Raid Feedback: Caught in the Web

[Thrudh]

Ugh, can have, not do have.

Chances. More lottery.

Like every other raid. You were expecting 100% drop rates?

[Lifespawn]

Like every other raid. You were expecting 100% drop rates?

i read it as the chests can have raid loot in the but it's not turned on yet


which seems to fit since there have been multiple completions and no raid loot posted

[Thrudh]

It's been over a year an Kobold AI in challenges is still awful.

It is? I completed numerous Crystal Cove missions without fail a couple of months ago, and I daily run challenges with kobolds and torches with ZERO problems.

Kobold AI is awful? Seems to work just fine to me.

The devs are asking for bug reports if the NPC gets stuck. This is the best time to submit them... because they'll get fixed... Wait a year, and those kind of bug fixes will be way down the list.

[Cauthey]

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-li...-jeans/1354204

I love that skit. Eons old, but I still reference it, and remember it well.

[Thrudh]

Blind faith get you no points...

And you haven't even run the raid, yet you're bashing it hard.

Blind faith that the devs want their product to work and their game to be fun and will listen to our suggestions seem much preferable to "I haven't played the raid, and I never will because I hear it sucks!" pessimism.

[redspecter23]

It is? I completed numerous Crystal Cove missions without fail a couple of months ago, and I daily run challenges with kobolds and torches with ZERO problems.

Kobold AI is awful? Seems to work just fine to me.

The devs are asking for bug reports if the NPC gets stuck. This is the best time to submit them... because they'll get fixed... Wait a year, and those kind of bug fixes will be way down the list.

The kobold AI is still wretched, but I've become used to it. In lava caves in particular, the kobolds will run "the long way around" in a few particular spots instead of running to the teleporter a few feet away. I typically avoid the bottom lava area near the wolves the small bridge near the arena and near the shrine at the bottom because of this behavior. I put a second teleporter on the "long" side so they hop in that one instead. To players unaware of this "long pathing" behavior it can be frustrating. Extraplanar mining has a few spots similar to that, but I don't run it as much so don't have them all memorized. The kobold AI is definitely not perfect. I really don't want them to try to fix it in case they make it worse.

[Feather_of_Sun]

Ugh, can have, not do have.

Chances. More lottery.

While I understand and respect that you want every player completing a raid to automatically get a raid item from the chest, we do not feel that automatically bestowing raid items to every player opening a chest is a good direction for the game at this time.

Instead, it's going to continue working just like any other chest with named or raid loot in the game. It rolls loot for every player opening the chest, and all of them have their individual chance for a named item result to appear in their name.

How much of a delta in chance of pulling raid gear between completion and perfect completion (which I gather depends entirely upon the escort mechanic)?

It's also based on the difficulty you're running the quest on. I'm afraid that giving out exact numbers on loot drop rates is not something we will do, but seeing multiple groups "skunked" when they're only earning one chest in the raid, on normal, is not at all surprising.

That one chest by itself has only a small chance to drop raid rewards. For a much higher chance at raid loot (which can come from any of the chests), you'll need to earn more chests.

Unlike other raids, it's even possible for one player, in one run, to get more than one raid item.

[MrkGrismer]

So you want every chest to always give you a raid item?

Every raid chest, yes, but I know what I want is unrealistic. I just have a tendency to be very unlucky.

I thought maybe they were going to always drop relics or something like that which could be turned in for the raid item. At least then every time you wold be making progress towards getting a raid item.

[Eladiun]

And you haven't even run the raid, yet you're bashing it hard.

Blind faith that the devs want their product to work and their game to be fun and will listen to our suggestions seem much preferable to "I haven't played the raid, and I never will because I hear it sucks!" pessimism.

No point did I say any such. People who have run it have though. I can very competently critique big picture design choices because I have experience and intelligence.

I can say it is a simple fact that in the history of MMO and gaming in general escort missions are despised by a large majority of players.
I can say DDO NPC AI is awful because I have played 6 years.
I can say the current state of the physic engine is attrotious and lends to creating havoc in this sort of quest.
I can reason that combining these into a raid is likely to provide frustrating results.
I can read and comment on the responses of players I trust, Nick for example when they say the quest is frustrating not fun.
I can say that a mechanic for spawning chests based on NPC health will create a situation where if the quest goes poorly people will drop group to not get completion so they have a better shot at loot. This will create problems and generate negative fun when half way through a raid 3 players just drop because the conditions are such that you won't get more than one chest. I think we can all recall when this was a major issue with the Shroud.

These are all observations that can be made using logic and reasoning.

[redspecter23]

It's also based on the difficulty you're running the quest on. I'm afraid that giving out exact numbers on loot drop rates is not something we will do, but seeing multiple groups "skunked" when they're only earning one chest in the raid, on normal, is not at all surprising.

That one chest by itself has only a small chance to drop raid rewards. For a much higher chance at raid loot (which can come from any of the chests), you'll need to earn more chests.

Unlike other raids, it's even possible for one player, in one run, to get more than one raid item.

So can we assume then that each individual chest in this raid has a lower chance at raid loot than the 1:6 ratio we're used to? Such that a single raid chest earned here is less rewarding than a single raid chest in other areas, but potentially with more than one chest earned we could see better odds than 1:6 overall?

[Cyr]

It's also based on the difficulty you're running the quest on. I'm afraid that giving out exact numbers on loot drop rates is not something we will do, but seeing multiple groups "skunked" when they're only earning one chest in the raid, on normal, is not at all surprising.

That one chest by itself has only a small chance to drop raid rewards. For a much higher chance at raid loot (which can come from any of the chests), you'll need to earn more chests.

Unlike other raids, it's even possible for one player, in one run, to get more than one raid item.

Perhaps I was not clear...

How many chests are there total compared to the one that you get for just completing and a confirmation that none of them are 'special' where they are the real raid loot chest and the rest are some gimped drop rate junk chest put in to say you can pull raid loot.

I want to know that if we run this quest once we have 1/3 the chance of a perfect completion for raid loot for example...not that we have a 1.5% chance of getting raid loot in a normal completion.

That is pretty basic information and information that is fairly critical in understanding how much hinges on this escort mechanic beyond the incredible frustration possible with stuck spots, unresponsive npc, or falling npc.

[Feather_of_Sun]

So can we assume then that each individual chest in this raid has a lower chance at raid loot than the 1:6 ratio we're used to? Such that a single raid chest earned here is less rewarding than a single raid chest in other areas, but potentially with more than one chest earned we could see better odds than 1:6 overall?

Yes, a group that does exceptionally well and earns enough extra chests will (on average, RNG is still RNG after all) see more raid items than you would expect on average from older raids such as Hound, VoD, Abbot, etc.

[Captain_Wizbang]

st, we do not feel that automatically bestowing raid items to every player opening a chest is a good direction for the game at this time.

That is good news indeed. In fact, Im a proponent of lower drop rates. What makes an artifact rare? The drop rate, it's an artifact. (DM guide)






I'm afraid that giving out exact numbers on loot drop rates is not something we will do,

When I asked certain staff members this pointed question 3 years ago, I got the answer I expected.

Q; Are the drop rates taken from the standard formula used in 3.5 DM guide?

Ans; For the most part. But we can't divulge that info.

That being said, you should have a 5% (on average) of named or raid loot dropping from lvl 15 thru 20 quests.
(For DDO purposes and comparison, it would be on normal.)
Artifacts are around 1% for something to compare it to.

I have the base chart for drop rates, but they aren't an exact match to DDO. Mine came from a certain section of the DM guide.

[Malshier]

So I'm guessing it'll take until 20th completions before we get to see if anything worthwhile drops out of there.

[Spartywinz]

I spent 4 hours in Madstone Crater the night it opened. 16 hours in a brand new raid that is still in BETA and that has known bugs (that they are working on) doesn't seem very long to me.

Can I quote you in 6 months saying that you decided to never run this raid ater 16 hours of testing in BETA? I'll be curious what your /quest completions says at that point.

Yes.

[Carpone]

What's the repeat completion reward mechanic with this raid? Every 5th, 10th or 20th completion?

What's the maximum number of chests possible? Does it change with difficulty, or solely based on optionals/Ana's health?

[bbqzor]

Something like this could've been implemented a couple weeks ago. Right now, don't have enough time for it, because of all the bugs/lag/stability fixes that need to be done.

Well, you might consider pushing back the release date. I understand that you as a person probably have zero say in that, and a large amount of it is probably decided by bean counter types who may have no idea how to even equip a longsword.

That said, we need to see less "well, its subpar but thats how its going to be were out of time" and more "well, it may be subpar at launch but by patch 1 or 2 itll be brought up to snuff".

In another thread, Fatesinger Echos were pointed out to not stack with Power Attack, when Power Attack is a prereq for Warchanter... things like this should not just get left as is because of time. They're fundamental building blocks to playing DDO, having your abilities function together. Or having the Raid NPC be clearly controllable. Etc.

If it goes out to launch since you can't redo it in time, fine, but please don't just say "well, out of time, maybe we make future content better but whats in as is stays as is". Its kind of ridiculous to have to "choose" (in a time sense) between making the content "correct" in terms of function, or "fixed" in terms of bugs/lag. And if theres anything we, as players, can do to run that message up the food chain please let us know. If submitting some kind of bug report or petition will give you guys more time to get this stuff right, I can probably have 50-100 of them (from different people) sent in by the weekend, and Im just one poster...

Let us help you if we can, but please don't just let things which could have been fixed a week ago cause you had more time stay broken. This game is, in some ways, a pile of leftover broken things. Remember Staff of Nat Gann, how it added Uncanny Dodges? Then they were removed cause it removed uses when swapped? Then that got fixed but they weren't ever reinstated? And now that actual Dodge is going in, its just left as a new conversion to that, with no potential addressment of something like "Dodge +4, but if you have Uncanny Dodge it adds +6 dodge instead".

Obviously thats kind of a useless example (I dont think anything could help that staff at this point lol, poor nat) but it does go to show that things which get left behind, are almost always left behind for good. Don't leave this behind. Thanks.

[bbqzor]

Yes, a group that does exceptionally well and earns enough extra chests will (on average, RNG is still RNG after all) see more raid items than you would expect on average from older raids such as Hound, VoD, Abbot, etc.

What I want to know is, what do you expect/intend the average to be.

For example, if a raid (making up numbers for example here) has between 1 and 5 chests, and you have a 10% chance per chest to see an item, you'd have about a 10% chance to see at least one raid loot in your name at one chest, and a 40% chance to see at least one raid loot in your name if you got all 5. Compared to the "normal" 16.7% chance to see one raid loot in your name per chest which is the "default", that might make sense.

But only if you expected the average to be 1-2 chests, with 3-5 being extremely unlikely... otherwise loot would be too common at those values (relative to current drop rates, whether it should be more or less common than current rates is a whole different topic).

So, in other words, what do you expect a typical, run of the mill, normal pug raid to be hitting in here? Its one thing to say "well, if you get all 5 chests, youll see crazy loot drops compared to old raids" ... but its another thing entirely if that scenario isnt really possible in a practical, repeatable sense.

As with most raids, as a player, you have to expect to grind it out like 20+ times to get what you're after, and that means that being able to reasonably repeat your successes is critical. Please give us some idea of what you think the "norm" will be, so we can end speculation over the two extremes (minimal one chest, maximum "better than other raids" version) and look at what the reality of this going live is going to be. Thanks.

[sweez]

Unlike other raids, it's even possible for one player, in one run, to get more than one raid item.

Ahem, did you forget about h/e HoX and VoD?

[Malshier]

a typical, run of the mill, normal pug raid .

Not trying to be a jerk here, but do you really think this raid is puggable?