New Difficulty Feedback: Casual

[Shassa]

OK SOS on Casual...

Got careless in the Fire section, and a solo cleric surrounded by 7 Effretti and 2 Fire Elementals cannot move to escape and use her BB with any effect. Since everything out there was more or less Implosion proof, I died. Got thru part one with the Stone Giants ok. Since I usually follow a group spent more time than I should have going in circles a bit. Took a just a bit over 15 on that part (this is more an allaround CLeric, Metas are Quicken, Maximize, Empower Healing), but with enough melee ability that I actually just hammered down the last few giants instead of grabbed a pot. *snippety snip*

First of all Zenako, thanks for the report. Second of all, I will have you guys notice! Zenako, who is clearly not a noob or new player just admittedly learned Stealer of Souls better by soloing through Casual. I too have a habit of going in circles the first time through a quest, you should have seen me learning Inferno of the Damned. There's never anyone around to tell me where to go or what to do. Do you think I learn maps better by having to pay attention rather than just following the group? You bet.

Sorry to throw you up as an example Z, but I had to point that out. Casual is not the death knell that some people are claiming it to be. It is a very useful tool for all ability levels.

[Junts]

Personally, any quest with a purple named mob (like SoS and dreaming dark) should be unavailable on casual. They are in the raid boss category, after all.

That those 6 man instances happen to capstone their packs without being 12 mans doesn't change the way they should be treated in difficulty.

[Razcar]

Do the monsters even fight back in the new setting? Because that's about the only way it gets any easier than it already is on Normal.

A bunch of Bugbears standing around with no weapons waving white flags... that sounds really exciting to play. <rollseyes>

On Casual the bugbears even drives you to your soccer training

[Samiusbot]

Oh good - I've been wanting to run Against the Demon Queen on my level 6 cleric.

you can't do DQ until 8. ha ha.

Got you! I win the troll game!

[moorewr]

On Casual the bugbears even drives you to your soccer training

That's no bugbear! That's your mother!

[Zenako]

First of all Zenako, thanks for the report. Second of all, I will have you guys notice! Zenako, who is clearly not a noob or new player just admittedly learned Stealer of Souls better by soloing through Casual. I too have a habit of going in circles the first time through a quest, you should have seen me learning Inferno of the Damned. There's never anyone around to tell me where to go or what to do. Do you think I learn maps better by having to pay attention rather than just following the group? You bet.

Sorry to throw you up as an example Z, but I had to point that out. Casual is not the death knell that some people are claiming it to be. It is a very useful tool for all ability levels.

No problems. Never went at SOS solo before, cause I knew it would either a) be rather costly in supplies and b) would hardly be worth it with the borked DT armor runes. (also never even bothered thinking about Prey either.)

Usually when on a caster or cleric, would keep a distance from the ones engaging the mobs to avoid a) large arc swings from the stone giants, b) AoE Ice spells in the Frost sections (although I would often be one of the first across the bridges), c) avoid the DBFs from the elementals to lower healing needs, and the Air Elemental fun and Large arc swings in part d. So when solo, you need to run other tactics obviously. Another character of mine who has been thru it a lot is a Ranger, and in many parts of that quest he is ranging to control aggro or draw it away from more vulnerable types.

Ironically the Refuge is one of the few areas I have done little soloing in. Have soloed a number of the Battlefield quests (mostly when it was on Lamannia...I tend to be more social on the live servers and run with friends/guild types fairly often).

[ahpook]

I have little problem with inclusion of this new mode but please don't call it casual. It will attach an unwarranted stigma to us casual players who may never even use that setting. Please call it "Easy", "Novice", "Learning", "Sub-normal", "Simple", ....

Also with this new easier mode coming in, please review your scaling levels for normal and hard. The scaling is too generous from my experience (and I am scaling supporter). It is too tempting to not bring in another player because with current scaling levels you cannot be certain that they will be more effective than the scaling factor they are adding. Since there is now an easy mode for those that need it, some challenge can be restored to normal mode.

When Dungeon Scaling was first previewed I tested a bunch of self-healing bosses and found that problem on all of them: Two-toed Tobias, Ardan ir'Karsmore, Rort Rotseer, ARN01D, Whisperdoom, Taeron Rimnon, and more.

This may have been fixed already. My rogue solo'd Rort just fine. He was working him down slowly and he dropped quickly once deception went off. (Yes winsom, deception works on the red named).

[ezgoezit]

Personally, any quest with a purple named mob (like SoS and dreaming dark) should be unavailable on casual. They are in the raid boss category, after all.

That those 6 man instances happen to capstone their packs without being 12 mans doesn't change the way they should be treated in difficulty.

Thanks for all of your posts in this thread Junts. They are all good (+1). They are logically and fairly presented.

I can see a lot of good and some bad coming from the casual setting for me personally. I am at the point where a lot of the quests I need to do only show up on the LFMs occasionally and more often than not there is a stated or unstated expectation that you know the quest. I see this as an opportunity to learn the quest either solo or with my less-leet friends so that one day we may attain that lofty aspiration of being worthy of questing with our more experienced counterparts. I have no expectation that i will get the same rewards as on n/h/e, but at least i will learn something about it which would really be more valuable than the loot there.

Ez

[Razcar]

That's no bugbear! That's your mother!

Ah that explains the fluffy ears!

[krud]

Junts, as much as I like you, that is one hell of a wall of text. You got the TL;DR version?

Here's the cliffs notes for dummies version:

these freakin casual noobs are gonna ruin all our raids.

[ddaedelus]

I don't care much for the wording. "Casual" is not a difficulty setting, it refers to how much time someone has to devote to the game and the priority they put on gaming.

"Easy," on the other hand, is a common difficulty setting.

However, now that I think about it... if you call it "casual" then DDO can join the rest of the MMO nation and start our own Casual vs. Hardcore arguments just like in... that other game. Maybe they'll even replace the FTP vs. VET arguments. That might be worth it.

[dasein18]

For real? Casual? I thought running the Depth series with one character (solo) on normal difficulty and at level was casual.

Sad very sad.

[Zenako]

For real? Casual? I thought running the Depth series with one character (solo) on normal difficulty and at level was casual.

Sad very sad.

Wait until you try solo on Casual....if you though solo on normal was easy now....

[lyeman]

Lol, I have this image in my head of a group taking longer to buff than to finish the quest

[techwench]

Wait until you try solo on Casual....if you though solo on normal was easy now....

I just ran through part of VON2 on casual on level 11 ranger, just to check it out. I 3-shot killed the first beholder (on the way to wooden dagger) without manyshot. One shot killed the spider when I jumped off the platform to see where it would teleport me to.

It is very easy (of course, being 3 levels over probably didn't help)...

HOWEVER, I still see the value of this setting and love the idea!

[Quanefel]

I don't care much for the wording. "Casual" is not a difficulty setting, it refers to how much time someone has to devote to the game and the priority they put on gaming.

"Easy," on the other hand, is a common difficulty setting.

However, now that I think about it... if you call it "casual" then DDO can join the rest of the MMO nation and start our own Casual vs. Hardcore arguments just like in... that other game. Maybe they'll even replace the FTP vs. VET arguments. That might be worth it.

I see it as rubber PC words to avoid offending anyone. Instead of just being direct and calling it simply the "easy" setting, they use something ambigious as "casual". Not suprising from a company based in the east coast.

East coast sensibilities, gotta love it.

[Credinus]

While not necessarily commenting on the specifics of casual difficulty since I don't have the Lam client, I'm going to chime in here with my feedback about the general idea of it...


Awesome.

There were bound to be complaints about the implementation of this, and some I do partially agree with (such as extra rare named loot that can be farmed easier if they can drop in casual difficulty), but for the most part, I see this as a huge bonus. I play on Cannith, and there's probably a good 60-70% of the quests in the game that I can never, ever find a group for, either because they're less popular pay-to-play quests (like the Catacombs), or they're really unpopular free-to-play quests (like the Pit). Luckily, my main character is a monk and soloing most of these on hard or elite is still entirely doable, but on any of my other characters, that's a huge chunk of the game that I'm missing out on simply because they're characters not built for soloing and groups are just too far and few between for those quests.

Another perfect example of why I see this as a great addition... My level 13 monk is -STILL- unable to solo the Marut on VON4 (due to still not being lucky enough to find or buy a pair of metalline handwraps and not caring enough to purchase some metalline kamas just for one quest), and despite hours of having it up on LFM, not getting a single group request... So now, I may just finally be able to get flagged for the raid portion.


All the praise aside, though, as I mentioned before... I wouldn't mind seeing named loot left out of casual difficulty chests, and they may very well be that way already.

[Zenako]

I see it as rubber PC words to avoid offending anyone. Instead of just being direct and calling it simply the "easy" setting, they use something ambigious as "casual". Not suprising from a company based in the east coast.

East coast sensibilities, gotta love it.

Actual the various settings should be more like

Easy, Whatever, Hard, Wicked Hard, OMG

[ahpook]

/Off topic

Another perfect example of why I see this as a great addition... My level 13 monk is -STILL- unable to solo the Marut on VON4 (due to still not being lucky enough to find or buy a pair of metalline handwraps and not caring enough to purchase some metalline kamas just for one quest), and despite hours of having it up on LFM, not getting a single group request... So now, I may just finally be able to get flagged for the raid portion.

Your level 13 monk should have little problem in this quest on normal. But you will want to use Anarchic handwraps and not metalline. Anarchic (or true chaos) gets past his DR. You might want to bring a decoy hireling in case he thunder punches you though.
/Back On topic

After thinking about it, I like a tag like "learning" or "training" the best. It implies it is easier and also that you should plan on moving up to harder difficulty at some time. It would also imply that the rewards are reduced from the normal mode. Certainly better than Casual.

[Junts]

metalline handwraps are ml 10 so you probably won't be seeing any for a while.

However, you don't need metalline handwraps for the marut, you need anarchic ones, which are cheap and always at a broker.