Epic 3BC Dev Diary

[Krelar]

Good Question... Those quests are Free Agent favor currently, and they have never given extra favor for EPIC versus HEROIC quests before.

We are getting one new quest. I don't know if it would be enough favor to take us to another reward level.

[Havok.cry]

Re-using systems: good:
-Bed Ship has potential here... can we get a side story where we rescue our original bedship from xoriat and sail it into 3BC?
-Kobold Crossbows are a good thing for anti airship. My only concern here is: will it make sense, story wise for them to be there? Will they just be randomly littering the landscape like in framework, or would they have pirate crews on them that we have to take them from, so we can use the ambush they set up? The second would me more immersive of the story than having them randomly litter the landscape in my opinion. I hope it is something that makes sense anyway. Speaking of framework, could we get some framework ballistas in here too? could be fun for getting around the massive area, and for trying to board airships.

Re-visiting and continuing storylines: Good:
-I hope it has a bunch of lore and story available about the bloodtide and that Ogre Mage. Maybe he could revisit us as one of those intelligent zombies the bloodtide were using.
-Will you be tying in other storylines as well? Will we have a pirate dragon? Or a pirate mounted on a dragon? Could part of the Last quest involve crash landing on the shipwreck shore of korthos island and next pack involve epic korthos?

Developing new systems:
-Just remember the proper procedure for panicing:
1-Raise arms fully extended above the head, wave in all directions.
2-Open your eyes to their widest point, and tilt you head back, open your mouth as wide as possible.
3-Stand up from your computer, and run in circles around your chair.
4-Scream loudly into any mic you are wearing, only pausing for breath.
-If you remember this simple procedure, you will be able to handle many of the endless bugs the new system will introduce, however, when it inevitable re-introduces already fixed bugs, you need to add one more step:
5-While screaming, repeat the phrase "Not again, not again, not again!" continuously, speeding up each repetition until it is not comprehensible as actual speech.

Questions:
-Will the heroic 3bc wilderness be getting upgraded with wandering airships as well? That would be awesome, I hope you say yes.
-Will players be able to scape up the grappling hooks and board the enemy airships that way, maybe if they have a high enough strength or constitution for the climb?
-Yuan-ti and harpies... sigh... I assume yuan-ti are going to show up in garl's tomb. Harpies could be interesting opponents with all the cliffs and rugged terrain. How will you explain them moving in there?
-Can we have a werewolf pirate? Werewolves were the single(only) best thing you have made in all of FR, and you have seriously underused them. Please please please can we get more?
-What will happen if a ranged character kills the airship while his buddies are on board it slaughtering the crew? Will it have a crash animation that gives them time to jump off and fall? Will they be able to ride the burning wreck to the ground heroiclly? Will Elminster show up and save them from certain, but easily avoidable, doom? Having it crash and then having a wreck there that you have to enter to get the loot for killing it would be even more awesome, I hope you can do something like this, having it just disappear would be kinda lame.

[redspecter23]

I currently only have one concern. Please tell me your re-imagining of guard duty has nothing to do with protecting anything, escorting anything or a failure condition based on ridiculously stupid NPC AI.

[Gywiden]

Good Question... Those quests are Free Agent favor currently, and they have never given extra favor for EPIC versus HEROIC quests before.

True. It's just interesting that they are bringing Cydonie into it. It makes me wonder if it has something to do with favor. There has to be some reason to change quest patrons, though I suppose it could be strictly plot.

[patang01]

Rumors have surfaced of a giant treasure cache, hidden somewhere in Three Barrel Cove by the pirate lord Ahraatz-Ri before he was slain. For those who might not remember Ahraatz-Ri, he was the ogre-mage boss and leader of the Blood Tide pirates in the Sentinels of Stormreach adventure pack.

Excellent idea, as it builds on a previous pack. May I suggest a Saga then for doing Sentinels and the ones set in this pack?

We’re also completely replacing the old heroic monsters with a new list of epic monsters. There is some overlap between the old list and the new list, because some monsters make ideal pirates at any Challenge Rating. For example, warforged are on both lists. However, they’ll feel more like airship pirates rather than the original Three Barrel Cove warforged, and will be used both in different combat roles and different locations.

A number of new “native” monsters are planned to be added to 3BC’s landscape: harpies and yuan-ti. We discussed a number of possible monster additions with the Player Council. The dev team had a short list of monsters to meet particular gameplay goals, and we narrowed it down to those two through PC votes.

Sounds good, I'm glad you're not just increasing the HP and damage of existing mobs and are considering giving the new wilderness a more epic feel.

Each of the pirate crews are based on a pirate airship, flying about the 3BC landscape. This is a new thing for us, but we’ve been able to prove out the concepts in our prototypes – each airship will be a single attackable monster, with several attacks, including:

This idea is awesome. I watched the video and there's so much potential in this type of 'monster'. This sure adds an epic feel to the wilderness and makes it less about the mob and more about fighting an entire pirate ship. make it so.

The landscape will have different slayer and rare objectives on epic and heroic. It also won’t have the exact same list of explorer points. All the monsters on the landscape will be replaced on epic. It’s likely that at least some encounters will be on the Random Encounter system. But one of the realities is that 3BC has a ton of tight cliffs & walkways, without enough space for random encounters to spawn. Those areas will get new statically-placed monsters.

I'll be honest - 3BC is not my favorite packs and the quests doesn't really tingle me at all. But I guess with a new coat of paint it might be good enough to add to the ETR cycle.

Yes, we’re planning on adding free teleport points across the landscape!

TYTYTY
This alone makes it worth doing. It's one of those things that I liked but soured my experience with the second xpack. To pay to get to the entrance of the quest. It just felt wrong. I'm glad you came to your senses with the new raids and in this case.

In each dungeon, you’ll be vying against Blood Tide pirates and other pirate crews to locate clues to the location of the treasure. The clues might be as simple as a piece of a map, or something a bit more complex. Once you’ve completed the 4 dungeons, you’ll be able to find the location of the treasure on the 3BC landscape.

Sweet, looking forward to see what this treasure is. Here's a suggestion - add a final encounter for the treasure. Sorta like a bossfight, but since it's just that one 'treasure guardian' it's going to be a quicker encounter. Like an undeed version of the captain or a big dragon. Just to make it interesting.

We’re also planning a 5th dungeon – a brand new epic-only dungeon. It’s something of a spiritual replacement for Guard Duty, where you are fending off pirate airships which are attacking the airship carrying the treasure back to Stormreach. Rather than the static nature of the original Guard Duty, we’re planning on something much more dynamic and interesting by building on top of the technologies we developed for the “bed ship” in Acute Delirium.

Interesting, so this would be the 'final encounter' then? Sounds good. Maybe you should make this a short raid. Like fighting of waves and waves of pirates until you battle the boss. It can be as short as DQ2. Raids don't have to be long or complicated.

[Captain_Wizbang]

3BC has always had a bad rap.

It might be ok, but I doubt "epifying" it will spark any more than a passing interest.

I would have chosen "The Vale", with a new "Harry" in a revamped Shroud.

[moo_cow]

It's been said that they abandoned the EN/EH/EE loot tiering after eGH.

That's too bad. The way it is set up like this is terrible.

[patang01]

That's too bad. The way it is set up like this is terrible.

I hope they give it the haunted hall treatment with possibly 2 tiers upgrades. I'm not a fan of EN, EH and EE, it just ends up with some not playing the stuff buying the items and a auction house full of all versions and some you can even find at a vender.

[rest]

I hope they give it the haunted hall treatment with possibly 2 tiers upgrades. I'm not a fan of EN, EH and EE, it just ends up with some not playing the stuff buying the items and a auction house full of all versions and some you can even find at a vender.

Well it's a good solution for people who don't want to run a bunch of sucky dungeons. I'm super glad I can buy the stuff from haunted halls on the AH. I hate that awful quest.

[Scraap]

That's too bad. The way it is set up like this is terrible.

I disagree. Vehemently.

Monsters:
We’re also completely replacing the old heroic monsters with a new list of epic monsters. There is some overlap between the old list and the new list, because some monsters make ideal pirates at any Challenge Rating. For example, warforged are on both lists. However, they’ll feel more like airship pirates rather than the original Three Barrel Cove warforged, and will be used both in different combat roles and different locations.

Step in the right direction.

[geoffhanna]

Swashbucklers and exploding Pirate ships! Minotaurs descending on grappling hooks to attack us while we dodge artillery barrages! Escorting our own airship through a hellish corridor of mage-fire cannons and rune arms!

Oh wait, escort... well, still, this all sounds pretty **** epic to me.

It's nice that we're not just getting the same monsters with more hit points. Or at least not only getting them. We're getting epic enemy pirate ships!

I get excited easily but ... wow ... this just sounds like so much fun!

[brian14]

Re-using systems: good:
-Bed Ship has potential here... can we get a side story where we rescue our original bedship from xoriat and sail it into 3BC?

That would be awesome!

[EllisDee37]

Awwww, no epic Scoundrel's Run?

[Cleanincubus]

A number of new “native” monsters are planned to be added to 3BC’s landscape: harpies and yuan-ti. We discussed a number of possible monster additions with the Player Council. The dev team had a short list of monsters to meet particular gameplay goals, and we narrowed it down to those two through PC votes.

For the sake of transparency (and curiosity), could we see that short list, to see what the Players Council actually had to choose from? To put it bluntly, it doesn't sound like they were given a very good list to choose from. Perhaps I'm incorrect.

The epified dungeons have their monsters completely replaced, and as well may have some different objectives. Their layouts and main critical paths are probably going to be similar to the old ones, but the nature of the new pirate monsters should make them feel different. We’ve tentatively chosen 4 dungeons to be epified as part of a new 5-part epic arc: Prove Your Worth, Ghost of a Chance, The Legend of Two-Toed Tobias, and Garl’s Tomb. These are partly based on the responses to the “favorite 3BC dungeon” thread, and partly based on our internal evaluation on how much effort it would take to epify each of the 3BC dungeons. We also considered how well the new story and pirate monsters would work in these dungeons.

In each dungeon, you’ll be vying against Blood Tide pirates and other pirate crews to locate clues to the location of the treasure. The clues might be as simple as a piece of a map, or something a bit more complex. Once you’ve completed the 4 dungeons, you’ll be able to find the location of the treasure on the 3BC landscape.

We’re also planning a 5th dungeon – a brand new epic-only dungeon. It’s something of a spiritual replacement for Guard Duty, where you are fending off pirate airships which are attacking the airship carrying the treasure back to Stormreach. Rather than the static nature of the original Guard Duty, we’re planning on something much more dynamic and interesting by building on top of the technologies we developed for the “bed ship” in Acute Delirium.
Thank you for reading!
PurpleFooz

The new quest does sound quite interesting. But only 5 quests out of the original 9 are getting the Epic treatment? This is greatly disappointing. Seems like the only things that will save me from being upset that I spent TP for 3BC, is if the new quest is very fun (fun> challenging) and the loot is great.

[Madja]

I hope they give it the haunted hall treatment with possibly 2 tiers upgrades. I'm not a fan of EN, EH and EE, it just ends up with some not playing the stuff buying the items and a auction house full of all versions and some you can even find at a vender.

This would be my prefered method too. Make items that have three tier upgrades. Have the unupgraded item drop on normal, have the tier 1 drop on hard and the tier 2 drop on elite. The upgrade components would drop all the difficulties but have varying droprates depending on the difficulty.
Having three tiers would help ensure that the components are still useful for those running elite.


Also:
Would it be possible to, instead of having the entire airship attackable, have certain key components of it determine it's overall health? These could be parts like the engine (or whatever you'd call it on airships powered by elementals), the turrets, the wings etc.

It would make more sense to me to aim for these areas instead of just firing arrows randomly into the hull and it would also help avoid some possible targetting annoyances that might come from having such a massive single target.

[Seikojin]

While this is being worked on, please bump up the base exp of the heroics by 1000 each tier and bump their optionals to 25% base.

I like the look of what was shown and it sounds like it will be a lot of fun.

In the big picture, E3bc is just more epics that we can run to help get to cap and etr, so all in all, always welcomed.

[axel15810]

First off, I'm disappointed that not all the quests are being made epic. I had up to this point assumed all of them would be. No epic Scoundrel's Run or Fire Caves is disappointing. Glad to see Guard Duty being replaced, very unpopular quest.

Extremely happy to see that teleport points, free ones, are being added. Without this feature, I probably would spend very little time in the new content since the run times are so unbearably long.

Extremely disappointed that unlike epic gianthold, there is no new raid, since DDO BADLY needs more relevant endgame raids.

Airships look kinda interesting. Happy monsters are being replaced, wanting to see exactly what they're being replaced with before I can give an opinion though.

I'm happy the devs seemed to make some sort of balance between melee and ranged contributions. Still concerned that ranged will just blow up the airships and grappling hooks before melee can climb onto them though. Hopefully I am wrong about this. Melee needs to be better than ranged at damaging some part of the airships. Perhaps give the grappling hooks a lot of inherent elemental resistance/absorption.

Overall, I feel okay-ish about this. Still think the time could be much better spent putting in more endgame raids, we have enough quests already. But still glad we are getting new content fairly soon.

[RedOrm]

/signed on bumping the xp for heroic 3BC.
Also, why only 2 monster types in the wilderniss? There's undead on heroic 3BC, why not on epic? Ans I don't mean generic skellies; there's plenty more interesting undead that can be moved there. Also, in the lava area, how about replacing the yuan-ti with the new salamanders? Oh, and I would certainly enjoy the named pirates from the Crystal Cove public wilderniss as random encounters (and while you're at it, please give those a chest in Crystal Cove?)

Other then that, I'll have to see more before I can comment, other than 100% agreeing the loot better be really awesome, and also NOT be changed between the last preview and the actual release like last time!
Unless it's changes many many players asked for.

Greetz,
Red Orm

[dunklezhan]

I am really excited about this, because I am one of the apparently few who love 3BC. But also because it's not a straight conversion, they're thinking about it, taking new approaches and making it unique. So: awesome. It would be awesome if it was Shantokor (ok bad example because actually that really would be more awesome), or Restless Isles, or even Sorrowdusk - if they do this level of revamp, I'd be happy. Also it's in Eberron, and that pleases me greatly. It wouldn't have sold it on it's own though: another Sentinels or House P job on the other hand would have really really irritated me. I'd rather have more FR content than the old style epics which always felt utterly uninteresting and lazy to me.

To be more specific, I'm really looking forward to:

More epic EBERRON content to run
3BC love - ignore the haters on this one, there's plenty of people love it, even if few get chance to run it because of where it is placed in the level range.
A new 3BC quest, woo, even if it is basically a reboot of the same 'story', it's scratch built, it is definitely a new experience, and I like that.
The airships stuff sounds awesome in general. I remember when challenges were being discussed I suggested an airship battle challenge - I hope this could be something we do now get to see eventually.
I also hope one of the options for 'clever players' is a window of opportunity to climb up the grapple lines to make an onboard assault.
The different pirate crews - 3BC always had this, good to see even more differentiation, really interested to see if you can pull off the tactics AI you're aiming for.
Hopefully decent new loot (decent. Not 'the new best loot' because then you'll be forced to make it grindy - see below)
Reuse of random encounters, turrets and other things like that. These were great/interesting additions to the game, keep using and refining them, and please also keep reusing and refining your airship tech.
More Argonessen plot. Always nice. Be nice to interact with it and the prophecy more directly again though.

I am concerned about:
NOT getting all the 3BC quests epified.
Grindy loot. Moving away from EN/EH/EE tiers (which I personally prefer to RNG crafting drop systems) I do understand - many people don't like that for various reasons this isn't the place to argue about - but I do understand the decision. But if I can't reasonably reliably get an item within a few elite runs (<5) I simply don't bother trying (I still run the quests, but I don't play for loot. I like loot, but I prefer to spend time on character abilities and progression).
Lack of love for heroic 3BC: it desperately needs XP and teleporters too. Especially teleporters. An airship ride you could FF off would be fun, just saying...
Still no update on Cannith Crafting.
Lack of information on whether it will be included in the existing 3BC pack, whether that price will be going up to reflect the new content, what it means for people who already own the pack etc. I realise you wouldn't be able to talk price points right now, but I'd like to know what the approach is at least please. I am however going to take it as read that it will be free to VIPs. Right? Right?
Reuse of Yuanti and Harpies - hitherto unheard of in Eberron content, so I'd like some backstory in game please. If you've just slotted them in because they're available resources since Stormhorns & Underdark then I will be... disdainful. I would rather you reused known Eberron creatures (already known in DDO that is) if you're just doing it for the sake of it, or better yet developed new ones though I quite understand how intensive that must be, and I'm very happy with the sound of the airships . If on the other hand the yuanti are a pirate crew from somewhere else on Xendrik, or having slipped through the portal between worlds, and the Harpies have escaped from some collector's menagerie having brought them back from Faerun or Khorvaire or something, sweet - as long as it's relevant and something you can find out in game.

[Lanadazia]

i dont like 'epi-fy'ing in general.
the epic gianthold was disappointing to me, since only a new raid was added and the quests remained unchanged

i was pretty skeptic when reading the announcement..
but!
the ideas including this update are well designed; like you get 4 clues in the dungeons and can find the actual chest in the explorer area!
also the new random encounters and new monsters sound great!
the new guard duty thing sounds pretty awesome aswell

but sadly its only 1 new quest.
dont get me wrong, i like everything that improves this game, also the ideas for the epifying are good, as i wrote above
but i prefer all-new packs/quests, even if they are pretty small
the haunted halls are one quest only for the cost of a whole pack like vale of twilight or gianthold,
but its worth it, cause its a new adventure!
if you go back to an old place where you've been alot with different toons its just not the same feeling /excitement for the new update
cause you already know the layout or the actual 'new' quest (like in gianthold. just the CR changed basically) or the explorer area (though it may be changed in a few spots)
though you put alot of effort into this, the old heroic quests that got epified will be kinda stale, just as in GH

this post is based on the assumption, that the epified quests that already exist wont change, but in CR