Epic 3BC Dev Diary

[PurpleFooz]

Hello! This is Lead Developer PurpleFooz, and I’d like to talk a little more about our plans to “epi-fy” Three-Barrel Cove! Many details are still being worked on, but we wanted to give you some idea of what to expect when Update 22 arrives.

The Story:
Rumors have surfaced of a giant treasure cache, hidden somewhere in Three Barrel Cove by the pirate lord Ahraatz-Ri before he was slain. For those who might not remember Ahraatz-Ri, he was the ogre-mage boss and leader of the Blood Tide pirates in the Sentinels of Stormreach adventure pack.

The remnants of the Blood Tide pirates believe that if they can find Ahraatz-Ri’s treasure, they can use it to restore themselves to their former power. Rumors of treasure have also attracted other pirate crews, and Epic Three Barrel Cove is now crawling with competing pirate crews looking for treasure, and who are willing to fight for clues!

Cydonie will be the questgiver; it’ll be a new instance of her in Three Barrel Cove. There are some complex Argonessen politics going on – while Cynodie is still the ambassador, she’s out of favor for siding with the lesser races when Argonessen wanted to raze Stormreach. Cydonie has numerous motives, and is choosing to have adventurers do work on her behalf, at least for now.

Monsters:
We’re also completely replacing the old heroic monsters with a new list of epic monsters. There is some overlap between the old list and the new list, because some monsters make ideal pirates at any Challenge Rating. For example, warforged are on both lists. However, they’ll feel more like airship pirates rather than the original Three Barrel Cove warforged, and will be used both in different combat roles and different locations.

A number of new “native” monsters are planned to be added to 3BC’s landscape: harpies and yuan-ti. We discussed a number of possible monster additions with the Player Council. The dev team had a short list of monsters to meet particular gameplay goals, and we narrowed it down to those two through PC votes.

Pirate crews will use slightly different line-ups of monsters from each other. For example, we’re planning on a crew that uses a lot of artillery, using rune-arms and explosives. Another crew might only have a small number of monsters which use rune-arms. A completely different crew might specialize in undead pirates.

Most of the pirate types are individually weak, and are meant to work in conjunction with each other in order to threaten high-level players. They support the airships, which are the real epic monsters.

Airship monsters:
Each of the pirate crews are based on a pirate airship, flying about the 3BC landscape. This is a new thing for us, but we’ve been able to prove out the concepts in our prototypes – each airship will be a single attackable monster, with several attacks, including:

Magefire cannon broadsides: Different airships will barrage you with different types of magefire cannons, i.e. deal different types of damage.
Grapping hooks: Airships can shoot grappling hooks down to the ground, allowing their crew to zip down. Airships will typically try to drop their crew near to players they plan to fight. For some types of pirate ships, the monsters will just be the generic crew. Other pirate ships might specialize in this, and drop off much nastier pirate marines.


And because a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures, here's some early footage from Eberron of airships in Three Barrel Cove:



http://youtu.be/FfG6QqJMt8s

Players with powerful ranged attacks can directly attack these airship monsters. Melee players will be great against crew and marines, and in particular against the grappling hooks that allow those monsters to continuously spawn. There will also be large Ballista Turrets in the landscape that can be used against airships, giving all characters the chance to hit a ship in the sky. The turrets are expected to be similar to the kobold crossbow turrets in Haunted Halls that you may have already encountered. Clever players can find ways aboard some airships, fight through the crew to the lower decks, and destroy the airship from the inside.

Quests and Adventuring in Three Barrel Cove:
The landscape will have different slayer and rare objectives on epic and heroic. It also won’t have the exact same list of explorer points. All the monsters on the landscape will be replaced on epic. It’s likely that at least some encounters will be on the Random Encounter system. But one of the realities is that 3BC has a ton of tight cliffs & walkways, without enough space for random encounters to spawn. Those areas will get new statically-placed monsters.

Yes, we’re planning on adding free teleport points across the landscape!

The small town and ship dock that’s currently part of the adventure area will be converted into a public area. We want to do this because it makes it easier for us to set up and place the new epic quest arc.

The epified dungeons have their monsters completely replaced, and as well may have some different objectives. Their layouts and main critical paths are probably going to be similar to the old ones, but the nature of the new pirate monsters should make them feel different. We’ve tentatively chosen 4 dungeons to be epified as part of a new 5-part epic arc: Prove Your Worth, Ghost of a Chance, The Legend of Two-Toed Tobias, and Garl’s Tomb. These are partly based on the responses to the “favorite 3BC dungeon” thread, and partly based on our internal evaluation on how much effort it would take to epify each of the 3BC dungeons. We also considered how well the new story and pirate monsters would work in these dungeons.

In each dungeon, you’ll be vying against Blood Tide pirates and other pirate crews to locate clues to the location of the treasure. The clues might be as simple as a piece of a map, or something a bit more complex. Once you’ve completed the 4 dungeons, you’ll be able to find the location of the treasure on the 3BC landscape.

We’re also planning a 5th dungeon – a brand new epic-only dungeon. It’s something of a spiritual replacement for Guard Duty, where you are fending off pirate airships which are attacking the airship carrying the treasure back to Stormreach. Rather than the static nature of the original Guard Duty, we’re planning on something much more dynamic and interesting by building on top of the technologies we developed for the “bed ship” in Acute Delirium.
Thank you for reading!
PurpleFooz

[rest]

Harpies and yuan-ti? If those were the ones that were deemed "the best" I'd really hate to see what didn't cut the muster.

Still completely underwhelmed by the epicifying of 3bc. Hopefully the loot isn't btcoa and I can just buy what I need (if it's not awful) from the ASAH.

Also, fix sagas.

[moo_cow]

Looks interesting actually, as someone who has only run three barrel cove once, 3 years ago, this should be fun.

Have a few questions if you are allowed/able to answer them.

Are the named items split into en/eh/ee? Or are they all just epic? (honestly will be a little upset if they are all just epic based)

Is the loot based off previous loot that comes from three barrel cove? Or is it entirely new loot? (I assume the first since you kept the same quests, but just curious)

[Visual_Nobu]

Great! I really like 3Bc, but i'm scared for the loot. many 3Bc loots are awensome, pleaso don't nerf them or make them usefull. And don't make just Epic, but EN/EH/EE. I think: if u wanna do something do it right, if not... don't do it...

[rest]

Looks interesting actually, as someone who has only run three barrel cove once, 3 years ago, this should be fun.

Have a few questions if you are allowed/able to answer them.

Are the named items split into en/eh/ee? Or are they all just epic? (honestly will be a little upset if they are all just epic based)

Is the loot based off previous loot that comes from three barrel cove? Or is it entirely new loot? (I assume the first since you kept the same quests, but just curious)

It's been said that they abandoned the EN/EH/EE loot tiering after eGH.

[Tinco]

YARRR! (I guess.)

Nice to see some fresh game systems making it into DDO, I sincerely hope they provide a nice experience. 3BC is one of the few packs I don't own because frankly I was less than impressed with the heroic version at that time and so I actually haven't run the quests since DDOEurope days but this might rekindle my interest.

[Memnir]

Sounds and looks interesting, the teleporter idea is long over due and I hope it makes it into Heroic 3BC as well.

I just have a sinking feeling that there is just nothing that can be done to make me interested in Epic 3BC, nor lure me there once it's implemented. I admire and appreciate the attempts to reinvigorate the area - but I just do not enjoy it at all. It's like having a bad culinary experience at a restaurant. Yeah, they may change cooks - but it's still unlikely you'd want to go back and sample the food again. For me, I've just had too long of a time not enjoying anything about the new 3BC to get excited about it anymore. The reboot killed the area, which sucks because I used to really enjoy it. It's one of the best looking outdoor areas in the game - but the hits that gameplay took as a result of the makeover, and the ensuing time it took to address things like the need for teleporters, have engrained it as a Must-Skip chunk of the game. For me, at least.



I'm happy for the folks who are looking forward to this, and will find entertainment value in it. I simply don't anticipate being one of them, and the news and video above has given me no real hope that my stance will change. Maybe next time.

[rest]

YARRR! (I guess.)

Nice to see some fresh game systems making it into DDO, I sincerely hope they provide a nice experience. 3BC is one of the few packs I don't own because frankly I was less than impressed with the heroic version at that time and so I actually haven't run the quests since DDOEurope days but this might rekindle my interest.

Actually, having them introduce MORE systems scares the beejesus out of me. The game is littered with too many abandoned, half-finished, only partially functional systems already. We don't need any more. All they need to do is introduce new collectables and an additional crafting system, and this pack can have all the DDO tropes together at last!

[dejafu]

Looks like this could be a lot of fun - I always thought that DDO has underutilized airships as plothooks, it's good to see them being used as something besides buffing and fancy teleporters! I'm also glad to see that Eberron is still getting some love.

As others have already indicated, though, the loot will make or break these quests in terms of their success. The dev team has proved repeatedly that they can make gorgeous and interesting landscapes, innovative quest designs, etc. But loot has been a sore point for years now (and a REALLY sore point this last year or so), and while the last update was a step in the right direction, much of it was still mostly underwhelming at best.

Start planning loot NOW if you haven't already. The whole plot of this update revolves around looking for treasure so amazing that epic pirates are hunting it - be ready to back up those expectations. Pull devs from other duties to put together the loot if necessary. Put treasure proposals up on Lammania as soon as the first testing begins, and don't start with your lowest possible bid - aim to wow us with treasure again. Please. Pleeeeeaaaaase.

[Merlin-ator]

The airships could be interesting. It has the potential to be really awesome or hilariously pathetic (see Fly spell in Reaver's Refuge).

[Madja]

I personally look very much forward to this. I've always enjoyed 3BC, I think it's a great area, but unfortunately the XP has always been horrendous and so I haven't run it as much as it deserves.
Still I think the loot will be the deciding factor in this success of this, so I hope they're done right :)

The airship battles sounds like a lot of fun!

P.S.: Please don't return to tiered loot, it makes it very annoying having to run quests on different difficulties just to get the items you want.
I personally mostly run EE and having to run EN/EH just to get a lower ML item is just a bother, especially when you combine it with random stats.

[CaptainSpacePony]

Looks great! Very excited.

[Gywiden]

This looks awesome so far! I'm glad it's not going to be a simple rehash.

[Tinco]

Actually, having them introduce MORE systems scares the beejesus out of me. The game is littered with too many abandoned, half-finished, only partially functional systems already. We don't need any more. All they need to do is introduce new collectables and an additional crafting system, and this pack can have all the DDO tropes together at last!

That's why I carefully worded the second part of the sentence. But seeing new uses of the engine at least shows some life beneath the game's rusty bones.

[Qhualor]

Sounds interesting so far. The quests must take longer than 2 1/2 minutes to get too because that's the longest it takes to get to the heroic quests. That must be why for the teleporters? Loot will be the obvious hit or miss to get people to run the pack, so hopefully some good brainstorming is going on. With a new map and monsters, hopefully don't have a problem with monsters getting confused with the difference between heroic and epic like the problem we had with GH slayer after release.

[unbongwah]

The monster list sounds dull, but I'm looking forward to airship combat, especially ship-to-ship (or ship-to-dragon!) fights if you can find ways of making it work. I keep having Skies of Arcadia flashbacks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40NUgIctdm4). :)

Might I suggest letting guilds bring their airships into battle? Or at least replicas thereof; it would probably make no functional difference in terms of how the quests play out, but I'm sure lots of folks would get a kick outta fighting on the decks of their own airships.

[TPICKRELL]

It sounds kind of interesting... But I have no idea if it will be fun after the first time through or not.

As others have said, the loot will be critical. The story is built around loot, so there needs to be a good loot payout for a wide variety of toons.

XP will also be critical. Especially XP/Time. 3BC is not one of the most popular packs now, so you need to make it attractive all the way around.

It needs to be Interesting to do over and over again, needs to provide solid loot that has some longevity, and competitive XP per time. If its not extremely good on one of these dimensions, it needs to be competitive on all dimensions.

Also, it would be very useful to know what level the area and quests will be...

[Gywiden]

Some questions:

Does this mean we'll be able to reach Honored Argonnessen status?
What level is the content going to be? 28?

[TPICKRELL]

Some questions:

Does this mean we'll be able to reach Honored Argonnessen status?
What level is the content going to be? 28?

Good Question... Those quests are Free Agent favor currently, and they have never given extra favor for EPIC versus HEROIC quests before.

[shadowowl]

please make this into a SAGA with the sentinals chain it would be really nice to have more SAGA's (assuming you can get them working again)
and as a SAGA it would likely be more people would be interested in it

[Krelar]

Good Question... Those quests are Free Agent favor currently, and they have never given extra favor for EPIC versus HEROIC quests before.

We are getting one new quest. I don't know if it would be enough favor to take us to another reward level.

[Havok.cry]

Re-using systems: good:
-Bed Ship has potential here... can we get a side story where we rescue our original bedship from xoriat and sail it into 3BC?
-Kobold Crossbows are a good thing for anti airship. My only concern here is: will it make sense, story wise for them to be there? Will they just be randomly littering the landscape like in framework, or would they have pirate crews on them that we have to take them from, so we can use the ambush they set up? The second would me more immersive of the story than having them randomly litter the landscape in my opinion. I hope it is something that makes sense anyway. Speaking of framework, could we get some framework ballistas in here too? could be fun for getting around the massive area, and for trying to board airships.

Re-visiting and continuing storylines: Good:
-I hope it has a bunch of lore and story available about the bloodtide and that Ogre Mage. Maybe he could revisit us as one of those intelligent zombies the bloodtide were using.
-Will you be tying in other storylines as well? Will we have a pirate dragon? Or a pirate mounted on a dragon? Could part of the Last quest involve crash landing on the shipwreck shore of korthos island and next pack involve epic korthos?

Developing new systems:
-Just remember the proper procedure for panicing:
1-Raise arms fully extended above the head, wave in all directions.
2-Open your eyes to their widest point, and tilt you head back, open your mouth as wide as possible.
3-Stand up from your computer, and run in circles around your chair.
4-Scream loudly into any mic you are wearing, only pausing for breath.
-If you remember this simple procedure, you will be able to handle many of the endless bugs the new system will introduce, however, when it inevitable re-introduces already fixed bugs, you need to add one more step:
5-While screaming, repeat the phrase "Not again, not again, not again!" continuously, speeding up each repetition until it is not comprehensible as actual speech.

Questions:
-Will the heroic 3bc wilderness be getting upgraded with wandering airships as well? That would be awesome, I hope you say yes.
-Will players be able to scape up the grappling hooks and board the enemy airships that way, maybe if they have a high enough strength or constitution for the climb?
-Yuan-ti and harpies... sigh... I assume yuan-ti are going to show up in garl's tomb. Harpies could be interesting opponents with all the cliffs and rugged terrain. How will you explain them moving in there?
-Can we have a werewolf pirate? Werewolves were the single(only) best thing you have made in all of FR, and you have seriously underused them. Please please please can we get more?
-What will happen if a ranged character kills the airship while his buddies are on board it slaughtering the crew? Will it have a crash animation that gives them time to jump off and fall? Will they be able to ride the burning wreck to the ground heroiclly? Will Elminster show up and save them from certain, but easily avoidable, doom? Having it crash and then having a wreck there that you have to enter to get the loot for killing it would be even more awesome, I hope you can do something like this, having it just disappear would be kinda lame.

[redspecter23]

I currently only have one concern. Please tell me your re-imagining of guard duty has nothing to do with protecting anything, escorting anything or a failure condition based on ridiculously stupid NPC AI.

[Gywiden]

Good Question... Those quests are Free Agent favor currently, and they have never given extra favor for EPIC versus HEROIC quests before.

True. It's just interesting that they are bringing Cydonie into it. It makes me wonder if it has something to do with favor. There has to be some reason to change quest patrons, though I suppose it could be strictly plot.

[patang01]

Rumors have surfaced of a giant treasure cache, hidden somewhere in Three Barrel Cove by the pirate lord Ahraatz-Ri before he was slain. For those who might not remember Ahraatz-Ri, he was the ogre-mage boss and leader of the Blood Tide pirates in the Sentinels of Stormreach adventure pack.
Excellent idea, as it builds on a previous pack. May I suggest a Saga then for doing Sentinels and the ones set in this pack?


We’re also completely replacing the old heroic monsters with a new list of epic monsters. There is some overlap between the old list and the new list, because some monsters make ideal pirates at any Challenge Rating. For example, warforged are on both lists. However, they’ll feel more like airship pirates rather than the original Three Barrel Cove warforged, and will be used both in different combat roles and different locations.

A number of new “native” monsters are planned to be added to 3BC’s landscape: harpies and yuan-ti. We discussed a number of possible monster additions with the Player Council. The dev team had a short list of monsters to meet particular gameplay goals, and we narrowed it down to those two through PC votes.
Sounds good, I'm glad you're not just increasing the HP and damage of existing mobs and are considering giving the new wilderness a more epic feel.


Each of the pirate crews are based on a pirate airship, flying about the 3BC landscape. This is a new thing for us, but we’ve been able to prove out the concepts in our prototypes – each airship will be a single attackable monster, with several attacks, including:

This idea is awesome. I watched the video and there's so much potential in this type of 'monster'. This sure adds an epic feel to the wilderness and makes it less about the mob and more about fighting an entire pirate ship. make it so.


The landscape will have different slayer and rare objectives on epic and heroic. It also won’t have the exact same list of explorer points. All the monsters on the landscape will be replaced on epic. It’s likely that at least some encounters will be on the Random Encounter system. But one of the realities is that 3BC has a ton of tight cliffs & walkways, without enough space for random encounters to spawn. Those areas will get new statically-placed monsters.

I'll be honest - 3BC is not my favorite packs and the quests doesn't really tingle me at all. But I guess with a new coat of paint it might be good enough to add to the ETR cycle.


Yes, we’re planning on adding free teleport points across the landscape!

TYTYTY
This alone makes it worth doing. It's one of those things that I liked but soured my experience with the second xpack. To pay to get to the entrance of the quest. It just felt wrong. I'm glad you came to your senses with the new raids and in this case.


In each dungeon, you’ll be vying against Blood Tide pirates and other pirate crews to locate clues to the location of the treasure. The clues might be as simple as a piece of a map, or something a bit more complex. Once you’ve completed the 4 dungeons, you’ll be able to find the location of the treasure on the 3BC landscape.

Sweet, looking forward to see what this treasure is. Here's a suggestion - add a final encounter for the treasure. Sorta like a bossfight, but since it's just that one 'treasure guardian' it's going to be a quicker encounter. Like an undeed version of the captain or a big dragon. Just to make it interesting.


We’re also planning a 5th dungeon – a brand new epic-only dungeon. It’s something of a spiritual replacement for Guard Duty, where you are fending off pirate airships which are attacking the airship carrying the treasure back to Stormreach. Rather than the static nature of the original Guard Duty, we’re planning on something much more dynamic and interesting by building on top of the technologies we developed for the “bed ship” in Acute Delirium.

Interesting, so this would be the 'final encounter' then? Sounds good. Maybe you should make this a short raid. Like fighting of waves and waves of pirates until you battle the boss. It can be as short as DQ2. Raids don't have to be long or complicated.

[Captain_Wizbang]

3BC has always had a bad rap.

It might be ok, but I doubt "epifying" it will spark any more than a passing interest.

I would have chosen "The Vale", with a new "Harry" in a revamped Shroud.

[moo_cow]

It's been said that they abandoned the EN/EH/EE loot tiering after eGH.

That's too bad. The way it is set up like this is terrible.

[patang01]

That's too bad. The way it is set up like this is terrible.

I hope they give it the haunted hall treatment with possibly 2 tiers upgrades. I'm not a fan of EN, EH and EE, it just ends up with some not playing the stuff buying the items and a auction house full of all versions and some you can even find at a vender.

[rest]

I hope they give it the haunted hall treatment with possibly 2 tiers upgrades. I'm not a fan of EN, EH and EE, it just ends up with some not playing the stuff buying the items and a auction house full of all versions and some you can even find at a vender.

Well it's a good solution for people who don't want to run a bunch of sucky dungeons. I'm super glad I can buy the stuff from haunted halls on the AH. I hate that awful quest.

[Scraap]

That's too bad. The way it is set up like this is terrible.

I disagree. Vehemently.



Monsters:
We’re also completely replacing the old heroic monsters with a new list of epic monsters. There is some overlap between the old list and the new list, because some monsters make ideal pirates at any Challenge Rating. For example, warforged are on both lists. However, they’ll feel more like airship pirates rather than the original Three Barrel Cove warforged, and will be used both in different combat roles and different locations.
Step in the right direction.

[geoffhanna]

Swashbucklers and exploding Pirate ships! Minotaurs descending on grappling hooks to attack us while we dodge artillery barrages! Escorting our own airship through a hellish corridor of mage-fire cannons and rune arms!

Oh wait, escort... well, still, this all sounds pretty **** epic to me.

It's nice that we're not just getting the same monsters with more hit points. Or at least not only getting them. We're getting epic enemy pirate ships!

I get excited easily but ... wow ... this just sounds like so much fun!

[brian14]

Re-using systems: good:
-Bed Ship has potential here... can we get a side story where we rescue our original bedship from xoriat and sail it into 3BC?
That would be awesome!

[EllisDee37]

Awwww, no epic Scoundrel's Run?

[Cleanincubus]

A number of new “native” monsters are planned to be added to 3BC’s landscape: harpies and yuan-ti. We discussed a number of possible monster additions with the Player Council. The dev team had a short list of monsters to meet particular gameplay goals, and we narrowed it down to those two through PC votes.
For the sake of transparency (and curiosity), could we see that short list, to see what the Players Council actually had to choose from? To put it bluntly, it doesn't sound like they were given a very good list to choose from. Perhaps I'm incorrect.


The epified dungeons have their monsters completely replaced, and as well may have some different objectives. Their layouts and main critical paths are probably going to be similar to the old ones, but the nature of the new pirate monsters should make them feel different. We’ve tentatively chosen 4 dungeons to be epified as part of a new 5-part epic arc: Prove Your Worth, Ghost of a Chance, The Legend of Two-Toed Tobias, and Garl’s Tomb. These are partly based on the responses to the “favorite 3BC dungeon” thread, and partly based on our internal evaluation on how much effort it would take to epify each of the 3BC dungeons. We also considered how well the new story and pirate monsters would work in these dungeons.

In each dungeon, you’ll be vying against Blood Tide pirates and other pirate crews to locate clues to the location of the treasure. The clues might be as simple as a piece of a map, or something a bit more complex. Once you’ve completed the 4 dungeons, you’ll be able to find the location of the treasure on the 3BC landscape.

We’re also planning a 5th dungeon – a brand new epic-only dungeon. It’s something of a spiritual replacement for Guard Duty, where you are fending off pirate airships which are attacking the airship carrying the treasure back to Stormreach. Rather than the static nature of the original Guard Duty, we’re planning on something much more dynamic and interesting by building on top of the technologies we developed for the “bed ship” in Acute Delirium.
Thank you for reading!
PurpleFooz
The new quest does sound quite interesting. But only 5 quests out of the original 9 are getting the Epic treatment? This is greatly disappointing. Seems like the only things that will save me from being upset that I spent TP for 3BC, is if the new quest is very fun (fun> challenging) and the loot is great. :(

[Madja]

I hope they give it the haunted hall treatment with possibly 2 tiers upgrades. I'm not a fan of EN, EH and EE, it just ends up with some not playing the stuff buying the items and a auction house full of all versions and some you can even find at a vender.

This would be my prefered method too. Make items that have three tier upgrades. Have the unupgraded item drop on normal, have the tier 1 drop on hard and the tier 2 drop on elite. The upgrade components would drop all the difficulties but have varying droprates depending on the difficulty.
Having three tiers would help ensure that the components are still useful for those running elite.


Also:
Would it be possible to, instead of having the entire airship attackable, have certain key components of it determine it's overall health? These could be parts like the engine (or whatever you'd call it on airships powered by elementals), the turrets, the wings etc.

It would make more sense to me to aim for these areas instead of just firing arrows randomly into the hull and it would also help avoid some possible targetting annoyances that might come from having such a massive single target.

[Seikojin]

While this is being worked on, please bump up the base exp of the heroics by 1000 each tier and bump their optionals to 25% base.

I like the look of what was shown and it sounds like it will be a lot of fun.

In the big picture, E3bc is just more epics that we can run to help get to cap and etr, so all in all, always welcomed.

[axel15810]

First off, I'm disappointed that not all the quests are being made epic. I had up to this point assumed all of them would be. No epic Scoundrel's Run or Fire Caves is disappointing. Glad to see Guard Duty being replaced, very unpopular quest.

Extremely happy to see that teleport points, free ones, are being added. Without this feature, I probably would spend very little time in the new content since the run times are so unbearably long.

Extremely disappointed that unlike epic gianthold, there is no new raid, since DDO BADLY needs more relevant endgame raids.

Airships look kinda interesting. Happy monsters are being replaced, wanting to see exactly what they're being replaced with before I can give an opinion though.

I'm happy the devs seemed to make some sort of balance between melee and ranged contributions. Still concerned that ranged will just blow up the airships and grappling hooks before melee can climb onto them though. Hopefully I am wrong about this. Melee needs to be better than ranged at damaging some part of the airships. Perhaps give the grappling hooks a lot of inherent elemental resistance/absorption.

Overall, I feel okay-ish about this. Still think the time could be much better spent putting in more endgame raids, we have enough quests already. But still glad we are getting new content fairly soon.

[RedOrm]

/signed on bumping the xp for heroic 3BC.
Also, why only 2 monster types in the wilderniss? There's undead on heroic 3BC, why not on epic? Ans I don't mean generic skellies; there's plenty more interesting undead that can be moved there. Also, in the lava area, how about replacing the yuan-ti with the new salamanders? Oh, and I would certainly enjoy the named pirates from the Crystal Cove public wilderniss as random encounters (and while you're at it, please give those a chest in Crystal Cove?)

Other then that, I'll have to see more before I can comment, other than 100% agreeing the loot better be really awesome, and also NOT be changed between the last preview and the actual release like last time!
Unless it's changes many many players asked for.

Greetz,
Red Orm

[dunklezhan]

I am really excited about this, because I am one of the apparently few who love 3BC. But also because it's not a straight conversion, they're thinking about it, taking new approaches and making it unique. So: awesome. It would be awesome if it was Shantokor (ok bad example because actually that really would be more awesome), or Restless Isles, or even Sorrowdusk - if they do this level of revamp, I'd be happy. Also it's in Eberron, and that pleases me greatly. It wouldn't have sold it on it's own though: another Sentinels or House P job on the other hand would have really really irritated me. I'd rather have more FR content than the old style epics which always felt utterly uninteresting and lazy to me.

To be more specific, I'm really looking forward to:

More epic EBERRON content to run
3BC love - ignore the haters on this one, there's plenty of people love it, even if few get chance to run it because of where it is placed in the level range.
A new 3BC quest, woo, even if it is basically a reboot of the same 'story', it's scratch built, it is definitely a new experience, and I like that.
The airships stuff sounds awesome in general. I remember when challenges were being discussed I suggested an airship battle challenge - I hope this could be something we do now get to see eventually.
I also hope one of the options for 'clever players' is a window of opportunity to climb up the grapple lines to make an onboard assault.
The different pirate crews - 3BC always had this, good to see even more differentiation, really interested to see if you can pull off the tactics AI you're aiming for.
Hopefully decent new loot (decent. Not 'the new best loot' because then you'll be forced to make it grindy - see below)
Reuse of random encounters, turrets and other things like that. These were great/interesting additions to the game, keep using and refining them, and please also keep reusing and refining your airship tech.
More Argonessen plot. Always nice. Be nice to interact with it and the prophecy more directly again though.

I am concerned about:
NOT getting all the 3BC quests epified.
Grindy loot. Moving away from EN/EH/EE tiers (which I personally prefer to RNG crafting drop systems) I do understand - many people don't like that for various reasons this isn't the place to argue about - but I do understand the decision. But if I can't reasonably reliably get an item within a few elite runs (<5) I simply don't bother trying (I still run the quests, but I don't play for loot. I like loot, but I prefer to spend time on character abilities and progression).
Lack of love for heroic 3BC: it desperately needs XP and teleporters too. Especially teleporters. An airship ride you could FF off would be fun, just saying...
Still no update on Cannith Crafting.
Lack of information on whether it will be included in the existing 3BC pack, whether that price will be going up to reflect the new content, what it means for people who already own the pack etc. I realise you wouldn't be able to talk price points right now, but I'd like to know what the approach is at least please. I am however going to take it as read that it will be free to VIPs. Right? Right?
Reuse of Yuanti and Harpies - hitherto unheard of in Eberron content, so I'd like some backstory in game please. If you've just slotted them in because they're available resources since Stormhorns & Underdark then I will be... disdainful. I would rather you reused known Eberron creatures (already known in DDO that is) if you're just doing it for the sake of it, or better yet developed new ones though I quite understand how intensive that must be, and I'm very happy with the sound of the airships :). If on the other hand the yuanti are a pirate crew from somewhere else on Xendrik, or having slipped through the portal between worlds, and the Harpies have escaped from some collector's menagerie having brought them back from Faerun or Khorvaire or something, sweet - as long as it's relevant and something you can find out in game.

[Lanadazia]

i dont like 'epi-fy'ing in general.
the epic gianthold was disappointing to me, since only a new raid was added and the quests remained unchanged

i was pretty skeptic when reading the announcement..
but!
the ideas including this update are well designed; like you get 4 clues in the dungeons and can find the actual chest in the explorer area!
also the new random encounters and new monsters sound great!
the new guard duty thing sounds pretty awesome aswell

but sadly its only 1 new quest.
dont get me wrong, i like everything that improves this game, also the ideas for the epifying are good, as i wrote above
but i prefer all-new packs/quests, even if they are pretty small
the haunted halls are one quest only for the cost of a whole pack like vale of twilight or gianthold,
but its worth it, cause its a new adventure!
if you go back to an old place where you've been alot with different toons its just not the same feeling /excitement for the new update
cause you already know the layout or the actual 'new' quest (like in gianthold. just the CR changed basically) or the explorer area (though it may be changed in a few spots)
though you put alot of effort into this, the old heroic quests that got epified will be kinda stale, just as in GH :(

this post is based on the assumption, that the epified quests that already exist wont change, but in CR

[PuppiesAndRainbows]

Will there be any new guild airship designs in 3BC?

Rather than destroying the airship will there be an option to take command?

Will the airships have chests to loot or amenities?

Can the anchors or ropes be attacked/destroyed?

Would you consider adding ballistas from Frame Work to shoot players onto attacking airships?

And this looks fantastic... I want this NOW!

[dunklezhan]

This would be my prefered method too. Make items that have three tier upgrades. Have the unupgraded item drop on normal, have the tier 1 drop on hard and the tier 2 drop on elite. The upgrade components would drop all the difficulties but have varying droprates depending on the difficulty.
Having three tiers would help ensure that the components are still useful for those running elite.


This... actually I could stand this as a system, even with my grind aversion.

[fool101]

Sounds like a lot of fun.

Could we make the explorer area a raid? If nothing else, it sounds like it would be a fun guild activity (or pug) to run around with a bunch of people taking over pirate ships, you know when a person gets tired of grinding quest (it could be looked at as an alternative to how PvP is in many PvE games, aka something to do in down time).

Otherwise, if teleporters are present, how often are people actually going to be passing through the explorer in a way that they are intercepted by ships?

[knightgf]

So if im reading this right, does this mean 3BC will have more than just dialogue changes when it comes to doing epic-level adventures in them? I gotta say, I was pretty disappointed that Gianthold had only those kind of changes...well, besides the new explorer points, of course, those were nice.

[PurpleFooz]

Some answers to questions:

Yes, there'll be new epic treasure. They won't be different tiers of treasure by difficulty, but drop rates will likely be different on each difficulty. We've been vetting the new treasure with the player council. It won't be too long before that's ready for feedback from the full player base.

Yes, we want to revisit the XP settings of the 3BC dungeons on heroic mode, as well as give them new XP settings on epic.

Great idea on a saga that connects Sentinels with 3BC. We're tentatively planning on adding that for U22.

Yes, some of the new guild airships appear as rares on the landscape.

A note on Yuan-ti: they actually live in the jungles of Xen'drik. They'd be one of the normal monster you'd expect to encounter while exploring the jungled areas of 3BC.

[Oxarhamar]

please make this into a SAGA with the sentinals chain it would be really nice to have more SAGA's (assuming you can get them working again)
and as a SAGA it would likely be more people would be interested in it

1000 times yes to more sagas.

Looking forward to E3BC.

Now let's see some meaningful loot. We have not had any new Rune arm in a while Epic Hand Cannon?

Make the XP worthwhile and this will be a solid update.

[Cetus]

Some answers to questions:

Yes, there'll be new epic treasure. They won't be different tiers of treasure by difficulty, but drop rates will likely be different on each difficulty. We've been vetting the new treasure with the player council. It won't be too long before that's ready for feedback from the full player base.

Yes, we want to revisit the XP settings of the 3BC dungeons on heroic mode, as well as give them new XP settings on epic.

Great idea on a saga that connects Sentinels with 3BC. We're tentatively planning on adding that for U22.

Yes, some of the new guild airships appear as rares on the landscape.

A note on Yuan-ti: they actually live in the jungles of Xen'drik. They'd be one of the normal monster you'd expect to encounter while exploring the jungled areas of 3BC.

This all sounds surprisingly good, EXCEPT:

No incentive for running EE. This is a mistake that keeps getting made.

[Qhualor]

Some answers to questions:

Yes, there'll be new epic treasure. They won't be different tiers of treasure by difficulty, but drop rates will likely be different on each difficulty. We've been vetting the new treasure with the player council. It won't be too long before that's ready for feedback from the full player base.

Yes, we want to revisit the XP settings of the 3BC dungeons on heroic mode, as well as give them new XP settings on epic.

Great idea on a saga that connects Sentinels with 3BC. We're tentatively planning on adding that for U22.

Yes, some of the new guild airships appear as rares on the landscape.

A note on Yuan-ti: they actually live in the jungles of Xen'drik. They'd be one of the normal monster you'd expect to encounter while exploring the jungled areas of 3BC.

I like the saga idea and I like the revisit xp in heroic 3BC, but if I plan on playing them in epic than I will just skip them during heroic leveling.

that's fine if there are no tiers for epic loot, but what is the incentive to run EE? the standard to loot farming is hard difficulty. will there be an actual reason to run EE besides a few more Comms, 1% increased chance at named loot and another place where Monkchers and Blitzers can dominate the game?

[dunklezhan]

A note on Yuan-ti: they actually live in the jungles of Xen'drik. They'd be one of the normal monster you'd expect to encounter while exploring the jungled areas of 3BC.

Which is why i was careful to say 'known to DDO'. I completely accept that Yuanti are a valid eberron monster, but they have never been mentioned before and now they're suddenly on 3BC? This warrants some kind of backstory. Even if its an npc commenting 'don't know where the bloody things came from, but ever since that rift opened in Stormreach all kinds of strange stuff has been coming through here on its way somewhere else. Some of it sticks around, I guess'. Or '**** things arrived on a ship from eastern Xendrik, stormed their way out of the docks and headed into the hills. I hope they stay there, filthy snakes.'

You know? SOMEthing.

Edit: suggestion if you can't afford to pay enough writers* - hold a player competition for the most convincing backstories with TP rewards as part of the weekly newsletter - maybe something will come up you can use? On the understanding that you don't owe them anything beyond the competition reward of course, all rights transferred etc.


*this is not meant as passive/aggressive sarcastic as it sounds. I swear. Also, even if it was, community engagement is never bad. Or shouldn't be, sometimes I do wonder if we deserve it...

[Captain_Wizbang]

Having given this a little more thought, 3BC is a great place for an airship raid type scenario.

Let's see how creative you all can be, and really script in the airship scenario w/ the quests. ;)

Maybe this would be a great time to add some pzazz to that underwater maze explorer "Elusive Bounty". And make a new Red Named to go there.

Lots of possibilities w/ 3BC, hope you can overcome the 3BC "suckks" stigma.

As stated by others, I hope the loot is done properly, and not something we can go buy on the AH.

p.s. Epifying vale would be better still. ;)

[dejafu]

Some answers to questions:

Yes, there'll be new epic treasure. They won't be different tiers of treasure by difficulty, but drop rates will likely be different on each difficulty. We've been vetting the new treasure with the player council. It won't be too long before that's ready for feedback from the full player base.


Very glad to hear this. Now spread the word with the loot dev(s) to take the feedback from the PC and the full player base very, very seriously. Justly or not, the dev team has a BIG hole to crawl out of regarding loot, and any inclination the devs might have that they know better than we do on this issue needs to be seriously questioned.

Also, while I don't mind using increased drop-rates as the primary incentive to run elite content, keep in mind that epic elite difficulty is a BIG jump from epic hard, so there should be a corresponding BIG jump in drop rates. 5% chance on EH vs. 8% chance on EE isn't a sufficient jump if it takes three times as long (and five times as many resources) to run on EE.

Finally, please continue the trend started with Thunderholme of having named loot/ingredients drop in explorer zones. It sounds like a lot of work is going into the explorer area here, but we'll need a **** good reason to even bother fighting those amazing looking airship battles you've been slaving away on.



Yes, we want to revisit the XP settings of the 3BC dungeons on heroic mode, as well as give them new XP settings on epic.


Excellent. XP is the other main carrot for rerunning quests, and you all have been moving in a very productive direction with this lately. Keep it up!



Great idea on a saga that connects Sentinels with 3BC. We're tentatively planning on adding that for U22.


Beautiful. We could use another wave of sagas, especially for Eberron content. MOAR!




A note on Yuan-ti: they actually live in the jungles of Xen'drik. They'd be one of the normal monster you'd expect to encounter while exploring the jungled areas of 3BC.

Yeah, I was kind of surprised to see the amount of negative reaction this got. The yuan-ti are nicely designed, they're a classic D&D foe, and are far more setting-appropriate than, say, the endless streams of hobgoblins and kobolds we encounter in Xen'drik. Even more importantly, they've been pretty underutilized so far, so they make for a change of pace from much of the other content.

[dunklezhan]

Yeah, I was kind of surprised to see the amount of negative reaction this got. The yuan-ti are nicely designed, they're a classic D&D foe, and are far more setting-appropriate than, say, the endless streams of hobgoblins and kobolds we encounter in Xen'drik. Even more importantly, they've been pretty underutilized so far, so they make for a change of pace from much of the other content.

I also agree with this, I don't want anyone to feel that I disagree with or dislike Yuanti or Harpies being there.

I just want to feel like there's a reason for them to be there that you can find out in game - these are intelligent enemies, even the Harpies in limited fashion. They shouldn't just 'be there' for the sake of it when we haven't encoutered them in Eberron up to now either real time or chronologically, given that DDO's 'timeline' goes in level order.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

That looks pretty cool. I'm one of the ones who love 3BC (although it's admittedly been a while since I was out there) so I've been looking forward to this. And now I'm even more looking forward to it! Two questions:

1) Will Garl's Tomb still be a double-dip quest where you have to run through, return to town, go back, and run again, or just a single mission?
2) Those grappling hooks look like they'll do some nasty damage to anybody who's in the area when they hit. Will they? (I kinda hope so... especially if there's some kind of warning to indicate you should MOVE NOW)

[patang01]

Some answers to questions:

Yes, there'll be new epic treasure. They won't be different tiers of treasure by difficulty, but drop rates will likely be different on each difficulty. We've been vetting the new treasure with the player council. It won't be too long before that's ready for feedback from the full player base.

Yes, we want to revisit the XP settings of the 3BC dungeons on heroic mode, as well as give them new XP settings on epic.

Great idea on a saga that connects Sentinels with 3BC. We're tentatively planning on adding that for U22.

Yes, some of the new guild airships appear as rares on the landscape.

A note on Yuan-ti: they actually live in the jungles of Xen'drik. They'd be one of the normal monster you'd expect to encounter while exploring the jungled areas of 3BC.

Thanks for your information on this. I'll give it a few runs. What's the general ML right now for the quest? Low, middle or high? Because right now the high end quests are anemic and badly needed for those last levels after 25.

[Sebastrd]

This all sounds surprisingly good, EXCEPT:

No incentive for running EE. This is a mistake that keeps getting made.

IME, players capable of running EE don't need more incentive; they run EE because they can. The extra Comms and XP are nice, though.

[Ganak]

Some answers to questions:
They won't be different tiers of treasure by difficulty, but drop rates will likely be different on each difficulty.

Haunted Halls Epic Elite runs are very, very rare. The wind blows that it is because this treasure mechanism discourages epic elite.

Does the Player's Council share this view?

[PurpleFooz]

I also agree with this, I don't want anyone to feel that I disagree with or dislike Yuanti or Harpies being there.

I just want to feel like there's a reason for them to be there that you can find out in game - these are intelligent enemies, even the Harpies in limited fashion. They shouldn't just 'be there' for the sake of it when we haven't encoutered them in Eberron up to now either real time or chronologically, given that DDO's 'timeline' goes in level order.

Epic 3BC takes place later in the timeline. Yuan-ti have moved into 3BC since the events of the heroic CRs. It's not unlike how Aztecs might expand their borders once their rivals are out of the way - in this case, the sahuagin. The sahuagin retreated to the Thunder Sea in the face of pirate and adventurer attacks. The Yuan-ti would naturally want to push out the pirate settlement, as they're recent invaders compared to the thousands of years that Yuan-ti have been fighting for territory, back & forth, with the other natives of Xen'drik.

[Cetus]

Epic 3BC takes place later in the timeline. Yuan-ti have moved into 3BC since the events of the heroic CRs. It's not unlike how Aztecs might expand their borders once their rivals are out of the way - in this case, the sahuagin. The sahuagin retreated to the Thunder Sea in the face of pirate and adventurer attacks. The Yuan-ti would naturally want to push out the pirate settlement, as they're recent invaders compared to the thousands of years that Yuan-ti have been fighting for territory, back & forth, with the other natives of Xen'drik.

OK, lore is one thing. Actual players getting attracted to the higher difficulty settings is, in my opinion, a much larger and more pressing issue.

We NEED an incentive to run EE. Right now, we can easily ransack all the gear out of haunted halls, temple of deathwyrm, and fire dragon raid until we get everything we want and that's the end of it. We don't need to touch EE aside from personal interest.

Big problem. Stop repeating this mistake, it cheapens your content.

[waryJerry]

Something I'm not entirely clear on is the degree to which you'll be changing the heroic version of 3BC, the wilderness area in particular? And are you doing epic versions of existing 3BC loot which will be upgraded from the originals or is your epic loot going to be entirely separate items? Personally, I'd like to see an epic version of the scrag longbow as well as some of the other items. The loot from 3BC is actually pretty good for the level, some of it anyway, and it would be nice to see some epic upgrades.

[waryJerry]

Then again, if the epic versions were only good for levels 28+ I'd be much less interested.

[Thar]

We’re also planning a 5th dungeon – a brand new epic-only dungeon. It’s something of a spiritual replacement for Guard Duty, where you are fending off pirate airships which are attacking the airship carrying the treasure back to Stormreach. Rather than the static nature of the original Guard Duty, we’re planning on something much more dynamic and interesting by building on top of the technologies we developed for the “bed ship” in Acute Delirium.
Thank you for reading!
PurpleFooz

are we losing guard duty? and that favor!! i need to get to 5000!!!

[Cardtrick]

While you guys are looking at 3BC, it might not go amiss to revisit the drop rates on some of the heroic wilderness equipment.

A lot of it is really cool, unique stuff. But it's BTCoE, so you can't pass it between alts as they hit the appropriate level ranges, and it's incredibly rare. I've ransacked the Sahuagin chest multiple times looking for a Chieftain's Spear, I check the auction house and shard exchange for one literally every time I log on, and at various times I've put out offers up to 1,000,000 plat or 3 large devil scales for one. I've never seen one.

I'm guessing the drop rates are about in line with rare Sands items, but those drop rates were originally set back when Sands was endgame and grinding for wilderness items was reasonable. A quarterstaff I'd use from level 4-8 on TR livs (until I can use a Theurgic one) shouldn't be as rare as a Bloodstone was back when it was the best trinket in the game.

Then again, I may just be cursed and the drop rates are actually completely reasonable.

[Robai]

Hello! This is Lead Developer PurpleFooz, and I’d like to talk a little more about our plans to “epi-fy” Three-Barrel Cove! Many details are still being worked on, but we wanted to give you some idea of what to expect when Update 22 arrives.
...

Awesome.
Small, but most important question:
- how large will be Pirate bank?
(I mean BtC bank space, in addition to house K bank)

[Pandir]

Well on first look this looks really interesting:D. Thanks for sharing.

[BOgre]

This looks like it'll be fun. Love the video. Thanks for the news :)

[Grosbeak07]

This looks like it'll be fun. Love the video. Thanks for the news :)

I agree. Looking forward to it!

[Saekee]

Looks like fun. Would be cool if twitch skills make the difference in some places.

Please consider options for stealthy players assassinating their way through some quests like in Blockade Buster. I have this image of lying in wait on a cliff edge and hopping onto an unsuspecting airship, stealthily taking out the crew.

Also, would love to see great variety amid Pirate factions. For example, there could be an undead pirate ship headed by a necromancer. Maybe a drow ship? Minotaur gang with some Trolls? Ogres? Each with their specific shot at named loot, like in the Sands.

Loved the grappling hooks!

How about some heavy underwater stuff like in The Red Fens? Even without the air-filled underwater balls (don't want those), I imagine there should be a fair amount of swimming (although the pirate ships are air ships...).

[mna]

We NEED an incentive to run EE. Right now, we can easily ransack all the gear out of haunted halls, temple of deathwyrm, and fire dragon raid until we get everything we want and that's the end of it. We don't need to touch EE aside from personal interest.


Extra favor per quest for EE? Would happen nicely, sort of as a side effect, if the epic quests were just tracked separately from heroic equivalents.

I mean, as of now, I and other favor-farmers (premium players as well as f2p, that is) do have incentive to run EE... for those quests that don't have heroic difficulty. Not much for those where full favor can be had at heroic elite.


(Yes, I know, run something on EN or even EC once and you can't get heroic favor any more from that quest. This feels sort of weird though, wouldn't it make more sense to tie it to character level instead? Of course if that's not possible currently...)

[moo_cow]

I disagree. Vehemently.



Well the thing is for getting loot, zerg to get to the chest on eh. EE is fun but if I can get my loot faster and easier I am going to do it. I of course will run ee for fun, but if I am after something for the quest I rather zerg the hell out of it on eh. And of all the people I play with on a regular basis this is the general consensus.

[dejafu]

OK, lore is one thing. Actual players getting attracted to the higher difficulty settings is, in my opinion, a much larger and more pressing issue.

We NEED an incentive to run EE. Right now, we can easily ransack all the gear out of haunted halls, temple of deathwyrm, and fire dragon raid until we get everything we want and that's the end of it. We don't need to touch EE aside from personal interest.

Big problem. Stop repeating this mistake, it cheapens your content.

While I agree with the specific points you raised, no need to knock the devs for answering questions about the lore behind the quests. It only takes a few sentences here and there to sate those of us with an interest in such things, and I'm pretty certain the thirty seconds it took PurpleFooz to type that out are not critical in solving complex loot issues.

[Thrudh]

The airship battles look cool.

Very much looking forward to epic 3BC... Thanks devs.

[Silkenwise]

Monsters:
We’re also completely replacing the old heroic monsters with a new list of epic monsters. There is some overlap between the old list and the new list, because some monsters make ideal pirates at any Challenge Rating. For example, warforged are on both lists. However, they’ll feel more like airship pirates rather than the original Three Barrel Cove warforged, and will be used both in different combat roles and different locations.

A number of new “native” monsters are planned to be added to 3BC’s landscape: harpies and yuan-ti. We discussed a number of possible monster additions with the Player Council. The dev team had a short list of monsters to meet particular gameplay goals, and we narrowed it down to those two through PC votes.

PurpleFooz

It's great to see some new creatures introduced to expand the Dungeons and Dragons feel of the game, but I'm wondering about only having two????

The list of core "product identity" monsters in D20 D&D is VERY short. It is merely ten monsters long. Fully half of them are NOT in DDO in any form, and many BADLY need to be added to the game as a whole to improve the Dungeons and Dragons experience of the game. This is the list of the ten:

Beholder
Carrion Crawler
Displacer Beast
Githyanki
Githzerai
Illithid (mind flayer)
Umber Hulk
Yuan-Ti
Tanar'ri (demon)
Baatezu (devil)

So, of those ten, we have the demons, devils, beholders, mind flayers, and now the Yuan-Ti. Those are ALL mid to high level threats.
I think it's all well and good that they went to the Players' Council and had a vote, but the other 5 monsters essential to the D&D "product identity" really should be a TOP priority for inclusion in the game.

That's Gith-(yanki/zerai), Carrion Crawlers, Displacer Beasts, and Umber Hulks! Those are all core monsters at the lower levels of a dungeons and dragons game, right up there with generic fare like goblins, orcs, and gnolls! The DDO mechanics even have Displacement as a spell mechanic, so the (arguably) oddest monster power of the bunch is already represented.


Make this happen DDO Devs!

[moo_cow]

Some answers to questions:

Yes, there'll be new epic treasure. They won't be different tiers of treasure by difficulty, but drop rates will likely be different on each difficulty. We've been vetting the new treasure with the player council. It won't be too long before that's ready for feedback from the full player base.

Yes, we want to revisit the XP settings of the 3BC dungeons on heroic mode, as well as give them new XP settings on epic.

Great idea on a saga that connects Sentinels with 3BC. We're tentatively planning on adding that for U22.

Yes, some of the new guild airships appear as rares on the landscape.

A note on Yuan-ti: they actually live in the jungles of Xen'drik. They'd be one of the normal monster you'd expect to encounter while exploring the jungled areas of 3BC.

Cool, can't wait to see the new loot!

[moo_cow]

It's great to see some new creatures introduced to expand the Dungeons and Dragons feel of the game, but I'm wondering about only having two????

The list of core "product identity" monsters in D20 D&D is VERY short. It is merely ten monsters long. Fully half of them are NOT in DDO in any form, and many BADLY need to be added to the game as a whole to improve the Dungeons and Dragons experience of the game. This is the list of the ten:

Beholder
Carrion Crawler
Displacer Beast
Githyanki
Githzerai
Illithid (mind flayer)
Umber Hulk
Yuan-Ti
Tanar'ri (demon)
Baatezu (devil)

So, of those ten, we have the demons, devils, beholders, mind flayers, and now the Yuan-Ti. Those are ALL mid to high level threats.
I think it's all well and good that they went to the Players' Council and had a vote, but the other 5 monsters essential to the D&D "product identity" really should be a TOP priority for inclusion in the game.

That's Gith-(yanki/zerai), Carrion Crawlers, Displacer Beasts, and Umber Hulks! Those are all core monsters at the lower levels of a dungeons and dragons game, right up there with generic fare like goblins, orcs, and gnolls! The DDO mechanics even have Displacement as a spell mechanic, so the (arguably) oddest monster power of the bunch is already represented.


Make this happen DDO Devs!

I like githyanki, I was a big fan of neverwinter knights 2 storyline, with them having a major roll. They obviously shouldn't be coming in a three barrel cove update, but I love the idea of them being added to the game.

[PsychoBlonde]

Wow, it's like, everything I asked for except a challenge pack. I DEMAND A CHALLENGE PACK!!!! :D

No, this sounds awesome. I was excited before but now I'm super-triple-excited.

[Cetus]

While I agree with the specific points you raised, no need to knock the devs for answering questions about the lore behind the quests. It only takes a few sentences here and there to sate those of us with an interest in such things, and I'm pretty certain the thirty seconds it took PurpleFooz to type that out are not critical in solving complex loot issues.

You are imputing nonexistent meaning to my post by saying that I "knocked" the devs. I wasn't knocking them, I was just bringing, what I think, a more pressing issue to their attention. An issue which, by the way, they still haven't addressed yet.

[Silkenwise]

I like githyanki, I was a big fan of neverwinter knights 2 storyline, with them having a major roll. They obviously shouldn't be coming in a three barrel cove update, but I love the idea of them being added to the game.

Yeah, that's true. A githyanki boss flying one of the ships wouldn't be terribly out of place, but might seem a little shoehorned in.... but Displacer Beasts and Carrion Crawlers should be roaming the wilderness, for sure.

[poltt48]

I do agree there is no point in running elite how is now. You say better drop rate on EE over EN but it is not like that now. I have ran EE HH 5 times and only 1 time have ever got a loot out of EE. Run EH about 10 times and only 1 loot on EH. Ran about 30 times on EN and have got loot on every run other then 1 time on EN. Everyone in my guild says same thing. EN drops tons more loots then EE. Personally we all rather do EE since we just tear though a EN. But there is no point doing EE if you have no chance at all of getting loot for challenging yourself.

[dunklezhan]

Epic 3BC takes place later in the timeline. Yuan-ti have moved into 3BC since the events of the heroic CRs. It's not unlike how Aztecs might expand their borders once their rivals are out of the way - in this case, the sahuagin. The sahuagin retreated to the Thunder Sea in the face of pirate and adventurer attacks. The Yuan-ti would naturally want to push out the pirate settlement, as they're recent invaders compared to the thousands of years that Yuan-ti have been fighting for territory, back & forth, with the other natives of Xen'drik.

Thanks for the background - I do appreciate you taking the time to answer Fooz, but what I really want is for that to be discoverable somewhere in game.

[relenttless]

Was there ever a proposal to have a raid in this "epic-fied" pack?

If not, why not?

If there was a move to produce a raid, why on earth was it rejected?

The game needs end game raids, so why no raid?

[dunklezhan]

You are imputing nonexistent meaning to my post by saying that I "knocked" the devs. I wasn't knocking them, I was just bringing, what I think, a more pressing issue to their attention. An issue which, by the way, they still haven't addressed yet.

You didn't knock the devs but you were certainly quite dismissive of those of us who are about more than just the gameplay aspects of things. Also, your issue is a general one which has been raised many times all over the forums - can we please try not to derail into perceived general problems with Epic and EE and loot, and stick to the 3BC specific feedback? I want this zone done right please, let's not make the Dev's jobs harder in terms of sifting through our feedback and suggestions. By all means lets suggest what we want from 3BC EE, sure - what sort of loot do we want to see? Sets? Crafted? Difficulty based? All those things are possible, but I don't hear anyone saying what they'd like, only what they don't like.

Which is not to say your or other's perception of the general problems shouldn't be raised - there's just no point going on and on about it and bring the topic back again and again to that area. Which is further not to say that you are somehow dragging the topic back around again and again, but I can see the discussion easily devolving if we're not all careful (I just deleted about a five paragraphs of stuff on the topic from this post, for example, before i realised what I was doing and had to slap myself and force a harsh edit).

In that vein, suggestion: 3BC is pirates. Pirates like loot. Therefore there should be a lot of it. Also, perhaps one of the items should be a trinket which grants loot bonuses - my suggestion would be an item that grants the wearer +1 loot, with a 1/day clickie that grants a non-stacking +1 loot in a bless-like radius for 1min. So once per rest you genuinely can 'bless a chest' for the whole party, and you yourself get a permie +1 loot for general RNG/named rolls.

That could certainly be a rare as the proverbial rocking horse droppings, only drop on EE, or require uber crafting grindiness etc, because that will stand you in good stead for running other EE content with the better loot. folks who love their loot can grind for that, while the rest of us are happily taking whatever drops.

[dunklezhan]

Ok so I just watched the video (didn't have opportunity before) - I'm even more excited now. Airship stuff looks brilliant.

Did I see someone jump from ship to ship in there, or was that a dev in god-fly mode? I hope it was jumping from ship to ship because I want that SO bad.

I want swinging on ropes between ships while dodging cannonfire, piles of loot below decks, all happening above a monster infested island to which you could plummet to your doom. Shark infested waters would be cool too - if the shallows were inhabited by hostile rays and sharks (i.e. in knee deep water we can stand in so we can fight since underwater combat is beyond DDO's capabilities no red fens doesn't and never counted) but I realise new monsters are out for this update, and I think this probably has enough new mechanics already. I'm just greedy.

[EllisDee37]

I've ransacked the Sahuagin chest multiple times looking for a Chieftain's Spear
[...]
I'm guessing the drop rates are about in line with rare Sands items, but those drop rates were originally set back when Sands was endgame and grinding for wilderness items was reasonable.Well, my experience farming up multiple whirlwinds and multiple cloaks of invisibility is that they drop at roughly the same rate. Expect 20-30 chest to get what you're looking for. This felt about right to me.

Do you think the 3BC loot requires significantly more chest pulls than that? You say you've ransacked them multiple times, but you can ransack them 3 times and still be on the low end of 20-30.

[Wizza]

You didn't knock the devs but you were certainly quite dismissive of those of us who are about more than just the gameplay aspects of things. Also, your issue is a general one which has been raised many times all over the forums - can we please try not to derail into perceived general problems with Epic and EE and loot, and stick to the 3BC specific feedback? I want this zone done right please, let's not make the Dev's jobs harder in terms of sifting through our feedback and suggestions. By all means lets suggest what we want from 3BC EE, sure - what sort of loot do we want to see? Sets? Crafted? Difficulty based? All those things are possible, but I don't hear anyone saying what they'd like, only what they don't like.


That IS a problem for 3BC. If you give us no incentive to run these on EEs, we will be done in like 1 week of farming on Normal and forget about it forever.

Just like Haunted Halls. I've got my items from there and I have no reason to step in that quest any more. Sure, it's a good quest but no loot = no incentive to run it.

[Full_Bleed]

Very much looking forward to this. I like that there will be some new mechanics and new types of combat.

I'm one of the people that quite enjoyed 3BC after the revamp... and I like the expansiveness of it. Taking a few minutes to get from point A to point B never felt like that big of a deal.



perhaps one of the items should be a trinket which grants loot bonuses - my suggestion would be an item that grants the wearer +1 loot, with a 1/day clickie that grants a non-stacking +1 loot in a bless-like radius for 1min. So once per rest you genuinely can 'bless a chest' for the whole party, and you yourself get a permie +1 loot for general RNG/named rolls.

This is actually a very cool item idea.

[Wizza]

Also, I want to see ALL THE NAMED LOOT OF THE WILDERNESS MADE EPIC. No excuse. ALL OF THEM.

[janave]

It's been said that they abandoned the EN/EH/EE loot tiering after eGH.

I dont know who to adress, but T.H.A.N.K.S for that :D. It seems they are returning to sanity.

I hope the stuff will be BTA, and I dont see anything bad about the old epic loot except the tiny inconsistent drop rates, item + seal/shard/scroll made a satisfying reward when completed. Now it is just run up the chest, loot random stuff - recall -reset -repeat until you loot what you want. Of course OP classes get the best stuff, the easiest with invis, haste, ddoor, teleport.. but well that is just how it is..


3BC epified looks good, hopefully the airship battles will be fun. I would like to see some timed charges, kinda like what Abbot does, but less completely overwhelming, and lag dependent. Like Archer mobs showering the area with disintegrating arrows, etc. Make wf arcanes take x4 damage, so the party remains balanced. :D :D

Oh n Also, please fix lags on chain end quest completions, thanks :D.

[RedOrm]

Which is why i was careful to say 'known to DDO'. I completely accept that Yuanti are a valid eberron monster, but they have never been mentioned before and now they're suddenly on 3BC? This warrants some kind of backstory. Even if its an npc commenting 'don't know where the bloody things came from, but ever since that rift opened in Stormreach all kinds of strange stuff has been coming through here on its way somewhere else. Some of it sticks around, I guess'. Or '**** things arrived on a ship from eastern Xendrik, stormed their way out of the docks and headed into the hills. I hope they stay there, filthy snakes.'

You know? SOMEthing.

Edit: suggestion if you can't afford to pay enough writers* - hold a player competition for the most convincing backstories with TP rewards as part of the weekly newsletter - maybe something will come up you can use? On the understanding that you don't owe them anything beyond the competition reward of course, all rights transferred etc.


*this is not meant as passive/aggressive sarcastic as it sounds. I swear. Also, even if it was, community engagement is never bad. Or shouldn't be, sometimes I do wonder if we deserve it...

Awesome suggestion, please make it so. If noone else, I'm sure the guy writing Moonbreaker could do this.

Greetz,
Red Orm

[Ebondevil]

Cydonie will be the questgiver; it’ll be a new instance of her in Three Barrel Cove. There are some complex Argonessen politics going on – while Cynodie is still the ambassador, she’s out of favor for siding with the lesser races when Argonessen wanted to raze Stormreach. Cydonie has numerous motives, and is choosing to have adventurers do work on her behalf, at least for now.

Wouldn't it make more sense for Commodore Bloodeye to be the quest giver as there's already a quest leading players from the marketplace to go to speak to him, which is based around him needing some help with odd Jobs around Three Barrel cove.

It would seem to make more sense to expand upon NPC's already present and tied into the adventure pack, even if they currently don't do much, than bringing in an outside element...

[A3oN95]

While you guys are looking at 3BC, it might not go amiss to revisit the drop rates on some of the heroic wilderness equipment.

A lot of it is really cool, unique stuff. But it's BTCoE, so you can't pass it between alts as they hit the appropriate level ranges, and it's incredibly rare. I've ransacked the Sahuagin chest multiple times looking for a Chieftain's Spear, I check the auction house and shard exchange for one literally every time I log on, and at various times I've put out offers up to 1,000,000 plat or 3 large devil scales for one. I've never seen one.

I'm guessing the drop rates are about in line with rare Sands items, but those drop rates were originally set back when Sands was endgame and grinding for wilderness items was reasonable. A quarterstaff I'd use from level 4-8 on TR livs (until I can use a Theurgic one) shouldn't be as rare as a Bloodstone was back when it was the best trinket in the game.

Then again, I may just be cursed and the drop rates are actually completely reasonable.

You're not the only one with this problem, I went through the same trying to get moonhowler axe (fortunately for me the rare who has it was not that far away from the entrance, otherwise I would have given up at the 2nd ransack). And while I can understand stuff like this being in an end-game wilderness area, it doesn't make as much sense when you're just after a TR twink item who is BTCoE (there are really good TR items there, but still, only useful for a short time, and only good for a single character once you equip them). Increasing the drop rates might get the attention of some people in a pack who has a really bad reputation (although I kinda like it tbh).

Also, about the other topics: I was hoping for a Kraken raid (like everyone else?), but resources are limited, I suppose; The airship fights are promising, but I'll wait to see the end product before commenting on it; For me lore is as important as EE incentive, some people are more interested in one of them, other people on the other, they're both equally important imho; I think epic 3BC should be at least lvl26, if not higher, since content starts being scarce around that level.

[Loromir]

I have an Idea that might be appealing. In the explorer area, setup up a small chance (very small chance) that someone could take over an airship for their guild. In order for this to work, every member of the party must be from the same guild, and this ship would replace their current ship.

[Saekee]

That's Gith-(yanki/zerai), Carrion Crawlers, Displacer Beasts, and Umber Hulks! Those are all core monsters at the lower levels of a dungeons and dragons game, right up there with generic fare like goblins, orcs, and gnolls! The DDO mechanics even have Displacement as a spell mechanic, so the (arguably) oddest monster power of the bunch is already represented.


Yes please add Githyanki. Would love to see them angered that their territory is being crossed by too many ships...and the most hated, cursed Illithid


Wow, it's like, everything I asked for except a challenge pack. I DEMAND A CHALLENGE PACK!!!! :D

that is interesting--why not add a Pirate-inspired challenge? Just don't add new challenge ingredients--simply loot. Or integrate the crystal cove there permanently. IDK need to think about it.




In that vein, suggestion: 3BC is pirates. Pirates like loot. Therefore there should be a lot of it. Also, perhaps one of the items should be a trinket which grants loot bonuses - my suggestion would be an item that grants the wearer +1 loot, with a 1/day clickie that grants a non-stacking +1 loot in a bless-like radius for 1min. So once per rest you genuinely can 'bless a chest' for the whole party, and you yourself get a permie +1 loot for general RNG/named rolls.

That could certainly be a rare as the proverbial rocking horse droppings, only drop on EE, or require uber crafting grindiness etc, because that will stand you in good stead for running other EE content with the better loot. folks who love their loot can grind for that, while the rest of us are happily taking whatever drops.

Great idea. What may be needed now for all epic quests is some kind of drop for the ultimate stuff, i.e. have thunderforged goodies drop anywhere or something like that. Why not have seals and shards drop in 3BC, as if the Pirates had raided them from elsewhere? Certainly the Sentinels stuff should all drop in 3BC, given the connection. Some of us trying to get an EMG are SICK of running sentinels


Also, I want to see ALL THE NAMED LOOT OF THE WILDERNESS MADE EPIC. No excuse. ALL OF THEM.
Yes yes yes--I swear by my Tiefling blade


Awesome suggestion, please make it so. If noone else, I'm sure the guy writing Moonbreaker could do this.

NIce to see a player supporting another one's creative efforts. Great idea too. Props to you. My rep on forums is still too low to give anyone else rep.


I have an Idea that might be appealing. In the explorer area, setup up a small chance (very small chance) that someone could take over an airship for their guild. In order for this to work, every member of the party must be from the same guild, and this ship would replace their current ship.

That is very cool. Why not?

Finally, I assume the new loot will include ULTRA FANCY PIRATE HATS--cosmetic and otherwise?

[lyrecono]

Do something about the itemisation:

Cuz,

The loot of U19....
http://www.runnerindenial.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/not-impressed.png

As for the mobs, the fire salamanders fit the river of lava pretty well.

How about an omni (ele)mental outfitted with a sadal and a epic mage?

Fire frog like animals(like the foxes in the other outdoor area's), sell m as pets too...

No harpies.... please, nor howlers or chain wielding emo assasin clowns

[HungarianRhapsody]

Players with powerful ranged attacks can directly attack these airship monsters. Melee players will be great against crew and marines, and in particular against the grappling hooks that allow those monsters to continuously spawn.

Melee players go home. DDO has now completed its transformation to Dungeons and Ranged Attacks Online.

[Kwyjibo]

Haunted Halls Epic Elite runs are very, very rare. The wind blows that it is because this treasure mechanism discourages epic elite.

Does the Player's Council share this view?
When tiered loot was first discussed with the folks in ML there was a lengthy, very polarized conversation about it.
Personally I'm in favor of tiered loot and was saddened when the mechanic was dropped. Can't speak for the rest of the PC.

[Cardtrick]

Well, my experience farming up multiple whirlwinds and multiple cloaks of invisibility is that they drop at roughly the same rate. Expect 20-30 chest to get what you're looking for. This felt about right to me.

Do you think the 3BC loot requires significantly more chest pulls than that? You say you've ransacked them multiple times, but you can ransack them 3 times and still be on the low end of 20-30.

I agree that the drop rate seems to be about the same as a Whirlwind. Although I can't judge by much, since I have yet to actually pull a Chieftain's Spear. I didn't go nuts with the grinding -- I ransacked the chest with 2 characters, and then went back a week later and ransacked it again (but just with one character). So just 3 ransacks. I do also check for the chest every time I'm in 3BC for any reason, and on the run to or after leaving any of the nearby quests. (Although, of course, the Sahuagin's only there about 50% of the time.) I'd guess . . . maybe 35 to 45 chests over the last few months? (Which means about 70-90 times checking for the Sahuagin.)

I've given up at this point. I'll keep checking the auctionhouse, and if I see one posted for under a million plat I'll probably buy it. But it's just not worth grinding for something that I'd only use from level 4-8, which is really only a few hours of gameplay.

I do think the desert items should have their drop rates bumped up a bit too, now that the desert is a long way from endgame, but at least a few of those items are useful for longer periods of time and at higher levels that we move through a bit less quickly. Whirlwind, in particular, is one of the best greatswords throughout the heroic levels, especially for anyone with self healing who can use its red slot.

[GMoneyMackDaddy]

Dont think this has been asked, in regards to the clues inside the epic quests, leading to the EPIC Treasure located in the wilderness, or whereever it is. (Secret airship, wilderness, etc.)

Once we find the clues, and find the final treasure, is it going to be in the same place every time?

Would kinda stifle the replayability value imo....... lets go run these 5 quests to get loot thats over here.... it just hasnt spawned yet, till we run the 5 epic quests again.

Multiple locations, multiple clues would add more replayability, imo.

Otherwise looks good. Airships battling! Loot should be EPIC, (an I mean, piratre loot epic), or it will be a fail for some I suppose.

[HatsuharuZ]

I think that most, if not all, of the 3bc heroic loot should be made epic. Also, add some more bucklers to the game since swashbuckler is coming out, too.

Remember when artificer came out, they added runearms to the game? Do something like that.

[PsychoBlonde]

OK, lore is one thing. Actual players getting attracted to the higher difficulty settings is, in my opinion, a much larger and more pressing issue.

We NEED an incentive to run EE. Right now, we can easily ransack all the gear out of haunted halls, temple of deathwyrm, and fire dragon raid until we get everything we want and that's the end of it. We don't need to touch EE aside from personal interest.

Big problem. Stop repeating this mistake, it cheapens your content.

Nonsense. You don't "need" a "run EE or else" requirement. People do it just because they *can*. What else are you going to do with your uber toons? If people don't like eE or want to play oddball toons that don't hack it so well, let them be.

Heck, I'd probably run eE TBC even if there wasn't any loot of any kind whatsoever--I like the quests and there's always XP to be had.

[danotmano1998]

The Story:

Monsters:

Airship monsters:

Quests and Adventuring in Three Barrel Cove:



Excellent reading, thank you very much.

The part that makes my inner geek want to squee is the new airship monsters and the onboard fighting.
Sounds and looks completely fun! Can't wait! Nice work, thumbs up!

I still want a Kraken raid though... Maybe someday, right?

[Zzevel]

While you guys are looking at 3BC, it might not go amiss to revisit the drop rates on some of the heroic wilderness equipment.

A lot of it is really cool, unique stuff. But it's BTCoE, so you can't pass it between alts as they hit the appropriate level ranges, and it's incredibly rare. I've ransacked the Sahuagin chest multiple times looking for a Chieftain's Spear, I check the auction house and shard exchange for one literally every time I log on, and at various times I've put out offers up to 1,000,000 plat or 3 large devil scales for one. I've never seen one.

I'm guessing the drop rates are about in line with rare Sands items, but those drop rates were originally set back when Sands was endgame and grinding for wilderness items was reasonable. A quarterstaff I'd use from level 4-8 on TR livs (until I can use a Theurgic one) shouldn't be as rare as a Bloodstone was back when it was the best trinket in the game.

Then again, I may just be cursed and the drop rates are actually completely reasonable.

This, Drop rates in today's 3BC are Redonkulous.. I too have run for this rare hundreds? of times and even have resorted a few times to rerolling that chest. I guess that's what Turbine wants us to do, why wouldn't they set the drop rate to .0001? DDO has turned into a pay or grind fest. I wouldn't be supprised to see an item in the store that give a bonus to finding named items in the future of ddo... I can see it now...

595TP for +20% / 1 hr
795TP for +33% / 1.5 hr
995TP for +50% / 2 hr

[Seikojin]

This all sounds surprisingly good, EXCEPT:

No incentive for running EE. This is a mistake that keeps getting made.


I like the saga idea and I like the revisit xp in heroic 3BC, but if I plan on playing them in epic than I will just skip them during heroic leveling.

that's fine if there are no tiers for epic loot, but what is the incentive to run EE? the standard to loot farming is hard difficulty. will there be an actual reason to run EE besides a few more Comms, 1% increased chance at named loot and another place where Monkchers and Blitzers can dominate the game?


While you guys are looking at 3BC, it might not go amiss to revisit the drop rates on some of the heroic wilderness equipment.

A lot of it is really cool, unique stuff. But it's BTCoE, so you can't pass it between alts as they hit the appropriate level ranges, and it's incredibly rare. I've ransacked the Sahuagin chest multiple times looking for a Chieftain's Spear, I check the auction house and shard exchange for one literally every time I log on, and at various times I've put out offers up to 1,000,000 plat or 3 large devil scales for one. I've never seen one.

I'm guessing the drop rates are about in line with rare Sands items, but those drop rates were originally set back when Sands was endgame and grinding for wilderness items was reasonable. A quarterstaff I'd use from level 4-8 on TR livs (until I can use a Theurgic one) shouldn't be as rare as a Bloodstone was back when it was the best trinket in the game.

Then again, I may just be cursed and the drop rates are actually completely reasonable.


Wow, it's like, everything I asked for except a challenge pack. I DEMAND A CHALLENGE PACK!!!! :D

No, this sounds awesome. I was excited before but now I'm super-triple-excited.


I do agree there is no point in running elite how is now. You say better drop rate on EE over EN but it is not like that now. I have ran EE HH 5 times and only 1 time have ever got a loot out of EE. Run EH about 10 times and only 1 loot on EH. Ran about 30 times on EN and have got loot on every run other then 1 time on EN. Everyone in my guild says same thing. EN drops tons more loots then EE. Personally we all rather do EE since we just tear though a EN. But there is no point doing EE if you have no chance at all of getting loot for challenging yourself.


Well, my experience farming up multiple whirlwinds and multiple cloaks of invisibility is that they drop at roughly the same rate. Expect 20-30 chest to get what you're looking for. This felt about right to me.

Do you think the 3BC loot requires significantly more chest pulls than that? You say you've ransacked them multiple times, but you can ransack them 3 times and still be on the low end of 20-30.

Continually seeing drop rates mentioned reminds me: Loot boosts should add an additional 'special' slot in the chests instead of bumping up the chest level. Same with difficulty. This would give a HUGE incentive to run on higher difficulty for two reasons:
1. The elite difficulty should have a higher chance for special items (named, tomes, etc).
2. It would have 3 total special slots without loot gems, maps, dragonmarks, per chest. Who wouldn't want that?!

[The_Human_Cypher]

I'm really looking forward to this Update. As I mentioned in an earlier post, everyone in my very small Guild loves 3BC. I run the area just because I enjoy its flavor and the quests, not for loot or XP.

I hope that the Crystal Cove event is a precursor to Update 22, in order to get everyone used to seeing pirates. :) Crystal Cove could happen in late May, followed by Update 22 in June. The Pirate Minotaurs from CC would make another good monster addition to an Epic 3BC, along with the Pirate Bugbears.

I also hope that the Kraken raid gets added to Epic 3BC at some point. The raid could make use of the underwater action mechanics from the Red Fens capstone quest.

[Cordovan]

Please take the wider discussion of how to incentivize Epic Elite elsewhere; it's cluttering up this conversation. Thanks!

[dunklezhan]

What may be needed now for all epic quests is some kind of drop for the ultimate stuff, i.e. have thunderforged goodies drop anywhere or something like that. Why not have seals and shards drop in 3BC, as if the Pirates had raided them from elsewhere? Certainly the Sentinels stuff should all drop in 3BC, given the connection. Some of us trying to get an EMG are SICK of running sentinels




Thematically, I would be entirely in favour of any and all named-loot collectibles in the game to drop in 3BC (tokens of the 12, dragonscales, GH relics, GS ingredients etc). Those pirates could have gotten their hands on anything, and presumably this would be incentive to run 3BC if only for one stop shopping! Maybe the one thing that shoudln't drop would be cannith crafting ingredients. After all, its not like that stuff is useful by epic, right?

[Erdrique]

I think the new thoughts on Epic Three Barrel Cove sound interesting and fun :) !! I'm a little disappointed that Scondrel's Run won't see a pass but that is minor. I'm also hoping that the unique loot set from the heroic version and from the Sentinel series will see some type of grade out there, since the premise is based on the Blood-tide story line. I think putting the storyline through Cydonie is a little interesting but could stretching the limits, I'll be curious to see how/where this goes.

[Cetus]

Please take the wider discussion of how to incentivize Epic Elite elsewhere; it's cluttering up this conversation. Thanks!

Its the CENTRAL issue of making 3 BC epic in the first place. You're bringing it to end game, what are you going to do about making its difficulty tiers attractive for endgame players?

Nonsense.

[Cetus]

stuff

Sorry if you have a problem with me expressing complete disregard for stupid lore arguments, when the central aspect of content longevity is the presence of REWARD on highest difficulty settings. Otherwise, normal and hard get crushed in a few hours, and goodbye weeks/months of development.

Lore is good for the first week, what next? The devs are clearly making EE less attractive with these last updates - and as an endgame player, I vehemently disagree with this direction.

If they want feedback - here it is. If you don't like it, fine - but don't expect me to reverse my position for your sake.

[Cardtrick]

Please take the wider discussion of how to incentivize Epic Elite elsewhere; it's cluttering up this conversation. Thanks!

Maybe start an "Official Turbine Discussion" for it?

For whatever it's worth, I do agree with Cetus that it's probably the most important thing to talk about in regards to any new epic content.

[EllisDee37]

I don't even run EE and I agree with Cetus that it's a crucial issue regarding epic 3BC. Possibly the central issue, above all others.

My vote is FoT-style tiered loot.

EDIT: Unless the plan is level 20-21 epic content on par with Sentinels of Stormreach. In that case, never mind.

[Scraap]

Please take the wider discussion of how to incentivize Epic Elite elsewhere; it's cluttering up this conversation. Thanks!

1) Where.
2) What if we had a 3BC-specific suggestion. Say tied to the hint mechanic mentioned in the OP?

[Seikojin]

I don't even run EE and I agree with Cetus that it's a crucial issue regarding epic 3BC. Possibly the central issue, above all others.

My vote is FoT-style tiered loot.

EDIT: Unless the plan is level 20-21 epic content on par with Sentinels of Stormreach. In that case, never mind.

I don't know why E3bc wouldn't be lvl 20-21. It wouldn't seem appropriate to make it top end levels.

[Cardtrick]

I don't know why E3bc wouldn't be lvl 20-21. It wouldn't seem appropriate to make it top end levels.

Well, the biggest reason is that there's already a ton of content in the 20-22 range, and relatively little in the 25-30 range. Level cap is going up soon, so this is going to be even more an issue.

I agree that thematically 3BC makes more sense as a low level epic, but from a practical standpoint it would be a lot better to have it fall in a different level range. (Which, incidentally, is exactly the problem heroic 3BC has always had.)

[Deadlock]

Lore is good for the first week, what next?

Weak lore is good for the first week. Good lore provides a cohesive framework that ensures that you don't have a disparate collection of quests. Good lore helps to create an immersive experience for new players and veterans alike.

[Teh_Troll]

Weak lore is good for the first week. Good lore provides a cohesive framework that ensures that you don't have a disparate collection of quests. Good lore helps to create an immersive experience for new players and veterans alike.

Nonsense. Lore has no replay value.

[dunklezhan]

Sorry if you have a problem with me expressing complete disregard for stupid lore arguments, when the central aspect of content longevity is the presence of REWARD on highest difficulty settings. Otherwise, normal and hard get crushed in a few hours, and goodbye weeks/months of development.

Lore is good for the first week, what next? The devs are clearly making EE less attractive with these last updates - and as an endgame player, I vehemently disagree with this direction.

If they want feedback - here it is. If you don't like it, fine - but don't expect me to reverse my position for your sake.

If that's what you took from my post I think you maybe want to read it again.

...anyway, on another note quite literally - I hope the music is also getting an upgrade. That tune is used in enough places now I think.

[Qhualor]

Please take the wider discussion of how to incentivize Epic Elite elsewhere; it's cluttering up this conversation. Thanks!

Just don't want to see the same mistakes made and have another pack easily farmed out a month after release. Than the big attraction would be specific quests with the best xp/min and Comm/min, if any, that is done the same way in every other part of the game. Something different and something new and shiny only lasts for a short time and can't be relied on to be continuously replayed. Good incentives is the driving force in this game to ensure replay value. If that discussion has no place in this thread than there is little I can say until release of epic 3BC.

[Deadlock]

Nonsense. Lore has no replay value.

All enjoyable quests have replay value. High XP quests with good loot make them rewarding. Lore doesn't detract from this and can only add to this. An immersive storyline and quest experience adds to enjoyment for many.

If you prefer to just run mindless grinds with no sense of enjoyment then that's your perogative.

EDIT: And there's no point in trying to polarise the discussion as if you sacrifice XP, loot, fun mechanics for the sake of lore. It's not an either-or situation.

[Cetus]

All enjoyable quests have replay value. High XP quests with good loot make them rewarding. Lore doesn't detract from this and can only add to this. An immersive storyline and quest experience adds to enjoyment for many.

If you prefer to just run mindless grinds with no sense of enjoyment then that's your perogative.

EDIT: And there's no point in trying to polarise the discussion as if you sacrifice XP, loot, fun mechanics for the sake of lore. It's not an either-or situation.

I love watching the "DELUGE!" at the end of CITW. Every time is just like the first =D

[HungarianRhapsody]

I love watching the "DELUGE!" at the end of CITW. Every time is just like the first =D

I do like the deluge in CitW, but I'm willing to spend the 5 shards to skip Spinner of Shadows on a saga just so I don't have to sit through that 20 minute movie at the end of the quest.

[Teh_Troll]

If you prefer to just run mindless grinds with no sense of enjoyment then that's your perogative.


DDO is nothing but a mindless grind at this point. Once again . . . the solution for the game being dumb is "don't play."

[mkmcgw17]

Hello! This is Lead Developer PurpleFooz, and I’d like to talk a little more about our plans to “epi-fy” Three-Barrel Cove! Many details are still being worked on, but we wanted to give you some idea of what to expect when Update 22 arrives.

The Story:
Rumors have surfaced of a giant treasure cache, hidden somewhere in Three Barrel Cove by the pirate lord Ahraatz-Ri before he was slain. For those who might not remember Ahraatz-Ri, he was the ogre-mage boss and leader of the Blood Tide pirates in the Sentinels of Stormreach adventure pack.

The remnants of the Blood Tide pirates believe that if they can find Ahraatz-Ri’s treasure, they can use it to restore themselves to their former power. Rumors of treasure have also attracted other pirate crews, and Epic Three Barrel Cove is now crawling with competing pirate crews looking for treasure, and who are willing to fight for clues!

Cydonie will be the questgiver; it’ll be a new instance of her in Three Barrel Cove. There are some complex Argonessen politics going on – while Cynodie is still the ambassador, she’s out of favor for siding with the lesser races when Argonessen wanted to raze Stormreach. Cydonie has numerous motives, and is choosing to have adventurers do work on her behalf, at least for now.

Monsters:
We’re also completely replacing the old heroic monsters with a new list of epic monsters. There is some overlap between the old list and the new list, because some monsters make ideal pirates at any Challenge Rating. For example, warforged are on both lists. However, they’ll feel more like airship pirates rather than the original Three Barrel Cove warforged, and will be used both in different combat roles and different locations.

A number of new “native” monsters are planned to be added to 3BC’s landscape: harpies and yuan-ti. We discussed a number of possible monster additions with the Player Council. The dev team had a short list of monsters to meet particular gameplay goals, and we narrowed it down to those two through PC votes.

Pirate crews will use slightly different line-ups of monsters from each other. For example, we’re planning on a crew that uses a lot of artillery, using rune-arms and explosives. Another crew might only have a small number of monsters which use rune-arms. A completely different crew might specialize in undead pirates.

Most of the pirate types are individually weak, and are meant to work in conjunction with each other in order to threaten high-level players. They support the airships, which are the real epic monsters.

Airship monsters:
Each of the pirate crews are based on a pirate airship, flying about the 3BC landscape. This is a new thing for us, but we’ve been able to prove out the concepts in our prototypes – each airship will be a single attackable monster, with several attacks, including:

Magefire cannon broadsides: Different airships will barrage you with different types of magefire cannons, i.e. deal different types of damage.
Grapping hooks: Airships can shoot grappling hooks down to the ground, allowing their crew to zip down. Airships will typically try to drop their crew near to players they plan to fight. For some types of pirate ships, the monsters will just be the generic crew. Other pirate ships might specialize in this, and drop off much nastier pirate marines.


And because a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures, here's some early footage from Eberron of airships in Three Barrel Cove:



http://youtu.be/FfG6QqJMt8s

Players with powerful ranged attacks can directly attack these airship monsters. Melee players will be great against crew and marines, and in particular against the grappling hooks that allow those monsters to continuously spawn. There will also be large Ballista Turrets in the landscape that can be used against airships, giving all characters the chance to hit a ship in the sky. The turrets are expected to be similar to the kobold crossbow turrets in Haunted Halls that you may have already encountered. Clever players can find ways aboard some airships, fight through the crew to the lower decks, and destroy the airship from the inside.

Quests and Adventuring in Three Barrel Cove:
The landscape will have different slayer and rare objectives on epic and heroic. It also won’t have the exact same list of explorer points. All the monsters on the landscape will be replaced on epic. It’s likely that at least some encounters will be on the Random Encounter system. But one of the realities is that 3BC has a ton of tight cliffs & walkways, without enough space for random encounters to spawn. Those areas will get new statically-placed monsters.

Yes, we’re planning on adding free teleport points across the landscape!

The small town and ship dock that’s currently part of the adventure area will be converted into a public area. We want to do this because it makes it easier for us to set up and place the new epic quest arc.

The epified dungeons have their monsters completely replaced, and as well may have some different objectives. Their layouts and main critical paths are probably going to be similar to the old ones, but the nature of the new pirate monsters should make them feel different. We’ve tentatively chosen 4 dungeons to be epified as part of a new 5-part epic arc: Prove Your Worth, Ghost of a Chance, The Legend of Two-Toed Tobias, and Garl’s Tomb. These are partly based on the responses to the “favorite 3BC dungeon” thread, and partly based on our internal evaluation on how much effort it would take to epify each of the 3BC dungeons. We also considered how well the new story and pirate monsters would work in these dungeons.

In each dungeon, you’ll be vying against Blood Tide pirates and other pirate crews to locate clues to the location of the treasure. The clues might be as simple as a piece of a map, or something a bit more complex. Once you’ve completed the 4 dungeons, you’ll be able to find the location of the treasure on the 3BC landscape.

We’re also planning a 5th dungeon – a brand new epic-only dungeon. It’s something of a spiritual replacement for Guard Duty, where you are fending off pirate airships which are attacking the airship carrying the treasure back to Stormreach. Rather than the static nature of the original Guard Duty, we’re planning on something much more dynamic and interesting by building on top of the technologies we developed for the “bed ship” in Acute Delirium.
Thank you for reading!
PurpleFooz

Sounds like your putting a lot of effort into not just recycling the area but making it a different place on epic. Cool. Yuan-ti and Harpies? I guess new monsters are hard to develop and they are not totally played out yet so guess that's cool. I'm looking forward to it what level will the quests be on epic? Also just a thought i actually enjoy heroic as much or more than epic it more closely resembles pencil and paper dungeons and dragons. That being said are there any plans to add any heroic quests in the future? A level 8 to 10 pack would be nice i'd buy it it. Also do you have any plans or has there been any thought to incorporating alignment shift or anything like that into the game? I understand your logic behind not allowing anyone to play evil toons but it would be nice to have something that encouraged role playing even if it was optional. The first Neverwinter Nights pulled it off nicely. One last comment in the paper version Paladins and Monks can't multi-class and they have to be human and they also can't retain tons of wealth and are both limited in the amount of things they can possess. I got around to checking out the Paladin and Monk trees and they are both far more powerful than the other classes. A first life Pally can have 220prr before he hits 20 and they both have far far superior saves to the other classes. I refuse to be forced to take Paladin or Monk levels just to play Epic Elite. If they are required to play the game I'll simply change games. Thank you for taking the time to take comments and suggestions that is awesome.

[Cardoor]

Any plans to use the grappling hook mechanic in reverse and have stuff leaping out of the water? Mermaid Marines?

[Cyr]

4 old dungeons made epic and one new one. Less and less coming out of the DDO offices when it comes to content over a years time. Game is winding down fast it seems.

[Qhualor]

4 old dungeons made epic and one new one. Less and less coming out of the DDO offices when it comes to content over a years time. Game is winding down fast it seems.

well, since its heroic quests made epic, im hoping its different objectives and maybe even a door, tunnel or secret passage that leads to a new part of the dungeon. think Mirra's. they said we are getting some new mobs and a change to the wilderness area with airships so, so far its not sounding like GH that much.

[Silkenwise]

I do like the deluge in CitW, but I'm willing to spend the 5 shards to skip Spinner of Shadows on a saga just so I don't have to sit through that 20 minute movie at the end of the quest.

Um.... Did you know that you can SKIP the cutscene by hitting the Alt key.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Um.... Did you know that you can SKIP the cutscene by hitting the Alt key.

I did not know that. Hooray!

(escape is almost universally used to skip cutscenes, but it does not work here. I tried Space and Enter also. I'm glad to finally have a key to deal with that)

[Deathdefy]

The bizarre pronunciation of "Deluge" drives me insane. It definitely merits re-hiring the voice actor and potentially breaking the raid.

I understand that whether the 'uge' is hard or soft is a nationality thing, but pronouncing the "de" as "day" instead of "de" as in "dell" makes the whole thing comically awful.

No one in the history of time until CiTW had pronounced it "Day-Looge".

I should link this post in my sig in case I'm accused of pedantry in future so I can direct them here for some real retentiveness.



Oh, and epic 3BC looks fine. I do worry a little about melee getting the rough end of the stick re: attacking airships, but if it's easy to get up there and attacking the core is more effective than shooting at range, then it's fine.

[HurtyouBad]

thank you Purple for the tiny sneak-peek and/or filler you shared about NEW 3bc , I personally can not wait till then as 3bc and G.H. are my favorite slayer areas...as for the others already whining and boo-hooing about this-that and the other....whoopty doo.....here is a novel idea go to Boston and show them "how to do there Jobs" teach them I'm sure they are just on pin&needles wanting and waiting to learn from you.....oh wait , sorry this isn't "Let it Out"....anyway I am excited about NEW 3bc and looking forward to it and the next update you plan to share , thnx Purple

[MangLord]

There needs to be a way for melees to compete with ranged/casters in attacking the airships, otherwise an existing problem will only continue to get worse. The ballista idea sounds nice, but it doesn't take into account the inherent advantage that ranged/casters will have with their enhancements and feats going into their damage. Perhaps melees can climb up the ropes? Maybe they can apply STR or CON bonuses to ballista damage? Otherwise my fighter is forced to just stand there and clean up trash while the sorcs and rangers can be the heroes yet again. It feels pretty crappy to be constantly relegated to guard duty while the archers and sorcerers are winning the fight. This is a fundamental issue you guys need to address soon.

Please don't make the wilderness area like epic GH, where I felt like I had to beat on every single giant for a solid minute if I'm not in my primary destiny. I like wilderness areas for times when I don't want a huge challenge, and as supplemetal xp for grinding destinies. Underdark and Sschindrylyn were nicely balanced epic wilderness areas that every class could do well in. Wheloon is an abomination that you should examine as a failure in wilderness design. The scaling is completely out of control and its too congested.

Also, it's incredibly boring to go through a quest and everything has over 5000hp. Just my opinion. I hate epic Gianthold for that. Even EH is tedious when you're not in your optimal destiny.

I would like to see a lot of named one handed and light weapons, in addition to a buckler or two. It doesn't seem to fit the theme, but there aren't a lot of high level heavy armors out there outside of dragonscales.

I never liked the EN/EH/EE loot system. It propagates powerbuilding, because everyone naturally wants the best version of an item. The Haunted Halls loot system (with the upgrade option) is more friendly for the other 95% of the player base that doesn't/can't run EE. You can still earn a nice item as a paladin, artificer or other suboptimal class that normally gets squashed in EE.

[IronClan]

For the sake of transparency (and curiosity), could we see that short list, to see what the Players Council actually had to choose from? To put it bluntly, it doesn't sound like they were given a very good list to choose from. Perhaps I'm incorrect.


I think "list" of monsters is what the Dev's had, and "narrowed it down" is what the PC did, between a couple of those options; exactly 3 options to be exact and it was a 10 7 vote on Yaun-ti versus Sah-whatist's. So maybe "list" is a tiny bit misleading.

[IronClan]

Okay bored at work so I read the whole thread:


Thanks for your information on this. I'll give it a few runs. What's the general ML right now for the quest? Low, middle or high? Because right now the high end quests are anemic and badly needed for those last levels after 25.

A fair question, wish I could tell you, maybe Mr Fooz or Cordovan will, guess it hits Lama soon anyway.


Haunted Halls Epic Elite runs are very, very rare. The wind blows that it is because this treasure mechanism discourages epic elite.

Does the Player's Council share this view?

We were not asked. Some of us have offered up opinions to be sure, but no discussion has happened. Personally I think that Loot needs more incentive to run harder dif's and that EN/EH/EE was klunky but at least accomplished that goal...

OTOH supposedly there will be at least one positive (IMO) change to how current named loot works.


Was there ever a proposal to have a raid in this "epic-fied" pack?
The game needs end game raids, so why no raid?

Nope, many of us asked for one.


Also, I want to see ALL THE NAMED LOOT OF THE WILDERNESS MADE EPIC. No excuse. ALL OF THEM.

I've argued that many players want packs epified specifically to get epic versions of the cooler heroic loot so they can use something heroic and then use it's epic version later. I'm not sure if we get to see the loot again or not, I'll just say I am disappointed in what I saw.

[Coyopa]

I did not know that. Hooray!

(escape is almost universally used to skip cutscenes, but it does not work here. I tried Space and Enter also. I'm glad to finally have a key to deal with that)

Interesting because Enter works for me every time. Of course, after that, the chat window is hot and so I have to hit Esc to cancel that.

[shawnvw]

Rather than destroying the airship will there be an option to take command?


Oh, yeah. Way cool.

Almost as cool as ship-to-ship combat. Cydonie gives you the option of boarding a ship flown by her allies, or summoning your own guild ship. If it's your ship, the captain tells you she has ordered all shrines and non-essential personnel stowed below decks for the duration of the mission. (In other words, to simplify the coding, you're on a bare-bones copy of the model your Guild owns, and restricted to the upper deck.)

[FynWarFyn]

I agree that the drop rate seems to be about the same as a Whirlwind. Although I can't judge by much, since I have yet to actually pull a Chieftain's Spear. I didn't go nuts with the grinding -- I ransacked the chest with 2 characters, and then went back a week later and ransacked it again (but just with one character). So just 3 ransacks. I do also check for the chest every time I'm in 3BC for any reason, and on the run to or after leaving any of the nearby quests. (Although, of course, the Sahuagin's only there about 50% of the time.) I'd guess . . . maybe 35 to 45 chests over the last few months? (Which means about 70-90 times checking for the Sahuagin.)

I've given up at this point. I'll keep checking the auctionhouse, and if I see one posted for under a million plat I'll probably buy it. But it's just not worth grinding for something that I'd only use from level 4-8, which is really only a few hours of gameplay.

I do think the desert items should have their drop rates bumped up a bit too, now that the desert is a long way from endgame, but at least a few of those items are useful for longer periods of time and at higher levels that we move through a bit less quickly. Whirlwind, in particular, is one of the best greatswords throughout the heroic levels, especially for anyone with self healing who can use its red slot.

I have not seen any of those weapons in any of the AHs. The problem is that the rare encounters do not always spawn then their rare treasures have such a minute chance of dropping and those are in addition to the long run/swim to the areas. I did manage to get one chieftain's spear after 3 months of run. I don't ransack. I run daily until I get one chance at the item drop, then I go do something else and come back 2morow. Don't want it to become too boring even if it takes up to 4 tries for that rare encounter to show. Was running with a lvl28 ranger with speed boost. Got 5 or 6 bow of the scrag, 4 or 5 of the tiefling blade, 1 chieftain spear and 0 sky captain dagger. I TRed into a sorcerer so I am putting them on hold til later, still want a sky dagger for a rogue I plan to TR into.

The proposed E3BC looks nice. Will wait n see. But it is about Treasure and pirates and Argonnessan is involved, and no Dragon?????? We need a dragon vs airship fight!!!!! I know, I know, melee toons will hate that, a flying Dragon most likely taken out by range and spells, but I am sure the devs can come up with something there too. Heck make it a Raid or a special 24 toons fight on 2 airships vs a moving dragon like the spectral dragon of mabar. Yeah I know, lag lag lag, but it will be fun. How it is flagged will be up to the devs. Dragon's defeat triggers a fall to the sea where the real boss await. No, not a kraken, I never liked kraken fight (and it does not make sense imo, underwater...kraken would be very powerful, above water well...there is a reason they are sea creatures with no bone structure). It will be the dreaded Dragon Turtle, finally a melee dream come true, extremely (read EXTREMELY) resistant to arrows, spells and piercing damages, slashing at special areas only while bludgeoning will work most anywhere, immune to Monks weaponless attacks/special moves (mwahahahaha). Need very special weapon materials to break a bizzare turtle armored DR.

[Onetunge]

Epic 3BC sounds nice. Nice to see they didn't gave up on Eberon.
Will there be a raid included as well? That would be nice.


Players with powerful ranged attacks can directly attack these airship monsters.

This is the only thing that wories me, looks like more monkcher bait.

[Nédime]

Well it's a good solution for people who don't want to run a bunch of sucky dungeons. I'm super glad I can buy the stuff from haunted halls on the AH. I hate that awful quest.

Lol, is there anything you don't hate ?


* * *

I was preparing myself to getting underwhelmed but I must admit, it seems I was way too negative.

I really like those ideas :

- not having to fight Epic mangy dogs
- crew working together and not only tons of hp mobs
- different tactics to beat airships (shoot, board, sabotage, take control)
- treasure (please make it (visually) the biggest pile of gold ever)

[Rull]

I Like it.

Consider raising the XP of the heroic quests before you release epic to make the pack more popular.
The reason 3BC has alwasy been a laughing stock was the horrible XP (even more than the absence of any named loot). Noone liked those quests, and that had nothing to do with the quests themselves.

[PurpleFooz]

...

The proposed E3BC looks nice. Will wait n see. But it is about Treasure and pirates and Argonnessan is involved, and no Dragon?????? We need a dragon vs airship fight!!!!! I know, I know, melee toons will hate that, a flying Dragon most likely taken out by range and spells, but I am sure the devs can come up with something there too. Heck make it a Raid or a special 24 toons fight on 2 airships vs a moving dragon like the spectral dragon of mabar. Yeah I know, lag lag lag, but it will be fun. How it is flagged will be up to the devs. Dragon's defeat triggers a fall to the sea where the real boss await. No, not a kraken, I never liked kraken fight (and it does not make sense imo, underwater...kraken would be very powerful, above water well...there is a reason they are sea creatures with no bone structure). It will be the dreaded Dragon Turtle, finally a melee dream come true, extremely (read EXTREMELY) resistant to arrows, spells and piercing damages, slashing at special areas only while bludgeoning will work most anywhere, immune to Monks weaponless attacks/special moves (mwahahahaha). Need very special weapon materials to break a bizzare turtle armored DR.

You are on the same page as our initial design. We were initially trying to build a 3-way fight between the players, the pirate airships, and dragons. Alas, that become prohibitively complex to implement, and we decided to cut the dragons. I would almost say that we cut it for the sake of our own sanity, but we already lost that when we made the Delirium dungeons ;)

[UurlockYgmeov]

OOOHHH!!!

Dragonturtle!!! Heck Yeah!

[Ovrad]

I would almost say that we cut it for the sake of our own sanity, but we already lost that when we made the Delirium dungeons ;)

So which update will include a fearsome Bacon Dragon, with boiling grease as a breath attack ? :D

http://i.imgur.com/sidqcYJ.jpg
(Thank you google, you rock!)

[Grosbeak07]

You are on the same page as our initial design. We were initially trying to build a 3-way fight between the players, the pirate airships, and dragons. Alas, that become prohibitively complex to implement, and we decided to cut the dragons. I would almost say that we cut it for the sake of our own sanity, but we already lost that when we made the Delirium dungeons ;)


That would have been awesome!

However, the lag would have reduced it to a slide show, so better you didn't do it. :)

[Infiltraitor]

If you run out of ideas for loot, might I suggest Blue Augments of Healing Amp? That is all. Thank you.

[dunklezhan]

You are on the same page as our initial design. We were initially trying to build a 3-way fight between the players, the pirate airships, and dragons. Alas, that become prohibitively complex to implement, and we decided to cut the dragons. I would almost say that we cut it for the sake of our own sanity, but we already lost that when we made the Delirium dungeons ;)

You know that heroic quest you cut from the epic version...?

Regardless of dragons and air combat (which sounds sweet but incomprehensibly difficult to fit in the current game engine), melee-heavy beach combat with The Dreaded Dragon Turtle as a short but epic quest would be AWESOME. Especially if it would scale for raid groups. So not really a "proper" raid, but certainly in keeping with the more recent twin dragon affair (which I love the accessibility of, don't mistake my categorising it as 'not a proper raid' as somehow derogatary, just differentiating it from longer affairs. For that matter, I don't consider Hound a proper raid either). It doesn't even need 'plot' as such. Its the friggin' Dreaded Dragon Turtle! Just kill it and make it leave us alone! Its a danger to shipping!

With waves of Sahaugin, or pirates, or Sahaugin Pirates, or something else, to keep things interesting, natch.

[Flavilandile]

For the sake of transparency (and curiosity), could we see that short list, to see what the Players Council actually had to choose from? To put it bluntly, it doesn't sound like they were given a very good list to choose from. Perhaps I'm incorrect.

We were give a choice between Yuan-Ti and Sahuagins.

We were asked if we wanted Kobolds or not.

Then we were told about the rest... Among which Gryphons and Harpies were listed... We managed to remove the gryphons from the list. ( But it was a choice between Black Death and Cholera IMHO... neither fits well in 3BC. )

Now keep in mind that there's more than the monsters listed above.

Oh and I can confirm that initially Dragons were part of the idea for the airship combat thingie.

[SirShen]

If you run out of ideas for loot, might I suggest Blue Augments of Healing Amp? That is all. Thank you.

Great idea also can you add a True Seeing Augment.

[poltt48]

I still have to agree with what people are saying there should really be a incentive to playing EE. I have beat EE HH about 10 times most time without dieing and just not worth the extra time. I get so many more loots on EN. Why am I wasting time playing on EE when drops far less loots then EN and takes longer. Seems this is going to just be the same way. Will not be hard for guild group to take them all on EE since we have best items in game and most of us 20+ tr but not worth doing cause no reward for it.

[Vooduspyce]

I want to man a ballista and shoot down a pirate airship! I have to admit I was disappointed that 3BC was the next in the world to go epic but the more I read about it, the more I'm excited for it to arrive. Can't wait to have another chance to drown my guildies while looking for the elusive bounty ;)

[Chaimberland]

The Dragon Turtle is a great idea. It's probably too late to implement for U22 but I really hope it can be added later on down the road.

[poltt48]

With how crappy all the players councle is saying loot is this pack is going to fail big time. I know if loot is as terrible as they keep saying I will only play it once on EE to see how is then never play it again.

[Nédime]

If you run out of ideas for loot, might I suggest Blue Augments of Healing Amp? That is all. Thank you.

+1. I'm surprised I haven't whined for that yet.



With how crappy all the players councle is saying loot is this pack is going to fail big time. I know if loot is as terrible as they keep saying I will only play it once on EE to see how is then never play it again.

You definitely need another post in the same page stating you play EE, some may have missed it

[The_Human_Cypher]

The Dragon Turtle is a great idea. It's probably too late to implement for U22 but I really hope it can be added later on down the road.

Yes

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Dragon_Turtle

[MangLord]

Some new augments would be cool. I would not like to see EE-only-drops like you did with pretty much all the current named augments. A system of earning, like you have with thunderforged weapons and HH gear, may be more grindy but far more inclusive to the general populace. I'd rather farm black stones for a couple hours each day than hope for great luck on an EE completion.

I fully expect at least one named rapier and buckler in this update. A couple other light weapons would be nice, especially the odd ones like picks, light maces and handaxes. (an undead specific light mace would be really nice for TWF in Thunderholme) Please don't give us named junk like Prison Break and Masters Riposte from update 19. I can't give those weapons away. Update 19 loot was pretty bad overall. U21 loot was much, much better.

A rune arm that epic enemies can't automatically evade would be nice, too. My lvl 24 Glass Cannon from Cove is a complete joke. I'm still using Archaic Device for the most part. An epic Strinati's Cannon would be nice.

[bls904c2]

That IS a problem for 3BC. If you give us no incentive to run these on EEs, we will be done in like 1 week of farming on Normal and forget about it forever.

Just like Haunted Halls. I've got my items from there and I have no reason to step in that quest any more. Sure, it's a good quest but no loot = no incentive to run it.

i hear this so often its frustrating it might be just my age but i remember the atari and the nes even the master system (sega) difficulty had nothing to do with loot ever. even the NEOGEO in jr high, difficulty never gave better loot. its just a way of increasing the challange. i remember Doom having level 1 "im too young to die" to level 3 as "hurt me plenty" to difficulty level 5 "nightmare". no better loot no better weapons or armor it was just a way to prove your skill.

now get off my grass you hoodlum

i take back my rant everyone is entitled to their own opinion on what makes game play fun but be sure there are quite a few of us out there that play things just for the challange and for the dungeon crawl. i have been here longer than my join date suggests, thats the time i left my year long VIP status. been here before citw and i still enjoy full completion of finding everything and slaying everything i even apply 1 lvl of theif or arti for traps. i don't need shinnies to enjoy play but to each their own

[bsquishwizzy]

i hear this so often its frustrating it might be just my age but i remember the atari and the nes even the master system (sega) difficulty had nothing to do with loot ever. even the NEOGEO in jr high, difficulty never gave better loot. its just a way of increasing the challange. i remember Doom having level 1 "im too young to die" to level 3 as "hurt me plenty" to difficulty level 5 "nightmare". no better loot no better weapons or armor it was just a way to prove your skill.

now get off my grass you hoodlum

i take back my rant everyone is entitled to their own opinion on what makes game play fun but be sure there are quite a few of us out there that play things just for the challange and for the dungeon crawl. i have been here longer than my join date suggests, thats the time i left my year long VIP status. been here before citw and i still enjoy full completion of finding everything and slaying everything i even apply 1 lvl of theif or arti for traps. i don't need shinnies to enjoy play but to each their own

We’ve entered the day and age of having you cake, and eating it too, and expecting a piece of someone else’s cake as well.

As an aside, when Doom first came out, we used to play it in Deathmatch after hours at work. I got really good in timing launching rockets at that secret door on lvl 2. I had it so that the rocket flew in juuuust as the door was closing behind the other player….


BOOM!

Their screen would go red, and they could hear me snickering in the other cubicle.

[poltt48]

Was so looking forward to this until played it on lamnia. All the quests are level 25. Loot is level 24. So while everyone is looking for items with 11 to a stat or insight 4 like we have got last 2 or 3 updates you put out more 8 or 3 insights to stats that are useless at this point way to go turbine. Looks like I will never play this update.

[FynWarFyn]

Have not played in Lam yet and probably wont, no time for gaming much these days. However, I am truthfully hoping that the AI for mobs will be vastly improved and that it will be transferred to heroic and all and every quests instances thereafter. The AI has been a vast disappointment for this game for a very long time. People keep clamoring for loot, loot, loot...I just want a good AI. Adding 1 million HP to a mob is the most laziest stupidiest way to increase challenge. It makes people want for more loot, which is very fun killing.

I want mobs that heal mobs and debuff mobs of my spells. I want mobs who blocks, shields or hide from my arrows for Christ's sake. I want mobs who cast a rage spell that ACTUALLY make me enter a TRUE rage and melee attack anyone closest to me, also disabling spellcasting. I want mobs who actually act as in a party and support each other. I want mobs to stop being sitting ducks in a firewall or running back and forth in a BB. Sure it is a lot harder to implement than adding HP and one shot kill abilities but it will truly make this game come alive and it is what this game need sorely. I also want the auto-target to be disable if out of point-blanc range for range attack or out of spell range for spells with some exceptions of course (some attack types or weapons used or spells that always hit and such....) and it should also be unable to auto-target a moving mob. We have a reticule in front of our avatar, we should learn to use it. I fail to see the fun in repetitively pressing a mouse button or a key all quest long unless I melee mobs, without moving my mouse at all.

A good AI will be changing this game from solo-because-I-can-and-it-is-soooooo-easy-on-heroic to holy-I-need-to-put-a-lfm/call-for-arms-cause-it-is-harder-than-I-though-going-at-it-alone. The AI may need to be incremental from casual to elite so that running a quest on elite is really worth it, as a bragging right by itself. Forget the loot, it is an extra sweet thing on the side, but making it thru a quest on elite should be worth more than the loot itself. I am just a bit tired of the Diablo-dropped-loot-wannabe this game has become. I thought I was playing DDO, that's all. The real challenge should always have been to complete the mission, not what kind of loot this quest will drop. So the favor thing may need to be revamped so that it really does something spectacular from getting all those favor points at elite level which in turn should be very challenging (in fact I think that all elite should be "challenging, party is most desirably required").

As for loot, we need a lot of specific drop tables. For example, a quest that has lots of undead may have a few more undead bane items tucked in hard to find corners from dead adventurers who have actually prepared for that undead quest but died on the way, in addition to their so-called backpacks laying around pointlessly. In a quest involving thieves and rogues a few more finesse(able) weapons or thieves implements (invis, blur, displace, bonus to search, spot, disable...items) may be found and the final chest may be actually very diversified cause they are actually thieves and they steal or fence stuffs found nowhere else so it might have a very good artifact or just mediocre gold and gems...
Then I think that a chest should be of limited capacity, so big chest has more stuffs while smaller chests have less. And not every one gets a separate list of loots but a share of a pool of loot, so people can actually trade for something others don't need or want, either from their share of loot or from their backpack, unless one party is giving away free loot to the other. And untaken stuffs left in chest for more than a minute after that person closes "his/her" chest become free for all to grab, first come first serve.
Then I think that we should have different kind of chest types. A weapon rack would yield weapons/ammunitions, a bookcase would yield scrolls and tomes, a lab would yield potions.....A dragon's hoard would yield many types and lots of gold and gems too.
Raid loot should be set at a total (read total, not per player) of 1 random named loot per 6/4/3 players on n/h/e difficulty, so there would always be 1 named loot for 6 players short manning a raid on normal. So more loot at elite with 12 players. Also raid loot is in lieu of valor commendations so raid loot can be traded only for another raid loot or for valor (will be subtracted from total valor not just valor in chest--a set price). Valor can then be traded for a specific raid loot, every 10-20? completions, at an increasing set price for each raid loot traded by the quest giver NPC, set price is constantly increasing even after TR. Raid loot should still be hard to get, no matter what.
Epic raid loot should not drop at all. They should be earned. Epic valor earned can be traded for a token by the quest giver, also at an increasing price, then used at an altar at the end of the epic raid quest itself to obtain a specific epic raid loot, available only every 5-10? completions. Epic raid loot can be earn but it should still be hard to collect all of them. Raid bypass hourglasses shortens epic raid to 1 day instead of instantly.

Just a few changes I would like and quite a challenge to devs.