A sneak peek at Update 24’s dungeons … and beyond

[Oxarhamar]

~ The Temple of Elemental Evil, as a classic dungeon set in another world, with be accessed magically and directly. The epic version will be level 30, and the heroic version will start at level 7 as the original was level 1-8.

~ We won't be creating the villages as part of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Yes, it makes us sad as well. Our estimates of the time it would take to run that pre-content was very low, and the development time estimates were so high we didn't feel that the additional play experience would be worth pushing the update out by months.

Instead players will get right to the heart of the adventure.

~ The Temple is very large, and we want players to have a reason to explore it even on subsequent runs. We want to find a fun system to reward exploring the temple rather than just running the most efficient path to finish the quests, and plan on having some rewarding optional objectives that randomly spawn and give out good XP and treasure.

Sev~

Please give us multiple quests inside TToE.

To make an entire module into one huge quest even with optionals in Haunted Halls fashion is such a waste.

[Uska]

I actually enjoyed the Xoriat chains. They were more creative with more interesting objectives and stories and bosses. Only reason why they're not generally done is they're not XP runs is due to their more difficult mechanics and inefficient XP/min, and since they broke the no ML rings, no reason to do them for gear. Unfortunately no matter how interesting or great they make a quest, the only way that a quest becomes 'popular' is through gear or good XP.

I, for one, look forward to more creative quests, and hope that they have the gear and/or XP to make them 'popular' so I won't be going solo when I feel like running them.

They didn't beak the rings they fixed the no level on those rings is what was broken

[Uska]

I have suggested a number of times on the forums making the City of Waterdeep/Undermountain/Skullport the next major paid expansion - if we ever get one again. This area of the Forgotten Realms would be the prime place to expand out that campaign area, in addition to Anauroch.

Well they wouldnt get a dime from me on that I wouldn't even play it if it was free or if they paid me to do it

[thomassmith2]

I would like to see with the new content a re-work of Archmage tree. Unless you are Warforged or PM no one plays wizard. Archmage needs a familiar. And some kind of healing amp or something. Let us magically infuse potions like arti's or give access to healing wands. And maybe even let us make wands. I don't want to play a pm and I don't want to be warforged either. And unless you are one of the two you are not getting into raids. Hell you are lucky to survive regular quests. We need something to make a non pm non warforged wizard viable. The harper tree helps but come on give us something better. Everything bloody evades the arcane blast and bolts in higher levs. So make it more powerful and let us heal better at least.

I feel your pain. I've been hoping for something like this for a while. being able to add a few spells from other classes spell lists, including healing spells, to the wizard list would seem to fit the theme of an arcane researcher so maybe that might be an option as well.

[Oxarhamar]

Its feedback from me and those others who cant stand subpar D&D and I am not the only player even in this thread and before that didn't want realms or at least not another desert

Feedback of the few does not equal the feedback of the community.

Desicions backed on player feedback needs to consider the entire population not just the squeaky wheel.


I invite you do tally up how many on this thread are glad to see Anaurock go and how many are disappointed.

[The_Human_Cypher]

Here is an interesting question: since TOEE is in Greyhawk, to which patron will the quest's favor be allocated? Will the devs create a new patron such as The Followers of St. Cuthbert ('Cuthbertines') from the Greyhawk campaign?

[Braegan]

No the more realms they add the more people want...

Going by your statement they should release more Realms content then. Give the people what they want!

Sorry man, you are a very vocal minority when it comes to the Realms hatred. There are things I don't like in the game, but I am the minority in those cases so I have the decency of character to not complain about it, repeatedly.

[Braegan]

Some additional info:

~ The Xoriat dungeons are all new content.

~ The Temple of Elemental Evil, as a classic dungeon set in another world, with be accessed magically and directly. The epic version will be level 30, and the heroic version will start at level 7 as the original was level 1-8.

~ We won't be creating the villages as part of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Yes, it makes us sad as well. Our estimates of the time it would take to run that pre-content was very low, and the development time estimates were so high we didn't feel that the additional play experience would be worth pushing the update out by months.

Instead players will get right to the heart of the adventure.

~ The Temple is very large, and we want players to have a reason to explore it even on subsequent runs. We want to find a fun system to reward exploring the temple rather than just running the most efficient path to finish the quests, and plan on having some rewarding optional objectives that randomly spawn and give out good XP and treasure.

Sev~

Well, that seems to solve most of the concerns regarding ToEE.

Well Done!

[Oxarhamar]

Going by your statement they should release more Realms content then. Give the people what they want!

Sorry man, you are a very vocal minority when it comes to the Realms hatred. There are things I don't like in the game, but I am the minority in those cases so I have the decency of character to not complain about it, repeatedly.

And this is why an ingame survey to gather the opinions of the actual player base rather than just the small portion of players on the forum would greatly benifit in making these kinds of decitions.

[Loromir]

Sorry man, you are a very vocal minority when it comes to the Realms hatred. There are things I don't like in the game, but I am the minority in those cases so I have the decency of character to not complain about it, repeatedly.

In all fairness...this is a semi public forum, so he does have the right to speak his mind here...but that goes both ways. I for one like the FR stuff (And the Eberron stuff)...so I say if you want to develop more FR content, More Power to You.

[Oxarhamar]

In all fairness...this is a semi public forum, so he does have the right to speak his mind here...but that goes both ways. I for one like the FR stuff (And the Eberron stuff)...so I say if you want to develop more FR content, More Power to You.

It's true all players have a say.

But, the question has been posed to the Devs.

To what player feedback was this based?

[Braegan]

In all fairness...this is a semi public forum, so he does have the right to speak his mind here...but that goes both ways. I for one like the FR stuff (And the Eberron stuff)...so I say if you want to develop more FR content, More Power to You.

True, but there is a difference between speaking your mind and beating a dead horse.

[Uska]

Feedback of the few does not equal the feedback of the community.

Desicions backed on player feedback needs to consider the entire population not just the squeaky wheel.


I invite you do tally up how many on this thread are glad to see Anaurock go and how many are disappointed.

Tallying fourm opionon means less than nothing and I will protest what and how much I want I invite you to,do,the same

[Uska]

Going by your statement they should release more Realms content then. Give the people what they want!

Sorry man, you are a very vocal minority when it comes to the Realms hatred. There are things I don't like in the game, but I am the minority in those cases so I have the decency of character to not complain about it, repeatedly.

I don't care what you do I will protest how I want and when I want if someone is silent it will be taken as approval

[Oxarhamar]

Tallying fourm opionon means less than nothing and I will protest what and how much I want I invite you to,do,the same

Protest all you want I could care less.

Forum tally will show exactly the feedback the have been given by those on the forum, without a player survey this is the only play feedback the Devs have to base off.


What I care about is what are the Devs basing playing feedback on?

If it's based on a few players repeated protest over a majority of those who support the idea then there is a problem.

Stating you oppinion 100 times over the supporting opinions of other players still only counts as 1 players oppinion.

[jalont]

Hi Folks,

it seems, there are not many Forgotten Realms lovers in the Forum/ and or Player Council these days. Its a fact that the FR are the most popular and most played fantasy world in pen&paper gaming.
Far beyond Greyhawk or Eberron.
In the last update Eberron was embraced in many ways by the Devs. But serious- how many raids of the mark of death have you already run?
I seeked on the server Thelanis every 2 days since the start and found not even one pug! All the guilds I know (no raid guilds) dont run the raid and after the last FR realms raid were published,
they were run a 1000 times even today.

So what is the most popular contend? I think just bringing old content into epic is not the same as bringing something totally new like Anauroch- all the quests of the orchard running once is enough for me because they are not changed so much from heroic. But I like the new ones in the FR even today.

I don't think location or raid content has anything to do with the amount of times someone runs a raid. Loot decides how popular a raid will be. Story, setting and all of that don't matter at all after the first run through.

[SilkofDrasnia]

Well they wouldnt get a dime from me on that I wouldn't even play it if it was free or if they paid me to do it

Yes we know your siggy also very nicely sums up how you feel about FR, that's okay to each their own. Consider though many of us like FR and other "realms" and WOULD PAY and PLAY it!

Try not to let your minority complaint/hatred of FR lead you into believing you speak for the majority.

Protest all you want I could care less.

........


What I care about is what are the Devs basing playing feedback on?
.......

Indeed, I wonder if this is based off the players or the "council" which doesn't necessarily reflect what players want.

[jalont]

It's true all players have a say.

But, the question has been posed to the Devs.

To what player feedback was this based?

It's quite clear that player feedback is coming from the PC. And it's the best method. These forums are a mess and can't be taken seriously, and I have a strange feeling that in-game surveys would be a complete failure.

I know nothing about pnp, but what probably happened is they said, hey, PC, we got the rights to this awesome, popular DnD module. Would you rather that be next or Auronoch, and people on the council said heck yeah to ToEE.

It isn't some conspiracy. Sheesh.

[EllisDee37]

~ The Temple of Elemental Evil, as a classic dungeon set in another world, with be accessed magically and directly. The epic version will be level 30, and the heroic version will start at level 7 as the original was level 1-8.

The only thing about level 7 is that there's no lack of level 7 content. Or level 8, for that matter, and definitely not level 5.

I suggest making it level 6 instead. Compare level 6 and 7:

Level 6
- Redwillow's Ruins
- The Bloody Crypt
- 1 Delera's walkup
- 8 lightweight F2P quests
- 5 lightweight P2P quests (tangleroot, sorrowdusk, 3BC)

Level 7
- Tear of Dhakaan
- Gwylan's Stand
- The Pit
- The entire Sentinels chain (Level 8 Spies is a walk-up)
- Half the Delera's chain
- 2 lightweight F2P quests
- 6 lightweight P2P quests (tangleroot, sorrowdusk, 3BC)

Neither level is particularly light on content, but 7 has a material advantage over 6 right now. 8 has more than either of them, and 5 has even more than 8. (Factoring in that you need twice as much xp to go from 8 to 9 as you do to go from 5 to 6.)

EDIT: My spreadsheet may have out-of-date info for a few of the quests (namely 3BC) but when I add up the base xp for all quests on normal, here's what I get for that range:

Level 5: 31,830
Level 6: 22,140
Level 7: 42,240
Level 8: 56,397
Level 9: 51,414

Level 6 is clearly lacking compared to its peers, while level 7 looks like it's already about right.

While compiling these xp totals it occurs to me that moving the first two Threnal quests from 8 to 9 would correct the imbalance between the two as well as fix the bravery issues with Threnal.

[FranOhmsford]

Well, to be fair, I don't have half of the packs you mentioned, so I'm only speaking from my perspective.

It's just that I seem to have had the worst time trying to find quests in the lv 18-20 range last life, and that was only from since a month ago.

maybe it's just my bad timing...

Tha's not because there's not enough quests in that lvl range but because people don't run the quests that are in that lvl range!

There are reasons for this:

1) People have learned over the years that it's a bad idea to take Lvl 19

2) GH, Vale and the Spinner Chain can get you to 1 xp away from Lvl 20 even on a 3rd Life

3) Once you hit 20 you're eligible to run E-VoN 3/4, E-Wiz King, E-Spies etc. which even on E-Norm give 3x the XP that any Lvl 17-19 quest gives on Elite!


IQ 1+2 and Murder By Night/The Riddle still get run a bit but the rest? Forget it!