My Thought on Endless Night event

[Creadance]

A few things I would like to see changed next time for the undead event.

Fix it so if you enter the dragon event as a group or raid they put you all in the same Instant. I was in 3 raid groups of all 20th level and every time we all got sent to different instants, at the most 4 or 5 where sent to the same.

Drought’s where sort of a disadvantage to melee classes but where great for casters.

I am sorry but it took an average of about 3 hours to get enough turn ins to enter the dragon instant they need to reduce the turn in amount . My God I was on more this weekend then I have ever been just to get 3 scales took 4 attempts.

Would be nice to have the graveyard instance with only level 20’s or appropriate levels range so you don’t have to fight lower level mobs and suffer penalties.

[Khanyth]

Things I loved:

... loved that you had to stay with your group so that you would not spawn weaker enemies.

... loved that you could solo or group and still get collectables

... loved that you could get hordes of mobs in one area

... loved that in one instance, you could spawn 7 red named mobs


Things I Was Indifferent To:

... indifferent to the fact that so many vampire fangs dropped, when really, you didn't need that many. Lots of people complained about this, but to me, it wasn't that big of a deal



Things that I did not love:

... did not love that you were in a raid with some people that you didn't know. I went 1 for 6 this weekend, because 1) people didn't talk over general chat, 2) people didn't know what they were doing, 3) some people don't(or did not appear to) understand english, or 4) general efftardidity. It just sucked.... that's all

... did not love that you could not purchase a spectral dragon scale, especially after the whole 9999/10,000 snafu.

... did not love the lag, but I hesitate to say that it caused me or my raid group to fail on the dragon.... it was annoying, but not worth blaming. Others might feel differently about this so I won't pretend to speak for anyone

[GuntherBovine]

Overall, I really enjoyed it. I spent a huge amount of time playing in the event. I played a level 7/8 wizard and didn't have problems finding level appropriate mobs to kill.

My suggestions:
1. Have the mouse over work on the items that you are purchasing. I had no clue if the items were any good. I bought the wrong wand because the part of the item description that actually said what type of wand it was was clipped off
2. Be able to turn in Vampire Fangs and Lich Dust for motes. The supply of Vampire Fangs grossly exceeded demand
3. Auto updates on the dragon. Sometimes people would post messages about it, but that was rare in my experience. Something like "Spectral Dragon in the Northwest Shrine" and an update whenever it losses 10% of its life.

[dkyle]

Biggest problem that also should be trivial to fix: get rid of the dang two-minute auto-recall. And make sure dead people get scales (heard they didn't, don't know for sure). I lost out on a scale because of a lag wipe in my altar room. Apparently, the instance pulled through, but not before I got kicked out. Just have that "public zone" release window pop up; I saw it in the Graveyard, why not with the Dragon?

Some kind of icon above dead peoples' heads would be nice too. Hard to see who to rez otherwise.

[Memnir]

Mabar Event After Action Review:


The Good

• I liked the Barter system for upgrading the items. A nice feature I'd like to see return.
  
• I appreciated that the event encouraged grouping, even when not in the Dragon encounter, but it was not absolutely necessary.
  
• The items were worth the grind, and upgraded appropriately at each tier.
  
• It was a fun way to spend time in a non-questing manner - either just running around the graveyard or hanging out with friends.

The Bad

• Liches spawned way too infrequently, even for large groups.
  
• Too many Vampire fangs, with too little to do with them. Really, I didn't need to end the event with 200+ fangs, after using the ones I needed.
  
• The Dragon encounter had too many varied bugs and some questionable design choices to be consistently enjoyable. Yes, I had many successful runs - but between lag, the occasional example of the Dragon not dying at 0HPs, and lever shenanigans - it was very hit or miss.
  
• Non-Lich Red Named spawns should have mattered more, being a guaranteed component in my opinion.
  
• I received an absurd number of Vampire fangs.
  
• The Dragon pretty much was just another single-room Boss beat-down, and it got very boring after a few runs. Yes, there were multiple single-rooms... but with no way to influence or interact with the other rooms, it still boiled down to being boxed into one room with a Boss to kill.
  
• Too many Vampire Fangs.
  
• It should have lasted longer, or come back for a few weekends like the original Risia event last year. One weekend, and on such a family activity-intensive weekend, was really not a good call.

The Indifferent:

• I liked the level-related-instancing of the Dragon encounter, and it really should have been applied to the Graveyard as well. It would have been more rewarding without having to deal with spawns not in level-range, both for high and low level characters. The Wrath of Mabar was pretty pointless, and just annoying most of the time.
  
• Too may Vampire fangs. Do I seem to mention that a lot? It's because I have a lot.
  
• The price of the Coffee and the Droughts seemed to be reversed to me.
  
• Since Shields are so underused in DDO, I think there should have been one on the rewards list to perhaps entice more folks finding use for them.
  
• Too many Vampire Fangs.
  
• Needing to contact a GM to buy a scale because of the stacking issue was just silly. The price should have been lowered, the stacks fixed, or the option removed. It caused a lot of confusion in the Gen Chat I saw. While I never had the need/want to buy a Scale - it was a bad bug to leave in.

[Zenako]

Overall I enjoyed it, but due to the fairly short time window felt very encouraged to overplay during it, since I had a number of character I wanted to make things for.

Vampire fangs...300+ extra now..are they going to be the next festival twig?

Instance conflicts. By that I mean graveyard groups of disparate levels conflicting with the needs of each other. A high level group banging around spawn Vampires and up mobs, will simply insta kill lowlevel characters who get nothing for it. At the same time a bunch of low levels running around and spawning zombies and skeletons will make it unplayable for high level groups. Even groups of 14's were getting tells from groups of 20's asking that they find another instance to work, since even 14's spawn a lot of wimpy mobs for 20's. Most requests were polite, but some were not. While it might be hard to make it absolute, perhaps something as simple as choosing which range of the graveyard to enter would help a lot. (Much like Barracks Assault, with a 6/12/18 targets, or low, mid and high level targets). Make each set of instances be restricted to the level class selected. Like you have instances 1 thru 5 of low level graveyard, and instances 1 thru 4 of mid level graveyard and instances 1 thru 3 of high level graveyard. Use some of the same sorting tech used for populating into the Dragon Raid encounter.

Communication inside the Spectral Dragon fight. A simple thing that would help immensely would just be a blue dot on the map for everyone in the instance. 90% of the communication was about how many are at each location? If you could just look at a map and see 4 dots in the SW and only 1 dot on the NW, you know where to go.

Far better and complete desciptions on the items from the item seller would help a lot. ESPECIALLY for this items (wands) which are class resticted (with umd levels). The info was available, but not in game. You could not mouse over the item in the shop and see the whole info, just a very short blurb about it. The normal mouse over an item (like in the AH) should have applied.

[ArkoHighStar]

Mabar Event After Action Review:


The Good

• I liked the Barter system for upgrading the items. A nice feature I'd like to see return.
  
• I appreciated that the event encouraged grouping, even when not in the Dragon encounter, but it was not absolutely necessary.
  
• The items were worth the grind, and upgraded appropriately at each tier.
  
• It was a fun way to spend time in a non-questing manner - either just running around the graveyard or hanging out with friends.

The Bad

• Liches spawned way too infrequently, even for large groups.
  
• Too many Vampire fangs, with too little to do with them. Really, I didn't need to end the event with 200+ fangs, after using the ones I needed.
  
• The Dragon encounter had too many varied bugs and some questionable design choices to be consistently enjoyable. Yes, I had many successful runs - but between lag, the occasional example of the Dragon not dying at 0HPs, and lever shenanigans - it was very hit or miss.
  
• Non-Lich Red Named spawns should have mattered more, being a guaranteed component in my opinion.
  
• I received an absurd number of Vampire fangs.
  
• The Dragon pretty much was just another single-room Boss beat-down, and it got very boring after a few runs. Yes, there were multiple single-rooms... but with no way to influence or interact with the other rooms, it still boiled down to being boxed into one room with a Boss to kill.
  
• Too many Vampire Fangs.
  
• It should have lasted longer, or come back for a few weekends like the original Risia event last year. One weekend, and on such a family activity-intensive weekend, is absurd.

The Indifferent:

• I liked the level-related-instancing of the Dragon encounter, and it really should have been applied to the Graveyard as well. It would have been more rewarding without having to deal with spawns not in level-range, both for high and low level characters. The Wrath of Mabar was pretty pointless, and just annoying most of the time.
  
• Too may Vampire fangs. Do I seem to mention that a lot? It's because I have a lot.
  
• The price of the Coffee and the Droughts seemed to be reversed to me.
  
• Since Shields are so underused in DDO, I think there should have been one on the rewards list to perhaps entice more folks finding use for them.
  
• Too many Vampire Fangs.
  
• Needing to contact a GM to buy a scale was absurd. The price should have been lowered, or the option removed. It caused a lot of confusion in the Gen Chat I saw. While I never had the need/want to buy a Scale - it was a bad bug to leave in.

I think Mem hit the nail on the head. The dragon fight was definitely the most hit or miss aspect of the event, and things like full raid groups getting split up should be addressed perhaps with a new group type called event allowing 24 players to join, and if your group has 18 or above you get your own instance.Also if you are going to split the groups to separate lvl 20 then an epic dungeon token(or shards) should be given out for the completion of a lvl 20 dragon.

Perhaps one solution is to separate the closing of the doors and the appearance of the dragon to allow the server to do a smart instance placement, perhaps the addition of a lobby, once everyone is in the lobby and the doors shut, groups will be put into instances together and non grouped players will fill in the empty spots

[Fomori]

And make sure dead people get scales (heard they didn't, don't know for sure).

You got a scale if you were dead and still in the instance.

I died from gargoyles on my monk pushing the last 2-5% on Eternity as we focused completely on it. After it died I got the message saying I had a scale, and boom it was in my inventory.

[Fomori]

One of my favorite aspects to this event was the random grouping for the Dragon fight. There could have been better ways of communication within the instance, and adding locating dots would be a huge start.

What I enjoyed most was that there was a sense of possible failure when you went into the instance. I dont enjoy failing and I still got upset those times we did, but failing is a part of life. Its nice to break from the bs that is being fed to people today that everyone wins a trophy.

[PNellesen]

...
I lost out on a scale because of a lag wipe in my altar room. Apparently, the instance pulled through, but not before I got kicked out. Just have that "public zone" release window pop up; I saw it in the Graveyard, why not with the Dragon?

Some kind of icon above dead peoples' heads would be nice too. Hard to see who to rez otherwise.

This happened to me as well on my last attempt, only we were all low level players (all level 4, I think) in my room, so nobody could rez me anyway. I was rather disappointed I didn't get a scale, but since I already had a couple it wasn't that big a deal. (Lag was particularly bad in this case, worst of all the fights I tried.)

My only other suggestion would be the same as others have stated: to have all players in one instance visible on the map - maybe a different color dot to designate players not in the party you were in when you entered the Chamber. General Chat worked pretty well to get the rooms/levers prepped if you had people who knew how to use it, but it would have been MUCH easier to get organized if you could see at a glance where everyone was. Otherwise - I really enjoyed the event, and hope they have others something like this in the future.

[gott_ist_tot]

One of my favorite aspects to this event was the random grouping for the Dragon fight. There could have been better ways of communication within the instance, and adding locating dots would be a huge start.

What I enjoyed most was that there was a sense of possible failure when you went into the instance. I dont enjoy failing and I still got upset those times we did, but failing is a part of life. Its nice to break from the bs that is being fed to people today that everyone wins a trophy.

All raids take time to master - this one being time constrainted, had learning curve smoothened just right in my opinion. After few runs, even PUGs got good enough to communicate through general channel. 'SE lever covered', 'NE room has only a caster', 'Ok, I'm moving to NE' - that all worked quite good. Out of 14 dragons, I have failed only one run, there was less than 12 people.

Dunno, maybe I just got lucky.

Adding dots would be nice, as well as something for the healer to tell who's hurt - the workaround we found sarisfying was to form a group out of people in given room for red bar management, and use general chat for inter-room/lever communication.