Weekly Dev Activities - 8/27/07

[Riddikulus]

Yea because VoN6 was so hard.

People have freaking solo'd VoN6 dude.

Not to detract from the rest of your point, which is spot on... oh really?

I'd like to know how someone manages to solo VoN6, the pillars in particular.

[Cowdenicus]

Not to detract from the rest of your point, which is spot on... oh really?

I'd like to know how someone manages to solo VoN6, the pillars in particular.

Photoshopped.

[Qzipoun]

Not to detract from the rest of your point, which is spot on... oh really?

I'd like to know how someone manages to solo VoN6, the pillars in particular.

I know of at least one person who has, check the European forums there's a whole thread where he talks about it and even has videos of it.

[LA_MIKE]

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...deoid=15806036

[Riddikulus]

I know of at least one person who has, check the European forums there's a whole thread where he talks about it and even has videos of it.

Nifty... the last part of the pillars is cut off though, but I found his thread here and it seems that is on purpose because he thinks it might be an exploit.

[Kalanth]

I would like to see a change to ALL raids to make them hard again. While impressive that people can solo the dragon, queen, and reaver, I find it dissapointing as well. It was more fun when the quests were the talk of the town and it would take people months to figure out how to defeat it.

[Spookydodger]

Come on, be reasonable. The computer can only store numbers up to a certain size before they have to start using floating point numbers. Besides, I don't think the servers could handle the workload of counting PoP runs

Binary-coded decimal, my friend. The workhorse of the Fortran era brought to you, fellow DDOites, for your PoP-ad-naseum needs!

[Spookydodger]

I would like to see a change to ALL raids to make them hard again. While impressive that people can solo the dragon, queen, and reaver, I find it dissapointing as well. It was more fun when the quests were the talk of the town and it would take people months to figure out how to defeat it.

It still takes people months to figure them out. That figuring out usually starts on Risia.

Quests/Raids being easier now due to finding tricks doesn't make them less difficult.

In almost any case you could care to cite, soloing a mission requires incredible equipment, prodigious talent, excessive knowledge of the game, and mind-boggling use of expendables such as scrolls and potions.

Just because it's soloed doesn't mean one should mistake it for "easier"

It's just a matter of someone not doing "insane mode" first, and eventually getting so good at something that they make it look like child's play.

Making it harder would generally make the quest totally impossible for casual gamers. I still see more Reaver raids fail than succeed.

[Riddikulus]

I would like to see a change to ALL raids to make them hard again. While impressive that people can solo the dragon, queen, and reaver, I find it dissapointing as well. It was more fun when the quests were the talk of the town and it would take people months to figure out how to defeat it.

It takes lots of practice and lots of consumables to solo raids... I don't think it's a big deal.

In any case, what would you do to make them hard?

How about a room full of red named beholders who are all buffed up with everything we cast on ourselves?

The only way to make raids a true challenge is to only allow each account to complete the raid once.

It would be interesting if the raid counted up how many times each person has repeated, totaled them up, and changed tactics accordingly. Once you've repeated Velah 20 times or so, she starts showing up as an ancient red dragon, etc. Have the AI metagame the metagamers...

[Kalanth]

It takes lots of practice and lots of consumables to solo raids... I don't think it's a big deal.

In any case, what would you do to make them hard?

I realize that people put a lot of effort into the raid to learn it so they can solo or reduce the number of people involved. And I don't look at just monsters as making something difficult. Monsters can be defeated, in many cases easily. I would say randomize the traps, make obsticles which require the mind, hide little pieces of the puzzle and randomize where that piece is hidden (like the bodies in Stromvaulds Mine). Little twists to the SOP of the raid would make it feel less like a chore and more like the grand adventure that it should be.

[Riddikulus]

I would say randomize the traps, make obsticles which require the mind, hide little pieces of the puzzle and randomize where that piece is hidden (like the bodies in Stromvaulds Mine).

Yeah, I find stormvauld's more annoying than challenging. Where is that last stupid freakin piece?... we've killed everything and we're just back tabbing our way from top to bottom. Yeah that's challenging... not.

Little twists to the SOP of the raid would make it feel less like a chore and more like the grand adventure that it should be.

The raid and raid prereqs are quite a grand adventure already IMO... the problem is that there are not enough of them, so people repeat them to the point where they have it memorized.

[Kalanth]

Yeah, I find stormvauld's more annoying than challenging. Where is that last stupid freakin piece?... we've killed everything and we're just back tabbing our way from top to bottom. Yeah that's challenging... not.

It's not that bad if you are actually thinking as you go through it. But you missed the first two parts, such as random puzzles and more mentally challenging puzzles. Maybe a social solution with answers that change? Or sure, you would limited on the total number of correct answers and questions, and eventually someone would memorize it, but at least they are ideas that go beyond, "Hey, if I put a Gorgon here and made him immune to everything but chicken feathers, I wonder how long the players would take to figure it out?"

[MasterofDungeons]

/clip The above example would show that you've completed PoP 36 times, including normal and elite, The Crucible 3 times, including Hard and Elite and MoM 17 times, including once on each difficulty./clip

That would be brilliant, please devs...

[Drfirewater79]

QUOTE
"The chance for raid items to drop is increased when the raid dungeon is run on higher difficulty levels.The actual increase in drop rate is dependent on the actual increase in danger of the raid as the Difficulty Level is increased. The maximum drop rate of raid items from any raid on Elite is 25%"


thank you for listening i have been saying that this needed to be done for over a year now good on ya

ps why is it that we never get any new spells these days i know the focus of this update is missions and new metamagic focus

but can we see more prestige and spells in the next update?

[dragnmoon]

ps why is it that we never get any new spells these days i know the focus of this update is missions and new metamagic focus

but can we see more prestige and spells in the next update?

Most new spells are added when thier is a Level Cap raise. No level Cap raise so hence lack of new spells.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Nifty... the last part of the pillars is cut off though, but I found his thread here and it seems that is on purpose because he thinks it might be an exploit.

You do know there are 3 parts to the video right? If you view them all you can see him take down all 3. I imagine the concern about "exploit" comes from how he gets at 2nd base. Brilliant really, clealry unintended by the devs, but brilliant.

[Riddikulus]

You do know there are 3 parts to the video right? If you view them all you can see him take down all 3. I imagine the concern about "exploit" comes from how he gets at 2nd base. Brilliant really, clealry unintended by the devs, but brilliant.

Yes, I saw that there were three videos.

I didn't see him take down the pillars.

The first video ends with him jumping the barrier into velah's pen, running to the back and prepping 2nd base all while getting fireballed a zillion times.

The second video starts with him facing off with velah after the pillars have dropped.

I don't see where he actually destroys the three pillars at more or less the same time. If you do see it, let me know which video and about what time position.

[Montrose]

Yes, I saw that there were three videos.

I didn't see him take down the pillars.

The first video ends with him jumping the barrier into velah's pen, running to the back and prepping 2nd base all while getting fireballed a zillion times.

The second video starts with him facing off with velah after the pillars have dropped.

I don't see where he actually destroys the three pillars at more or less the same time. If you do see it, let me know which video and about what time position.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...oid=2052618109

Right at the start. I can't give time position because the video doesn't actually have that info (so far as I can tell)

[Riddikulus]

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...oid=2052618109

Right at the start. I can't give time position because the video doesn't actually have that info (so far as I can tell)

OK thanks... I must have had some weird glitch earlier today.

The second video does show him taking all three pillars down in time. I don't know why I missed it the first time... it was like I started it halfway or something.

Very cool.

[arminius]

I wish the change to /death had been listed here.

It is leaving off stuff like that that makes the community paranoid and scouting behind every rock and bush for other undocumented changes. Then they start imagining phantom undocumented changes and a firestorm builds till finally the devs have to step in and swear on a stack of Bibles that X was in no way changed. All the bad feelings and doubts remain, no matter how the issue is resolved. What a mess.

I understand withholding some exploit fix information to the last minute, but overall the rule should be: If you change something, you should list it. If you are certain enough about a change to put it on Risia, then you should be certain enough about it to list it.

_