Raid Feedback: Caught in the Web

[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.

[DeadRabbat]

Alot of people aren't flagged for it yet. Also looking at who is online, there a very few FVS & Clerics on...alot of druids. So getting people who Are interested in the raid, Are flagged & have the time is being difficult when many are more interested in testing new abilities or classes.

It isn't because we haven't tried to get a full group, it is finding the people who can and want to.

we will keep trying.

And no, Politicians currently are hated more then developers.

[AMDarkwolf]

I can see ddo of the future, where the 'top end raid' would be a single room with a training dummy that has 6 billion HP, and the room 'explodes' every 10 seconds for 650+ dmg.

CHALLENGE DDO STYLE!

[FlimsyFirewood]

The victory condition in that room would be to solve a puzzle before the bored melee guys kill the dummy.

Oh and you have to escort the dummy somewhere. Who is totally stationary and doesn't move, unless its being hit by your melee, who have to herd it somewhere...

... you might be onto something. Taking notes.

[Carpone]

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

Would love to give you feedback about the raid loot...if we ever see it.

[Spartywinz]

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.

Ana or the Raid bugged, being at the end door with 0 mob spawns and ana standing there like shes lost while lolth just shoots you with beams for 30 minutes can't be wai.

[sirgog]

Would love to give you feedback about the raid loot...if we ever see it.

I would assume that the Commendations of Heroes drop here. (These are required for the tier 3 PDK favor vendor, who apparently sells Cormyrian Green Dragonscale and Cormyrian Red Dragonscale armors).

[Shade]

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.

A huge reason for this is the extremely lengthy flagging process. (well its not that long, but i mean relatively to past raids)

Altho ive been playing the beta a ton, im not yet flagged for the raid on any character. Not so much as I dont have time, but I dont really want to spoil all teh content before live, and pretty much 90% of the nwe quests are required.

If you could add a auto flag npc and gateway in the dojo, youd get a TON more "Valid" 12 man group feedback. IMO you should do this for EVERY raid, EVERY update, and have it ready at least 2 weeks in advance.. Raids are very a very important, major part of whta makes DDOs endgame fun, they deserve proper testing tools available 24/7 for a while.

[jamkriz]

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.

Glad you finally finished Punny. Sorry I couldn't stay until the end. I have to say I much prefer the flagging to the actual raid. Can't say I'll be doing it much (if at all) if it stays in it's current form when it hits live.

[Thrudh]

I love the sound of this raid...

I love the idea of splitting up the group, so self-sufficiency becomes more important than MAX DPS babysat by clerics spamming mass-heal.

[Don1966]

The victory condition in that room would be to solve a puzzle before the bored melee guys kill the dummy.

Oh and you have to escort the dummy somewhere. Who is totally stationary and doesn't move, unless its being hit by your melee, who have to herd it somewhere...

... you might be onto something. Taking notes.

how about this, boss fight is very first thing after zoning in, then you gotta escape the dungeon, fighting thru waves of mobs to get to the safe room which has the chest.

[AMDarkwolf]

how about this, boss fight is very first thing after zoning in, then you gotta escape the dungeon, fighting thru waves of mobs to get to the safe room which has the chest.

That is a neat perspective. Almost like an Indiana Jones style adventure, like u said with the fight to start it off, and a 'timed' escape(As the dungeon starts to collapse behind you?) with the big nasty fight being the first one(alone or with buddies?) and a few red/orange named who try to frantically stop you from escaping on the way out.

Maybe if the dungeon took about 45 min total time :P

[Havok.cry]

The raid I want to see would be thus:
Single massive room, constantly moving dividers continually alter the field into varying small(fireball sized) rooms (basically this massive room is an ever changing maze). Constantly apply planar environments a la prison of the planes final fight. Constant spawns of minions harass the players (always have ~ 3 spawns per player somewhere on the map). Boss teleports, but not just himself, he sends every player to a random location and then teleports to one of them, I would set this ability to be activated any time there is more than three players in his vicinity. Boss would have low HP (for a boss) but have the heal spell. Other spells this boss might have would include mordenkeinens disjunction (one capable of removing even ship buffs), various arcane and divine dots with random targets, disco ball, and chain missiles (preferably with double rainbow prism stance a la shiradi champion). Give him a cleaving melee attack. Have a shrine in each corner of the map, and one near the entrance so players can DDoor to easily find at least one shrine. Have a raid lockout mechanism set to still allow such DDooring, but prevent players from just soloing it and then calling in their buddies. Have chaos orbs randomly wandering. I would give it devil assault like scaling with it set to different levels via difficulty selected, letting it support casual heroic level 4ish, through epic elite level 25ish, but noted to be an extreme challenge at any difficulty.

To me that would be a real boss. There would be no special tactic to achieve auto victory like most raids have. Players would need to be able to handle themselves and react quickly to help support whomever they can. I would call this raid "Go Big or Go Home". But then my friends tell me I'm crazy.

[FlimsyFirewood]

That is a neat perspective. Almost like an Indiana Jones style adventure, like u said with the fight to start it off, and a 'timed' escape(As the dungeon starts to collapse behind you?) with the big nasty fight being the first one(alone or with buddies?) and a few red/orange named who try to frantically stop you from escaping on the way out.

Maybe if the dungeon took about 45 min total time :P

Oh that reminds me, that's one thing I didn't do. Put a 45 min time limit failure condition on this raid.

Kidding, kidding, sheesh.

[Nick_RC]

I love the sound of this raid...

I love the idea of splitting up the group, so self-sufficiency becomes more important than MAX DPS babysat by clerics spamming mass-heal.

By self sufficiency you mean silver flame pots? That's all my full tard barb needed. It is fun tho. I think self sufficient + handling ur business in a timely fashion will be important.

Maybe if the dungeon took about 45 min total time :P

It does. - We were down to 45 minutes and it was our third full run though, with 5 people, taking our time. I can see it being 30 min runs in a decent pug in the near future.