Raid Feedback: Caught in the Web

[Drakesblood]

Wow, this raid can lead to a lot of headaches if your not careful and not watching things around you. So I am going to start at the beginning of the raid.

The place where you start in the raid makes no sense, your are practically in the middle of the demon web. If this is your first time there you can easily go the wrong way, and run around the WHOLE map for hours looking for Ana. Sure the start of the raid is "Down the hill" and you watch a small show, but the little drama that unfolds pales in comparison with the drama in the tower of despair or even the lord of blades. It would make more sense to start where you have to take Ana out of the Demon Web, that way players would know where to take her after they find her as well as helping people plan a route to the end. You could always move the drama to the platform right after the exit and it will still fit right in.

Now once you find Ana, Lolth pops up and starts "Death Beaming" people. Which can get REALLY annoying fast, makes you look for a spot that you don't have line of sight and if you run your going to get zapped. Sometimes she has three to four of these beams hitting people and it really puts a toll on the healers in the party, especially if there on the healers (Quicken is a MUST). Also if you hide to long Lolth starts casting the annoying spell traps that slow you down and stuff which makes it even hard to run when you need to.

If you run from Lolth you might accidentally run into "Barrier" and the next thing you know your up to your neck in baddies somewhere FAR from the party. This could lead to an easy wipe of a person sitting out for 10-30 min. as the party makes it way to the lost person(s). Please don't make the "Barrier"s do this, instead make them knock you down like air elementals away from them, this way you won't have people getting frustrated because they now have to hike 5-10 min back to the party. Plus the "Barrier"s don't look like they would telaport people till one tries.

As for falling down in the demon web, it could get taxing real fast. 1d4 negative levels plus 100+ damage on top of 200+ spell point drain! It's bad enough you get knocked off by Lolths hand and foot, but **** I would rather die then lose that much resources. We could have Ana set up shrines but that would require us to spend even more resources in hunting down the stupid orbs and fighting Lolth and her "Beams of DOOM". I am fine with 1d4 levels and some damage, but the SP drain is a real pain and could make people frustrated more so in this raid.

When running around and trying to regroup me and a few others seemed to pass areas that would deal us force damage(Arcane waves) and we don't even know whats causing this. Me and a few others have died trying to get through it and nearly cause a party wipe because the healers could not see where the damage was coming from. I feel that this unnecessary and in no way helpful in an already confusing raid. Unless an icon shows up, and or some kind of graphic shows that you are crossing a hazard area, this effect should not even be used. Tired of pointless random deaths from a force that is busy "dealing" with my friends across the map.

The fights are ok, but some times when you got 3-4 Handmaidens it gets ugly real fast with the spamming of comet fall and power word stun with there small army of fortification piercing spies you might lose a few men or just wipe in a glory of spell spam and arrows. Please spread out the pockets of spawns with Ana so they don't congregate all in one area of death.

I was hoping to fight Lolth herself and not something that looks like a half finished model... Lolth still acts very static and looks horrible shooting eye beams and sending disembodied hands and feet after people. Don't know what to say but I am underwhelmed but the amount of effort put into the raid art wise, we get this great art of Lolth in her full form, we travel through 4 wilderness and 14 quests for a capstone raid to fight disembodied limbs and a really half finished placeholder of dimi-god. My bard finds the Lord of Blades more intimating then a scantly clad woman's torso. Sorry for ripping into the people who are the art designers for Lolth and this raid but I feel rather let down after all I seen in the expansion pack especially after the Kings forest.

I personally don't mind escort missions but sometimes it's pain trying to escort some one who might get stuck on geometry or have a "Herp a Derp" moment and gets themselves into a fight that was not needed. Ana seems rather stable but a few time she got caught in corners and such that it was a pain to move her out of. God forbid she some how falls off into the void, then we have to go hunt her down across the map.

The end fight was brutal and wiped once and nearly wiped a second time till we finally beat enough gate keepers to get past the wall and on out. Please allow us more then 30-60 seconds to run up past the wall or allow Ana to do what she normally does to arcane walls and blast them. Ana has shown us twice if not three times she can break down arcane walls. Don't make us rush to or deaths thinking she could do the same here...

This raid took a group of 15ish people to complete in 220 mins. (3.66 hours) and about 100-200 sp pots on Epic Casual. Only though Iron wills and determination did we finish and finish we did for some REALLY BAD VENDER TRASH. I think I will go cry in a corner and pray to bardic god Breca for his blessing on the Fate singer destiny.

Images for proof:




Group Picture:


Path to the end:


Please feel free to leave any comments, I know there might be better groups out there and I would like to hear how you handled some of the stuff in this raid.

[Gimpinator]

Worst raid in the game. Worst quest of the expansion.

[Judo]

Tedious, monotonous, boring...


All in all, not remotely fun, which is certainly the key criticism.

You kill the same set of mobs, over and over and over. What happened to the creative raids, like von5, titan even. Those raids were fun to learn. There is no learning here. There is only working your way to an annoying ending. And I do mean work.

[DeadRabbat]

We tried this raid twice. Once the night before with no healers (druid/bard yes) and got annihilated pretty fast.
This night (Friday) we set out with 6 of us to start. Two dc'd or raged quit out and others joined midway & at the end. Over all we had a balanced group of lvl25s even though we did this raid on casual...mainly to see it all way through and familiarize ourselves with it before live.

As a Dwarf Light Monk... those Force beam Dots hurt. I was taking 93-103 damage per tick which eats you up really fast, and it seems that there was no way to remove them. But someone did figure a way...not sure what helped..but most of my deaths (17) (over 700hp with buffs..over 800hp with every ones buffs) came from those Dots when trying to get Ana to follow and away from Lolth.

The layout is confusing as all get out. Very easy to get lost in and we did. Also noticed at times a few of the web bridges disappeared. not fun.
We had 4 Artifacts left to get..but gave up on them due to the huge damage Lolth did. You need to hurt her and seems only magic & range can do that. She won't drop the barriers until she leaves & at one time we had 7 spell wards going on around us with another 7 within close vicinity that Lolth throws down if you take to long killing her (for each artifact destroyed).

The end fight was wave after wave of minions we already killed, back to haunt us in soul form (Mabar wraps for the win) along with the Maidens (both dead and alive) & of course Lolth and her nasty eye beams of doooom. Too many spells going off and too many minions all clustered on small platforms ...have good connection or this will be a lag fest.
The final was anticlimactic. No real boss fight..just the minions galore before the final. The final.. sigh.
Place holder for Elminster. The loot was... vender loot. Lvl 20+ but nothing anyone would want for their lvl 23+ characters. No new items dropped, which i can understand somewhat..want it new and shiney for live but was still disappointing as hell. One chest. I am sure if we destroyed ll the artifacts we would have gotten a second one.
Finishing out since the portal didn't work we got our end quest reward from Elminster himself... I took the Tales of Valor. Yep. that good. The best item someone got was a +6Cha & +15 Haggle necklace. Not bad, but i have my cove hat i can wear at level 12 that does the same thing.

This raid to me was not fun. Was aggravating and annoying. I will run again on beta but I don't think I will on live. Too much time and effort for little satisfaction. Plus, after looking at the Relics on the Purple Dragon Knight Favor guy... nothing for a Monk. I am assuming that the Relics will drop from the raid.
Coyle is more fun, at least you can knock him out.

The only shrines you get are rest shrines and those come from Ana and only when she destroys an artifact will she have enough power to make one.
The group was fun. We hated the raid but laughed and cried through it. Not sure if casual is really casual..it did say lvl 21.. but those Force beams are the trouble. The minions can be dealt with... tone down those Force Dots. Please.

Over all... You need good strong tactics & someone who can replenish SP. Two to three healers as well... they went through a lot of pots on this...more then LoB epic (what the healers said) when it came out.

I know a few people completed the raid when it first opened that one night in a shortman fashion..but we had a great group and still had extreme difficulty.
Anyway, I have rambled too long. I am not impressed. Sorry to the developers who made this... but I did not find it fun or entertaining.

DR.

[Shade]

I know a few people completed the raid when it first opened that one night in a shortman fashion..but we had a great group and still had extreme difficulty.

I heard some issues where casual was acting more like elite for the raid. I dont think its intended to be available for raids.

[lugoman]

Lol, 586 monsters killed!

[Shade]

Casual?
220min?

Does not compute. Casual players dont have that much time. Thats the whole idea, casual play - log on for a short time and get some progress...

Does not sound to be intended.

Raids were never intended to be available on casual difficulty. They purposely disabled in all raids because they are designed to be very long adventures.. I dont think you were doing a mode that was intended to be ran.

[Drakesblood]

Casual?
220min?

Does not compute. Casual players dont have that much time. Thats the whole idea, casual play - log on for a short time and get some progress...

Does not sound to be intended.

Raids were never intended to be available on casual difficulty. They purposely disabled in all raids because they are designed to be very long adventures.. I dont think you were doing a mode that was intended to be ran.

This was not much of an issue of running on casual as to normal. On normal you would get the foot of Lolth, on casual you do not get the foot. The monster hit points did scale right and so was the damage, the high time was due to waiting on people after they fell for regrouping and near wipes with 90-130 point Lolth beams. Every time I fell I had to spend 5-10 min of running to re-join the group, some times I would get maimed from the areas that had Arcane waves and die. What REALY slowed us down was that you could not engage Lolths image with Melee due to one or two factors: 1) Lolth was to far away from the edge of the word and could not reach her aside from ranged comabat and spells. 2) The healers where unwilling to dump Mana on themselves and the melees who where getting ripped up.

I do shudder on how hard it is on normal scaling.

[DeadRabbat]

Casual?
220min?

Does not compute. Casual players dont have that much time. Thats the whole idea, casual play - log on for a short time and get some progress...
Does not sound to be intended.
Raids were never intended to be available on casual difficulty. They purposely disabled in all raids because they are designed to be very long adventures.. I dont think you were doing a mode that was intended to be ran.

I Remember that Casual was not to be played earlier in the closed beta program & that it was wonky. With the open beta, I figured it would have changed...the option for casual is there and accessible. It may not be scaled right.

To me most of it seemed fine for an Epic raid except for those force dots. Combine those with the slow effect from the Spell wards..Death!
We ran it on normal the first night and I was the one who suggest casual and like i said in my previous post..it was more to get a feel & through it before ramping up the fun...but sadly, the raid wasn't. Main reason is..we had no clue & the inability for melee to attack Lolth was .... well blah. I would imagine she would stay away so mortals couldn't hurt her. Makes sense. Why be near when you can attack from afar. But if you don't have the right group composition, then that will make the fight horrible lopsided and long. Tossing basic Flametouched Alchemical Shuriken does not do much to Lolth.
Ahhhitburns, a 25 Druid did 90% of the damage to Lolth when we had to fight her to continue.
This could be a fun Raid once you know where to go and tactics to take...that take s away the rp feel knowing everything already but it is an uber raid and ...well we already memorize the other raids.

The biggest frustration was the separation of the party...through transportation barriers after breaking an artifact & falling. With how vast the demonweb is & layered and the fact that the paths will probably change from raid to raid will get annoying to many. This is the same demon web wilderness area we already went to..familiarize the terrain & it will be easier, but me and others did believe that new paths were in place then with the wilderness area.

Even though we spent 3 hours in there & died..ooh 76 deaths total and *****ed and moaned...we all did have fun. because of the group.

The raid timer says..i don't remember at the moment..but i got the quest right back from Elminster even though hitting /quest said there was a timer, as well as a timer for graveyard for me. But you can go right back to these quests and do them again.

DR.
ps. This was my first epic raid. I am not geared for epics. Second life. I have always felt intimidated by epics after reading the forums. This new system will help ease people like me into Epics more. sad they are being washed down in tokens.

[Ew_vastano]

wow this looks like fun
/sarcasm off

comon 3 hrs for casual that is totaly rediculas.
and sp drain with no shrines HMMMMMMMMMMMMM anyone think turbine milking sp pots

i can see this being run even less then master arti or lob

[Meyhnach]

ok lets do it again on norm (Axle-1)

[DeadRabbat]

This forum needs a sticky. All the other quests have stickies...why not the raid?

[FlimsyFirewood]

Lolth's beams will now do randomly-typed damage instead of Force, which will give you guys more tools to mitigate it, however one of the types of damage is spell points so casters will have to be careful.

The random area 'force damage' was just Lolth's beams at an absurd distance, when the beams would fail to draw. That has been toned down, so she will only shoot at you when you're close enough.

[LeoLionxxx]

Lolth's beams will now do randomly-typed damage instead of Force, which will give you guys more tools to mitigate it, however one of the types of damage is spell points so casters will have to be careful.

The random area 'force damage' was just Lolth's beams at an absurd distance, when the beams would fail to draw. That has been toned down, so she will only shoot at you when you're close enough.

Um, spell point damage seems like it would be really unpoplar. Becase not only casters use SP, but paladins and the such too. random type od damage, yes. Spell point damage, no.

Unless i'm missing some info and there's crystals or something which have a HOT effect on SP.

[PNellesen]

Lolth's beams will now do randomly-typed damage instead of Force, which will give you guys more tools to mitigate it, however one of the types of damage is spell points so casters will have to be careful.

Thanks for the warning

*Scratches "Caught in the Web" off the list of raids my clerics will be running*

[XbaileyX]

Weve spent a lot of time in there over the past few days, mostly with the same 4 ppl but hopped in a pug completion for a chance at named loot. Ive got to say even with the changes, it makes me not want to pug this raid. All the random teleporting with people who dont communicate well with each other will be more hassle than its worth. Short man with guild and friends only Not having fun with this one.

[Spartywinz]

Ran it tonight 4 hours 200 pots. 1 hour with ana stuck in a rock.

Its like a caol chamber on steroids while habing an invinvinle dumb coyle to drag along
More annoying then challenging.


Got to the barrier at the end 400 some mobs killed. Spent 30 minutes trying to figure outhow to drop the barrier no mob spawns but lolth constantly shooting beams. Finally just recalled and went to bed. Definatley one of the worst raid/ quests ever if you rate based on challenge level and entertainment value.

[Xithos]

There are both good and bad aspects to this raid, but in its current implementation I just don't see this raid as being the type that the majority of the DDO populace will enjoy. I appreciate the fact that the developers were listening when people said they wanted a raid that was more than a single or 3 room boss-beatdown. In this raid we are given free-roam of an explorer area that functions as a maze due to differing placements of the web-bridges and sounds like a cool idea in theory. Unfortunately, the raid seems hastily thrown together and right now I don't see myself clamoring to run this as opposed to the other epic options that were added in the expansion.

First off, the splitting up of the party feels like a disaster for pick up groups. One potential spawn point after you first grab Anna is basically a sniper's nest of those drow assassins that will pewpew you to death in seconds if you are on something that doesn't self-heal well. I think on epic normal they crit for about 100 and with all the incoming fire they can do it often enough to make you just throw on your silver flame talisman and divebomb off the web in hopes of landing in a better spot. Although it is pretty funny when it randoms you back to the same spot with less hitpoints. The initial teleport barrier after rescuing Anna is annoying for people who are experienced and a calamity for others.

Priority number one for lots of people at this point is to run all over the place trying to group up and get to a healer to deal with the mobs. I am hoping the dungeon alert threshold is set fairly high for this raid because there is the potential for a fair amount of monster activity. Chasing a drow assassin a little too far as it tries to kite you can bodypull another wave of creatures behind it and add to the monster totals active at one point in time. A good deal of the creatures in the web appear to have tremor-sense or see-invisibility so running around invis to try and link up with the group doesn't feel like it works very well.

In the event that you are spawning shrines or doing the optionals, Llolth shows up and starts nuking people with her eye lasers. I like how its important to run for cover to deal with the trash when this happens, but when she is shooting someone running from island to island from an insane distance it is frustrating. If you are not chugging silver flame pots at this point even on epic normal you will die pretty quickly. It sounds like development is already adjusting this by making the damage elemental and I feel that her eye laser needs a range that is line of sight and probably half of one of the larger islands in distance at max. Getting hit when I couldn't even see the beams was the worst part.

Another thing I disliked was the range on the drow priestess' ability to consume a nearby mob to regain all of their health and gain a ridiculous amount of damage reduction. These things devour stuff almost an island away sometimes and it would be nice to have the proximity of that ability reigned in a little bit. Fighting these particular mobs is extremely boring because they have lots of hitpoints, immunity to nearly all fun effects, and spam cometfall with a reflex save that I am guessing is low or mid 30's on epic normal even. Melees will spend a moderate amount of time laying down and metagaming for reflex save and balance is probably the most important aspect of this raid because those priestesses are what provide the real challenge journeying through the web. Perma GH or yellow-slot fear immunity is necessary against these as well due to fear spamming, but I kind of liked that aspect of them. Finally a good reason to use a fear immunity item if you don't have a GH handy.

Llolth's hand is going to aggravate me to no end in a full 12 man raid group because it is pretty easy to get thwacked off when it is stalking you across one of the island web-bridges and group members who are directionally challenged will definitely struggle to find the main-body group. At this point I can see myself telling puggers to "do their best to catch up" while everyone else finishes the raid. People wandering around lost in the web and dying is going to be a painful issue and will strongly discourage me from inviting anyone who isn't proficient in the quest into a group. Please give the lower difficulties some form of soul-stone teleportation that will allow them to teleport to a party member or allow party members to "summon soulstones." You definitely don't need 12 people to finish this raid in a timely fashion and in its current implementation and this raid is not friendly to newer players on casual or normal. I'm not sure what the dev teams vision for accessibility is in regards to the raids, but the new "epic normal" difficulty is really easy in comparison to our current epics on live.

One thing that I found discouraging was the lack of a good epic boss beatdown. I was hoping that escaping from the web was the precursor to battling Llolth but was disappointed. This was another thing that made the raid feel like it was thrown together in a hurry. Recycling the demon web map with lots of trash mob spawns and no epic fight was a real letdown IMO. I'm sure it is too late at this point for anything like this, but keep it in mind for next time.

One of the best things about DDO currently is that the difficulty settings for the instanced quests and raids should allow casual and hardcore gamers to enjoy DDO. For Epic Hard and Epic Elite in the Llolth raid you guys can really give the raid everything that makes the raid lousy to run in a pickup group that provides incredible challenge but please keep epic casual and epic normal. Epic elite should have Llolth teleporting members at random, the hand spawns right away, spellwards appear everywhere, the mobs have boss level hitpoints and are immune to everything, the legs pin you down for excessive amounts of time, complete rez lockout, and the battle to bring down the barrier will involve even the most elite groups nearly wiping and drinking loads of mana pots.

Ultimately, if the raid goes live the way it is now I hope you guys have some loot that is significantly better than anything we have seen yet because the raid as a stand-alone is not that entertaining and I don't see it as having wide-spread appeal or replayability. I'm talking about a khopesh that makes the Epic Sword of Shadows look like the 2 year old loot that it is style of "good." A wizard item right out of Elminster's vault category. Make obtaining the items a bit of a grind and the raid will see action and people won't let their subscriptions lapse after they cap out an epic destiny and get too bored to TR again.

I have spent the majority of my time running this raid in a small group of 4 people that involves a couple of Barbs, a Favored Soul, and a Stalwart Defender tank. One thing we were wondering is if dungeon scaling was incorporated for the raid because most of the mobs don't have the durability to challenge a full raid group of 12 that is heavy on pipe hitters. Groups have the potential to blast through it in this regard, but this just isn't where the difficulty of the raid lies on the current working settings. It is dealing with the maze and potentially being split up a lot and aggravated when a group of 4 can make it to the barrier in under an hour when nobody falls off and the correct path is picked. There is the potential to kill well over 500 monsters in this place, or somewhere around 150 if you get the path right.

[Claver]

There are both good and bad aspects to this raid, but in its current implementation I just don't see this raid as being the type that the majority of the DDO populace will enjoy. I appreciate the fact that the developers were listening when people said they wanted a raid that was more than a single or 3 room boss-beatdown. .

Please don't get discouraged Devs.

I would hate to see you revert to formulaic and stagnant Raids.

If you don't take risks, and dare I say stumble, what would you learn? The game would never grow and in time wither.



....p.s. Very nice write up Xithos

[FlimsyFirewood]

To be clear, we're looking for feedback on the forum, not validation.

If I wanted to be popular, I'd pick a career in politics. I'm a content designer, hate is part of the job description.

There is a lot of useful feedback, but the fact that most of you ran the raid short-manned means that feedback related to the actual difficulty of the raid is invalid. With that being said, we're still polishing Ana's behavior to make her more productive, useful, and less stuck.