOL AGAIN??? they already did that on more than one occasion...hell for a year or more the abbot was so messed up you had to bugg it or exploit just to finish it. that was a few years ago.

[Cyr]

So make asteroids longer :)

Puzzles should be hard, they shouldn't just be a time consuming distraction from getting to show off your ubar DPS.

No what they need to do is stop screwing around with this very old raid that was always a junk raid.

They have dropped more dev hours into that bottomless pit then any other raid in the game and it is still the least like raid in the game.

[oweieie]

This is a really good idea!

Make asteroids duration scale with difficulty and put the fun tiles puzzle back into the game.

How about they get rid of asteroids until they can stop invisible ones or ones spawning with 0 distance from the platform happening first? Also the "phantom" roids that aren't actually there need to be gotten rid of too.

Actually, get rid of the ****ing thing. Does hurling miniature giant space rocks at other rocks make even the least bit of sense to you? Does it make any sense that doing so causes sarcophagi to appear? That the Abbot doesn't watch as you BRILLIANTLY split the party up then follow you and slaughter you?

Not only is this a spectacular example of poor design from a game design viewpoint, a laughably pathetic collection of bugs, but it's also worse than Twilight for making any sort of sense at all.

[porq]

On Orien, you see more pugs for the Titan raid than you do for Abbot. Clearly the abbot needs to be harder to complete :rolleyes:

[AtomicMew]

Go stand in asteroids for FORTY MINUTES waiting for goggles to complete, and then come back and regale us with your stories about how exciting it is, compared to the boring abbot beatdown.

40 mins? jeez! we've been finishing goggles before roids most of the time.


If Abbot is not being completed regularly by groups, it is likely due to a lack of a few experienced people for key roles with the puzzles.

This should be fixed by making the raid easier to learn, by making the puzzles scale properly on normal-hard-elite, not by making it easier across the board.

Make the puzzles fairly easy for people who don't know the raid well on normal, but have the loot drops fairly low. This is for people who are learning, or just want a completion.

Challenging puzzles on hard, with moderate loot drops and seal chances.

Hard puzzles on elite, with much higher loot drops, and 30-40% chance of seals. For very experienced players only.
agreed. What they shoulda done is make the puzzles more interesting across the board including ice and roids, not play the numbers game with abbot HP and dmg.

[Alleyna]

/signed for not messing around with this raid (or any other old raid) anymore.

It's fine as-is, no more messing with it. The only change I would be in support of is upping loot drops. Otherwise, just leave it alone.

[SurlyYuri]

40 mins? jeez! we've been finishing goggles before roids most of the time.


agreed. What they shoulda done is make the puzzles more interesting across the board including ice and roids, not play the numbers game with abbot HP and dmg.



I dunno, Ice was pretty interesting the last time I did it when I shot the wand, saw it hit the water and jumped for the non-existent iceberg before realizing the wand didn't trigger a charge. *ding*

[zolpidem]

I have no issue whatsoever if the OP and everyone who thinks the puzzle needs to be scaled does roids or ice and only those rooms for multiple completions (in my experience 12+ completions to get the item I needed) and depends on complete strangers doing goggles. In my experience it goes down like this:

* waiting for 30+ minutes for said pug to form
* completeing their ice/roids room quickly, and waiting additional time for goggles (add another 30+ min)
* goggles wiping, group reforming, and players get disgusted and drop (waiting an additional 30 min to find others to replace them if it was a healer or such)
* repeating any of those steps multiple times before one completion
* waiting 3 days for the cycle to refresh and praying to god the item you are trying to get drops for you this completion so you can be done with this pos dungeon and never come back

If the OP (or anyone that thinks the puzzle needs to be harder than it is) finds any of this enjoyable or fun please let me know. I have a feeling this exciting challenge you seek would quickly become one of anger and frustration like most people in other rooms feel. If you leet gogglers do 20 completions doing only ice and roids with completely random pugs doing goggles and you still feel this puzzle needs to be as difficult and challenging as possible, I will support your cause 100%

[oweieie]

I dunno, Ice was pretty interesting the last time I did it when I shot the wand, saw it hit the water and jumped for the non-existent iceberg before realizing the wand didn't trigger a charge. *ding*

Yeah, hit my water strider, saw the cool down timer on the hotbar start, jumped and *ding*. Timer was going, mocking me, but never got the water strider buff. Lovely.

[Xeraphim]

Go stand in asteroids for FORTY MINUTES waiting for goggles to complete, and then come back and regale us with your stories about how exciting it is, compared to the boring abbot beatdown.


What he said, but be sure to do exactly that at least 400 times over the course of a year without one successful completion.


Abbott needs to be changed to Epic only. Then, and only then, it would make sense.

[~Cavalier9999]

I want real challenge. Make the tiles appear and disappear randomly with no pattern and no static tiles. Also, triple the present speed at which they phase in and out. Now that would be fun!

It is so boring to go into a quest where it is more likely than not that you will succeed within a few attempts. Real joy would come from trying it for a few hours every night, over and over and over again with a completion maybe once a month or so. Anything less is easy button. :p

[KillEveryone]

Go stand in asteroids for FORTY MINUTES waiting for goggles to complete, and then come back and regale us with your stories about how exciting it is, compared to the boring abbot beatdown.

Just want to quote this because it just needs to be said again.

[akash]

This is the only raid which most of the ppl avoid because they think it's extremely hard or they don't have a clue. So imho Abbot atm is alright, and I want it this way for the mass server population. For elitist people, how about opening an epic difficulty for this raid? e.g. Epic Litany of Dead -> +2 profane bonus to all abilities

[Phemt81]

+2 profane bonus to all states

To ALL ? You mean ALL 52 states?

Wait 52 or 50?

:rolleyes:

[akash]

To ALL ? You mean ALL 52 states?

Wait 52 or 50?

:rolleyes:

i meant ability scores :)

[Matuse]

40 mins? jeez! we've been finishing goggles before roids most of the time.

Prior to the 13.1 hotfix, this is one of the directions that the goggles group went through on Hard difficulty:

Row 3: 1B - 2 - 3 - 4j - 5 Tumble Row 2 - 7 - 9 Tumble Row 3 - 10B - 11j - End

This was on the second side, the first side was already finished. It took almost 15 minutes just for the person with the second goggles to come up with that scheme as the most feasible one to cross the puzzle.

Needless to say, 3 people all tried it and died in the attempt. Wipe. Start over.

I would break forum rules (and probably some laws) with my commentary to people who want goggles changed back to U13.

[AtomicMew]

Prior to the 13.1 hotfix, this is one of the directions that the goggles group went through on Hard difficulty:

Row 3: 1B - 2 - 3 - 4j - 5 Tumble Row 2 - 7 - 9 Tumble Row 3 - 10B - 11j - End

This was on the second side, the first side was already finished. It took almost 15 minutes just for the person with the second goggles to come up with that scheme as the most feasible one to cross the puzzle.

Needless to say, 3 people all tried it and died in the attempt. Wipe. Start over.

I would break forum rules (and probably some laws) with my commentary to people who want goggles changed back to U13.
I 100% guarantee you that if you had taken a video of it, a pattern could be found with less lane changes.

We haven't failed goggles in ~20+ runs and easily have a 99% success rate (on hard). Goggles was slightly interesting before the update, but now it is just deathly easy. In fact, goggles now take LONGER than they did before. The tiles cycle slower and it takes more time to obtain the pattern. I am not exaggerating. Goggles take LONGER since the update.

Just because you can't do it, doesn't mean other people can't. I'm fairly certain that you have complained about easy buttons in the past. Now you are on the other side of the fence. Please think about it.

/signed x100, Devs please un-nerf abbot tiles on hard!

[akash]

I 100% guarantee you that if you had taken a video of it, a pattern could be found with less lane changes.

We haven't failed goggles in ~20+ runs and easily have a 99% success rate (on hard). Goggles was slightly interesting before the update, but now it is just deathly easy. In fact, goggles now take LONGER than they did before. The tiles cycle slower and it takes more time to obtain the pattern. I am not exaggerating. Goggles take LONGER since the update.

Just because you can't do it, doesn't mean other people can't. I'm fairly certain that you have complained about easy buttons in the past. Now you are on the other side of the fence. Please think about it.

/signed x100, Devs please un-nerf abbot tiles on hard!

What's the percentage of the googlers who can do google at hard in U13 tiles? Forget about that. what's the percentage of ppl who know how to do google? If a majority of the population can't do it properly, then un-nerfing it will be a bad idea. Imho this is a raid which needs more attention from the people, specially from the new players. Un-nerfing abbot again will completely kill the PUGs.

[HungarianRhapsody]

They need to be changed back to U13.0

I am confident that most PUGs will still be able to fail at least 50% of the time on Normal if they put their minds to it.

[simo0208]

On an honest note and trying not to feed the troll, I really don't like the tiles portion of abbot simply because half the party basically pikes and waits. The tiles certainly could be harder or easier, but I for one think they should be SHORTER. Either I'm on the end that sits and waits or I'm in tiles trying not to cause a wipe and waiting my turn to jump into CERTAIN DOOM. :)

Just my two cents.

Pacing is a big deal. They changed Reaver so the party did just pike and at least has to beat on the giant, it'd be nice if that were the case for abbot as well.

[AtomicMew]

What's the percentage of the googlers who can do google at hard in U13 tiles? Forget about that. what's the percentage of ppl who know how to do google? If a majority of the population can't do it properly, then un-nerfing it will be a bad idea. Imho this is a raid which needs more attention from the people, specially from the new players. Un-nerfing abbot again will completely kill the PUGs.

The majority of the population can't do it because the majority of the population don't even care to learn it. They just want the loot.

And the same people go into goggles over and over again, because failure in goggles is catastrophic. But none of that means that the puzzle is hard.

There's some argument to be made that the raid could be re-worked to get everyone involved in the puzzles. But simply making it easy to the point of just a formality is not the solution.

[akash]

The majority of the population can't do it because the majority of the population don't even care to learn it. They just want the loot.

And the same people go into goggles over and over again, because failure in goggles is catastrophic. But none of that means that the puzzle is hard.

There's some argument to be made that the raid could be re-worked to get everyone involved in the puzzles. But simply making it easy to the point of just a formality is not the solution.

Not all people are like that. When a PUG fails in a raid for 20-30 times, that is not really a favourable learning experience. With a certain PUG in update 13 it took me about 6 hours to complete that raid, because google failed over and over again. With the same PUG I completed that raid in first or maximum in second chance before the update 13.

[Hollowgolem]

Let's lay some facts down:

Abbot wipes, on average, more than any other raid (unless we're talking eLoB, I guess).

Recently, an update made this raid which already fails and has to reset often more difficult.

People are complaining about the reversion of this update.

The Abbot raid is a -really- cool raid. The way it was designed, the concepts behind the puzzles, etc. But so is the Titan, and it's still boring as hell unless you're the tank or firing the laser.

The biggest problem with learning goggles is that you need to actually get into the raid to learn them in the first place. How will the general server population manage to do that? If they hop in as PUGs in a guild run, they'll get sent to roids. Should their guild try to get into goggles and play around? How useful is that?

But frankly, my biggest problem with goggles is how bad latency can screw you up. We had a run the other day with an entire column of very fast reds, and I had to lead the people I was guiding by about 3 seconds to account for their ping rates. The kind of precision that a really hard goggles can require is all fine and good when lag isn't involved.

But it's DDO. Lag is always involved.

[ainmosni]

when i end up leading tiles i have a 0% success rate. there are a million me's out there.

[AtomicMew]

Let's lay some facts down:

Abbot wipes, on average, more than any other raid (unless we're talking eLoB, I guess).

Recently, an update made this raid which already fails and has to reset often more difficult.
I'd like to see statistical support for these "facts" of yours. IME, elite shroud, hard LOB, hard MA, elite VOD, elite HOX all wipes more often than hard abbot. "Abbot wipes more than any other raid" - is urban DDO myth. The difference between abbot and other raids is that people are willing to stick around for a reform, since it is a fast raid and often an even faster wipe/reform in the span of minutes. (Whereas a hard LOB wipe could take an hour or so to even reorganize and clear to the entrance.) This leads to the illusion that abbot wipes more often. But the truth is, regardless of what raid you are doing, having a bad leader, or a group of people who are undergeared/underprepared will lead to a wipe. Abbot is no different.


The biggest problem with learning goggles is that you need to actually get into the raid to learn them in the first place. How will the general server population manage to do that? If they hop in as PUGs in a guild run, they'll get sent to roids. Should their guild try to get into goggles and play around? How useful is that?
New players often get sent as scouts. Eventually they will hit goggles, and from there, it becomes obvious very fast whether they have any potential of being a good goggler. That's how I learned goggles, trial by fire, and that's how most other people I know learned it too.


The Abbot raid is a -really- cool raid. The way it was designed, the concepts behind the puzzles, etc. But so is the Titan, and it's still boring as hell unless you're the tank or firing the laser.
Definitely agree, I wish the raid would be re-organized a bit to make the other puzzles a bit more exciting. But again, easy button is not the solution.