Devs- How tough are the new Quests supposed to be?

[Ziindarax]

Raid prediction: pre-raid with lots of trash and a few puzzles leading to the second raid in a big room with a bad guy you back into a corner while everyone else rams their weapons into his nether regions.

Hope I get proven wrong.

you are, actually.

Through my journey across the new "wilderness", my party and I found two different entry-points for quests that "weren't available", and believed them to be the new raids...

After getting flagged, it turned out we were right. The two raids can be queued up at the same time, take place in different areas of the Cannith Manufactory, with different bosses. The wilderness is also a raid instance, so if you summon a hireling, no one else in the party can enter the wilderness.

[Emili]

However, a normal Bastion of Power in a group of pugs is much harder than 99% of Epic content with pugs--on elite it's crazy hard with pugs, and sins elite can go this way as well if the party does not employ any strategy.

All the Amrath quests were pretty much solo'd at first using strategy more than gear. Did your group employ strategy? Or did you all just try to brute force your way thru? Was it a balanced party? I know when I've grouped on Lamania, the groups were not the best overall--for instance many were not self sufficient at all yet we had no healer or no cc in some.

This is true, I still solo amrath - even elite - on characters without epic gear on them... often I do so because it's easier than with a group of others who may mess it up on me by spawning more at a time than the party may deal with. The real difference here is knowledge of the quest and knowing the limits of your character. Sins and Bastion are my favorite two amrath quests.

[maddmatt70]

People didn't have epic gear (or even Amrath gear) when Amrath opened.

Face it, you've WON DDO... You've got all the epic gear... Nothing below epic can possibly be a challenge for you. Don't expect it to be.

If you're lucky maybe they'll release a epic raid someday that will give you a challenge.

So what you are saying is we should play a different game? There is no reason why the devs/turbine can not release some quests/raids that challenge level 20s, but yet they have chosen not to in the last year or so. No challenge = no fun.

[Seikojin]

I like the challenge in the wilderness area. It is small, I agree. But the wilderness may expand as you unlock quests and whatnot. I didn't get to find out.

The only beef I had with the quest two things. One was the respawn of cannons and trash, and the leashes in quest. Mobs shouldn't have leashes in quest.

Difficulty wise, I think things were fine. Top geared players will mop the floor, casters will dominate, and average players will cry as they wipe. Sounds about what it should be. LOL

[ArkoHighStar]

I can't think of a successful game that punishes it's players. People play games to have fun and relax. If I wanted to get punished, I'd rob a bank.

I get what you're saying though. I just object to the use of the word "punish."

My point is new poorly geared players should expect to fail doing endgame content on elite. Your right punishment is the wrong word, Perhaps learning from experience would be better. I fail therefore I shoudl realize I need more experience and gear to be successful.

[Shade]

My point is new poorly geared players should expect to fail doing endgame content on elite. Your right punishment is the wrong word, Perhaps learning from experience would be better. I fail therefore I shoudl realize I need more experience and gear to be successful.

Exactly. If they won right way..
What would be the point in trying to get better gear and more experience?

Why strive for power, when theres no where to put it into play.

Even new players like a reason to better themselves in an rpg. If theres no reason, its not much fun.

[Mjesko]

Exactly. If they won right way..
What would be the point in trying to get better gear and more experience?

Why strive for power, when theres no where to put it into play.

I think that is a general problem in DDO. Why does a character need better gear and more experience if he can already play all quests? To play the same quests faster? To play new end-game quests to get better gear and more experience?

In my opinion such characters have, as Thrudh wrote, completed DDO until Turbine releases competive PvE quests with leaderboards.

[KristovK]

So what you are saying is we should play a different game? There is no reason why the devs/turbine can not release some quests/raids that challenge level 20s, but yet they have chosen not to in the last year or so. No challenge = no fun.

The new Cannith set DOES challenge lvl 20s, but it may not challenge YOU and your lvl 20s, with multiple TRs, Epic Red Dragon armors and all the other Epic gear you've acquired, mainly due to the simple fact that your characters are pretty much incapable of being challenged by anything in DDO. Which I do believe was the point in you making them as powerful as they are, was it not?

The devs HAVE tried in the past to give us quests that required the best of the best to do them. Each and every single time they've done that, it's failed, these forums have borne witness to that more then a few times. They quite simply cannot cater to the top end players, it's a failure to even think of it, this is an MMO, not a FPS, they have to cater to the MASSES, not the few.

I watched capped multi-TRs loaded out with Epic gear and GS get wasted in the new stuff on Normal after doing the quests multiple times already, the quests ARE tough enough to challenge most of the playerbase. And that's the target the devs aim for, seems they hit the target just fine to me.

[Shade]

And that's the target the devs aim for, seems they hit the target just fine to me.

Sounds like yet another greedy opinion of:

It's hard for me, so why should I care about you?

Because theres 4 difficulty settings, not every one of them needs to be for you. With 4 settings it can be challenging and fun for players of all levels. You can try and tell me your more important all day but I think some of the dev get that DDO still does have a lot of veteran players that still care about the game too.

And yea, there is tons of stuff still in the game that can challenge well geared multi tr players. Amrath elites remain quite challenging and in some ways harder then ever (Example: New Invasion boss fight was made even harder then original release, And ofcourse ToD/horoth has been buffed several times too). This stuff isn't yet but theres lots of time to tweak it to fix that.

[maddmatt70]

The new Cannith set DOES challenge lvl 20s, but it may not challenge YOU and your lvl 20s, with multiple TRs, Epic Red Dragon armors and all the other Epic gear you've acquired, mainly due to the simple fact that your characters are pretty much incapable of being challenged by anything in DDO. Which I do believe was the point in you making them as powerful as they are, was it not?

The devs HAVE tried in the past to give us quests that required the best of the best to do them. Each and every single time they've done that, it's failed, these forums have borne witness to that more then a few times. They quite simply cannot cater to the top end players, it's a failure to even think of it, this is an MMO, not a FPS, they have to cater to the MASSES, not the few.

I watched capped multi-TRs loaded out with Epic gear and GS get wasted in the new stuff on Normal after doing the quests multiple times already, the quests ARE tough enough to challenge most of the playerbase. And that's the target the devs aim for, seems they hit the target just fine to me.

Shade perhaps phrased this better, but the elite Tower Raid is no picnic even for the maxed geared/trrd/etc. people. Hard and specifically normal difficulties Tower Raid were designed for the more causal less geared players. What is wrong with that system? Why not have the same thing take place in the new area which is approximately the same dungeon level? I really do not understand your argument which I agree with Shade comes across as selfish.

[grodon9999]

Shade perhaps phrased this better, but the elite Tower Raid is no picnic even for the maxed geared/trrd/etc. people. Hard and specifically normal difficulties Tower Raid were designed for the more causal less geared players. What is wrong with that system? Why not have the same thing take place in the new area which is approximately the same dungeon level? I really do not understand your argument which I agree with Shade comes across as selfish.

nothing, Tower is the best raid in the game because of that.

[KristovK]

Sounds like yet another greedy opinion of:

It's hard for me, so why should I care about you?

Because theres 4 difficulty settings, not every one of them needs to be for you. With 4 settings it can be challenging and fun for players of all levels. You can try and tell me your more important all day but I think some of the dev get that DDO still does have a lot of veteran players that still care about the game too.

And yea, there is tons of stuff still in the game that can challenge well geared multi tr players. Amrath elites remain quite challenging and in some ways harder then ever (Example: New Invasion boss fight was made even harder then original release, And ofcourse ToD/horoth has been buffed several times too). This stuff isn't yet but theres lots of time to tweak it to fix that.

Actually, I happen to personally agree that the quests SHOULD be much harder then they are, I pretty much facerolled them solo, same as I do other end game content, but then again, my toon is designed to do just that, with 5+ years of game experience behind the design and twitch skills honed in FPS games which I still play on my PC and on consoles. That said...

The devs don't aim their designs at the top end players, it's a great way to fail, they've seen that every single time they've tried it in the past. It's how the game STARTED out, remember? Hard as all hells, required that you have knowledge beforehand of how the game of Dungeons and Dragons works AND how the changes made for DDO work in order to get a character past the bloody Wavecrest Basement starter quest...remember? What, do you folks just totally forget exactly how the game was originally and how radically it changed in the first 6 months after it went Live? THAT was the game that sucked me in and I tried to get all my friends who I play PnP with to buy and join me in. They tried the 7 day free trial, they loved how it worked, it was hard, it was a total pain, and it was SO unfriendly to new players that not a single one of them bought the game 5 years ago..and they still won't play it even now that it's F2P, they got a very lasting impression from DDO back then, a very NEGATIVE one.

I hit Korthos with a new lvl 1 non-TR, non-twinked new toon and I watch and listen to all the whining and complaining about how hard this game is to new players while I'm walking through the newb quests on elite...what does that tell you? I know what it tells me and what it tells Turbine, the game is too much of a challenge for the general gaming public, therefore it won't be a commercial success until that challenge level is lowered. Outside of Epics, which are now **** near Easy Mode, there's not really going to be much to challenge the top end players, just like in every OTHER MMO out there, which is really sad. But that's how it works, if you want to make money and be a commercial success..which, for some totally off the wall and really odd reason, Turbine WANTS to do with DDO..go figure huh? Maybe it's the years of it not being that, of it being a niche game with bad reviews and a constantly vanishing playerbase...who knows...