Turbine balancing developing on the right track - Grip of death.

[sephiroth1084]

So let me try to clear that up. The current intended functionality which will be limited to the two new raids is thus...

If you die in the boss battle an effect is applied to your dead spirit called “Lingering Grip of Death”, It lasts 60 seconds on hard, 90 on elite, 120 seconds on epic. The effect prevents Rezz effects from working on your spirit. Once it times out your fair game for a rezz. It doesn’t prevent death pact or divine intervention. The effect shouldn't appear on normal difficulty.

We currently have one known issue with it:

While dead in one of these encounters if the effect has already expired and you move away from your soul stone and teleport as a result, the effect will reapply. We are working on a fix now.

Hope this does the job of keeping things interesting for you but doesn't stop the action all together. What we saw opening night did look promising.

-Torc

This is better than the penalty box in other raids.

[Geonis]

There are raids that PUG runners can't get into? News to me. I PUG almost exclusively, and have never had trouble running the Raids I wanted to (so, all except Abbot and Titan).

Besides, it doesn't apply to Normal.

Abbott is exactly what I was talking about. I have been here since shortly after launch with no breaks and have tried running Abbott a few times, but never completed, as most Abbott runs are "know it" or something to that effect.

Raids like this are a waste of developer time for a good percentage of players. I know normal isn't affected by this, but that in itself says that they couldn't figure out a way to make this raid tough enough without it, so it really needs to be redesigned.

[Geonis]

This is better than the penalty box in other raids.

And those are ridiculous as well.

[Nick_RC]

Love it. Awesome change!

People who are complaining need to wake up. If you are to squishy/undergeared etc run NORMAL. There is no penalty box on normal. Chances are those worried about this change only ever run shroud and Tod on normal anyway. Problem solved. I love it that they are differentiating the difficulty levels.

The one thing I want to know is have the devs learnt from their mistakes on the shroud? Will there be an increased drop rate of ingrediants on elite/epic? Risk vs reward devs!

N

[sephiroth1084]

And those are ridiculous as well.

If the fight against the Stormreaver were to evolve significantly when he starts handing out Fly, the penalty box mechanic in there could be a little more interesting. Unfortunately, there's almost zero reason to bother trying for the east switch--I'd rather the box remain for that raid, but the encounter change.

For ToD, I'd prefer the devs to adapt this Grip of Death, as the penalty box in there is just silly.

[grodon9999]

The one thing I want to know is have the devs learnt from their mistakes on the shroud? Will there be an increased drop rate of ingrediants on elite/epic? Risk vs reward devs!

N

It's looking like we're gonna have to run the raid on higher levels to get the tier 2 and tier 3 stuffs for our new lootz. I LIKE this, a lot.

Now PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY up the drop-rates on older raids on elite. Got skunked last night in Tower, we we're all a little ****ed.

[Nick_RC]

It's looking like we're gonna have to run the raid on higher levels to get the tier 2 and tier 3 stuffs for our new lootz. I LIKE this, a lot.

Now PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY up the drop-rates on older raids on elite. Got skunked last night in Tower, we we're all a little ****ed.

Ah cool so to craft higher levels u do higher difficulties-that's great. They need to increase the drop rate also to encourage people to run at that diffculty regardless of whether they will be crafting or not. Or else it will be normal runs and boring with every couple of weeks h/e/ep to upgrade.

And yes I hope they fix the drop rate on Tod elite next mod. We beat it on llama but it was beastly.

N

[Vyrn]

Sweet, RAIDS..now with 85% more healer hate...

• ***? We failed because you wern't healing well enough once the tank went down we all went down...
• I don't care who you were centered on, we failed because you didnt heal us...
• They fixed the lag in U9! You must be a bad hjealer!
• I see your HP, you better stay alive now that we can't rez you!
• ...etc..

Don't you think it's tough enough to find a healer some days the way it is?

If the people you run with blame the healer when they die, you need to look at the people youre running with. If its a pug and they blame you, rez em, let em die, repeat. Theyll get the point around 4 rezs and shut up .

Edit: This is a great mechanic in my opinion, anything that makes it harder to get the ridiculous items they released is welcome.

[Gabriel_Black]

So let me try to clear that up. The current intended functionality which will be limited to the two new raids is thus...

If you die in the boss battle an effect is applied to your dead spirit called “Lingering Grip of Death”, It lasts 60 seconds on hard, 90 on elite, 120 seconds on epic. The effect prevents Rezz effects from working on your spirit. Once it times out your fair game for a rezz. It doesn’t prevent death pact or divine intervention. The effect shouldn't appear on normal difficulty.

We currently have one known issue with it:

While dead in one of these encounters if the effect has already expired and you move away from your soul stone and teleport as a result, the effect will reapply. We are working on a fix now.

Hope this does the job of keeping things interesting for you but doesn't stop the action all together. What we saw opening night did look promising.

-Torc

Only having this in the two new raids does make a difference. However, I do see something like this being applied to other raids at some point. While there are plenty of comments saying people should stop complaining because harder is better, I don't actually see many complaints about the affect on the fight. Most of the issue seems to revolve around the downtime after.

There is a difference between making something more difficult and making it more tedious. I see no reason why the timers can't expire when agro is gone. The increased difficulty of the fight is maintained without the additional downtime after.

[Riggs]

If things get exponentially more difficult - then the loot should be exponentially increased in drop rate for higher settings.

And yeah the issue is sp pots not simply being able to res.

[Shade]

Sometimes death pact brings you up automatically without accepting the raise. Chances are this happened and he/she died instantly again from something in the quest.

Yea seen his happen very often in traps.. And MA epic does have some very devastating traps, so that may of been it.

[Phidius]

If the fight against the Stormreaver were to evolve significantly when he starts handing out Fly, the penalty box mechanic in there could be a little more interesting. Unfortunately, there's almost zero reason to bother trying for the east switch--I'd rather the box remain for that raid, but the encounter change.
...

They should switch the tunnels so that the one to the west is the hardest to navigate, while the one to the east is the easiest.

It would be more interesting if the new strategy involved parking someone in the penalty box to hand out raises and to hit the switch

[Carpone]

So let me try to clear that up. The current intended functionality which will be limited to the two new raids is thus...

If you die in the boss battle an effect is applied to your dead spirit called “Lingering Grip of Death”, It lasts 60 seconds on hard, 90 on elite, 120 seconds on epic. The effect prevents Rezz effects from working on your spirit. Once it times out your fair game for a rezz. It doesn’t prevent death pact or divine intervention. The effect shouldn't appear on normal difficulty.

This is the best raid challenge change in the history of DDO. Thank you.

The only way you could make this better is if you applied it to all existing raids, and applied the same duration as a cooldown for SP potions.

[Sonofmoradin]

This is the best raid challenge change in the history of DDO. Thank you.

The only way you could make this better is if you applied it to all existing raids, and applied the same duration as a cooldown for SP potions.

The best raid challenge was always the abbot raid, doubt this is gonna change anytime soon unless the ddo storyline comes eventually to an end and we have to fight the dragon-lich, wasnt that named the Truthful One?

Adding a cooldown to potions will create a big headache to balance the game at the moment, this train has already left the station for turbine. I dont believe majors can be put into an halt or removed from the game anymore without making a complete revamp to the whole system. Like it or not, ddo combat system is so complex that people can become better and better at it to a redicilus point, thus for normal players the game might already seem like a cannon-fodder game. An outsider of ddo mentality from some other mmo will have to deal that a full hp bar can go down in a blink of a second, rather than gradually fall down in combat. (this is the first observation friends of mine did when they first saw ddo)

[dunklezhan]

I love the principle, but the timings are too long.

Current implementation is 60 seconds on hard, 90 on elite, 120 seconds on epic. a minute is a long time to stand around not contributing in DDO combat, and its a long time to sit at your computer screen doing nothing. You're more likely going to encourage people dropping group when they die which can spoil your chances later on in something like Shroud (all the other round room raids though... not such an issue).

I'm not sure what the timer should be, but I'm curious as to how they reached the figures they did. Why not 30/60/90? Or include normal difficulty and go 10/20/40/80? Or 30/60/90/120 for that matter? Or something else? What made them pick 1-2 minutes?

Like I say, this is an excellent idea for getting people to start using more tactics rather than powering through (which I'm very much in favour of), limiting the effectiveness of SP Pots and so on,. Definitely thumbs up. But it just seems like a very long time to sit starting at the screen to me.

[Combat_Wombat]

Would be better if the time stacked every time you died in a quest so 2 minutes first time, 4 minutes second time, 6 minutes 3rd time so on and so forth

[blkcat1028]

Each time you die on epic dificulty in a raid, you cannot be raised for 2 mins. (we tested this on MA raid yesterday after the patch) This timer is 1:30 on elite, 1:00 on hard and 30 seconds on normal. (from what I heard) We do not yet know if it applies to all raids, or just LoB and MA, so if anyone can confirm this it would be good.

I wouldn't mind if they added it to non-raid content as well.

[Lleren]

So if I get this right . . . if you die on epic . . . you cannot be raised for 2 minutes?

If so, that is evil and i LOVE it. This makes the game harder in a good way, takes out a lot of the stupid.

I really like the idea as well. Can we apply this to all Quests/Raids please.

[Darkshire]

I was unaware so many sadists "played" this game.

What exactly merits a mechanic, whose implementation is meant to add an additional layer of challenge to new high level raids, the need to be put anywhere else that's been existing fine without having overly punitive conditions applied? I know when bad things happen in older quests and raids that you're used to running smoothly, you want to get back at who you think's to blame, but the idea that your grand design ideas adopted by the game in totality would do anything but make it less fun to play for the general population is just a wee bit naive.

The game is supposed to be balanced according to difficulties that are chosen by the select individual running the quest/raids, most of whom people wanting additional death penalty mechanics implemented into would never invite or run with anyway... so what does it matter, really? I see far too much whining about SP pot usage unbalancing things, when I've rarely if ever run into people who want or have the financial resources to down them willy-nilly. Maybe that's my own personal experience, but then the same goes for the people complaining. We've all seen what happens when kvetching about certain classes/class abilities has suddenly thrown a wrench into the status quo in the name of balancing the game, I'm not really sure how anything positive could come out of yet again modifying old content that has less need for rebalancing than the new upcoming content.

Balancing for individual nostalgic opinions of how the game was and should be is not a healthy idea. It seems to be a vocal one though, so i guess in the end, I'm complaining about complaining, when it's unlikely to be necessary, as the drug and alcohol policy at Turbine would have to be seriously relaxed from what it is for that to start becoming reality.

[Ziindarax]

So if I get this right . . . if you die on epic . . . you cannot be raised for 2 minutes?

If so, that is evil and i LOVE it. This makes the game harder in a good way, takes out a lot of the stupid.

I like it and hate it at the same time.

I like this change because, frankly, there are too many people who cannot run raids on anything beyond normal. By implementing this change, more people will learn the importance of team work and tactics, things that the "big guilds" on Orien already have in place. Hopefully, this will result in more people completing challenging content.

Conversely, I dislike this change because it may discourage people from trying harder difficulties altogether. While I understand Turbine is trying to cater to the masochists/"hardcore" members of the community, I think the change may do more harm than good, as it could drive away new players (especially if this mechanic exists in quests as well as raids).