Please stop using an absurd number of mobs in every quest

[Wizza]

This trend has been around a while. Each and every quest has become just a massive slaughter of mobs, every 2 steps there is an encounter with lots of mobs. At some point, killing mobs in this game has become the most boring thing to do.

I've tried the two new quests yesterday and they are no exception to this rule. The quests themselves were really nice and I liked them so props there but after killing 100 or so mobs in first few corridors, I just found myself bored to death and HAD to use invisibility because otherwise I could not have finished the quests without falling asleep. This issue is specially true at higher levels (LE and EE), where the HP of mobs is not balanced at decent levels and it takes a while to clear an encounter. Killing 300+ mobs in every quest is not fun. Killing 300+ mobs with 20k+ HP each is even less fun.

And really, kobolds again? Because you absolutely read and listened our complains about kobolds in the previous two updates. Not just that, now there are MILLIONS of kobolds that do 17k points of damage with Fire Burst.

Balance the HP mobs and rework on the number of encounters in the new quests.

[dunklezhan]

This trend has been around a while. Each and every quest has become just a massive slaughter of mobs, every 2 steps there is an encounter with lots of mobs. At some point, killing mobs in this game has become the most boring thing to do.

I've tried the two new quests yesterday and they are no exception to this rule. The quests themselves were really nice and I liked them so props there but after killing 100 or so mobs in first few corridors, I just found myself bored to death and HAD to use invisibility because otherwise I could not have finished the quests without falling asleep. This issue is specially true at higher levels (LE and EE), where the HP of mobs is not balanced at decent levels and it takes a while to clear an encounter. Killing 300+ mobs in every quest is not fun. Killing 300+ mobs with 20k+ HP each is even less fun.

And really, kobolds again? Because you absolutely read and listened our complains about kobolds in the previous two updates. Not just that, now there are MILLIONS of kobolds that do 17k points of damage with Fire Burst.

Balance the HP mobs and rework on the number of encounters in the new quests.

Haven't played the new quests but very disappointed if its just another packmob overload. I'll not try to deny that it makes it more challenging (for me), but its becoming formulaic and very tired as an approach now. I'm also at a loss as to how it can not increase lag.

[azrael4h]

I actually stopped and quit playing the other day because of this very issue. While there are outside factors involved as well, after running through Creeping Death, I turned one too many corners to stare at one too many batches of HP-inflated critters, and just said screw it. I quit playing for several hours. Even now, I'm looking more at the game as a chore to play.

I had more fun running around Vol earlier today, despite having ran it so much I can do it asleep at this point, than running newer, less ran quests simply because since Druid's Deep or so, the dungeon design has devolved into halls full of monsters leading to rooms full of monsters, ad infinitum. It's become stale and boring, to the point that I look more forward to TRing and rerunning old favourites than seeing what new stuff is in store. Not a good thing if you want me to buy stuff once you fix the store so I can.

I was playing some Doom maps (yes, people still put out tons of mods and maps for Doom and Doom 2, even after 20+ years!). One of the things I noticed in the higher quality maps, is that even on UV, they tend to rely more on clever placement of mobs rather than overwhelming numbers. A well placed chain gunner can send even a veteran player scrambling. An Arch-Vile can be devastating.

[Lonnbeimnech]

I actually stopped and quit playing the other day because of this very issue. While there are outside factors involved as well, after running through Creeping Death, I turned one too many corners to stare at one too many batches of HP-inflated critters, and just said screw it. I quit playing for several hours. Even now, I'm looking more at the game as a chore to play.

I had more fun running around Vol earlier today, despite having ran it so much I can do it asleep at this point, than running newer, less ran quests simply because since Druid's Deep or so, the dungeon design has devolved into halls full of monsters leading to rooms full of monsters, ad infinitum. It's become stale and boring, to the point that I look more forward to TRing and rerunning old favourites than seeing what new stuff is in store. Not a good thing if you want me to buy stuff once you fix the store so I can.

I was playing some Doom maps (yes, people still put out tons of mods and maps for Doom and Doom 2, even after 20+ years!). One of the things I noticed in the higher quality maps, is that even on UV, they tend to rely more on clever placement of mobs rather than overwhelming numbers. A well placed chain gunner can send even a veteran player scrambling. An Arch-Vile can be devastating.

The quests with an impassable barrier every 3 feet that can only get through after killing all the mobs, like creeping death and the druids chain, are the worst design in the game, imo, even worse than 'protect the suicidal NPC' quests.

Combined with the new approach of saturating a quest with mobs, and yeah, its just boring and time consuming.

[azrael4h]

The quests with an impassable barrier every 3 feet that can only get through after killing all the mobs, like creeping death and the druids chain, are the worst design in the game, imo, even worse than 'protect the suicidal NPC' quests.

Combined with the new approach of saturating a quest with mobs, and yeah, its just boring and time consuming.

They could always have you protect a suicidal NPC while going through over-stuffed hallways full of hp-inflated mobs that you have to kill to remove barriers every 3 feet.

Artificial barriers are always bad design.

[Seikojin]

Threnal is a good chain for mob density, type, and strategy.

I agree that mob packing like they have been doing is boring. I think if we had earlier access to the quests, we could provide mob placement feedback and get things into the release.

But their super tight schedule and deadlines for releases don't allow that.

[Rys]

leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeroy jeeeenkins

[Wizza]

leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeroy jeeeenkins

The issue mentioned in the OP is even worse when your DDO partner rushes into the a bunch of shaman kobolds. And guess who dies -_-

[Rys]

The issue mentioned in the OP is even worse when your DDO partner rushes into the a bunch of shaman kobolds. And guess who dies -_-

You?

_{(Time was up, it wasn't my fault, we almost got'em, you had to share your experience with me anyway because I was the only one brave there)}

.

[Enoach]

I think this is an issue of confusion with quest design.

What is the appropriate density of mobs?

First any discussion on density of mobs should be noted that it should be based off a standard party of 4. Running with less you should be picking up the slack and running with more, well "many hands make light work"

I do agree, after 3 corners of "Oooh Mobs" and "Oh Mobs must die to proceed" your pushing the patience buttons on many players. Personally anything repeated more than 3 times - Lather, Rinse, Repeat drives a mechanic into the ground. And I like Temple of Elemental Evil, but even I think the hallways full of Mobs standing to be activated was the wrong approach. All those rooms and so many are empty - That's where they should be and mobs in the hallway should be wandering - say walking the full length in a patrol not standing at a junction like they are waiting for an invading army.

My first suggestion is a mechanic should not - repeat should not be used more than 3 times in a single dungeon.

Next it the issue of how many HP should "annoyance" (Not a boss and not a continue point fight) have?

One problem I think is that every mob be it in Heroic or later in Epic all seem to be inflated HP sinks. This is what I think drove many players to put their DPS to 11, which then drove Mobs Damage to 12. This becomes a never ending cycle of one-ups-menship where one release Mobs get the upper hand and later the characters get the upper hand.

I like the idea that entering a dungeon there is a risk that I'm going to die, but no one likes to know they will die 8 to 20 times because of a mechanic or the fact that the Boss is simply going to one-shot them. Don't get me wrong the end boss in Legendary Shroud is one I absolutely love because of his Hellball. Something that can be mitigated but can also be a big thorn in a players side. And in a Raid that is appropriate.

I think the other issue I have is the mix. Challenge is hard to create if all the mobs fall easy prey to a single tactic. Players figure that out and exploit that. Champions helped in the upper difficulties, but more really should happen. Mix it up, much like a balanced party make-up Divine, Arcane, Heavy and light melee as well as a tactical melee. Make it so concentrating on just one of Fortitude, Will and Reflex saves wont be more than 1/3 effective..

I'm not in favor of 4 on 100 at a time. But 4 on 12 still makes sense to me as long at it is not 12 of the same all the time.

[JOTMON]

This trend has been around a while. Each and every quest has become just a massive slaughter of mobs, every 2 steps there is an encounter with lots of mobs. At some point, killing mobs in this game has become the most boring thing to do.

I've tried the two new quests yesterday and they are no exception to this rule. The quests themselves were really nice and I liked them so props there but after killing 100 or so mobs in first few corridors, I just found myself bored to death and HAD to use invisibility because otherwise I could not have finished the quests without falling asleep. This issue is specially true at higher levels (LE and EE), where the HP of mobs is not balanced at decent levels and it takes a while to clear an encounter. Killing 300+ mobs in every quest is not fun. Killing 300+ mobs with 20k+ HP each is even less fun.

And really, kobolds again? Because you absolutely read and listened our complains about kobolds in the previous two updates. Not just that, now there are MILLIONS of kobolds that do 17k points of damage with Fire Burst.

Balance the HP mobs and rework on the number of encounters in the new quests.

bash bash bash, next set of mobs bash bash bash, rinse/repeat....
So they are continuing the trend of brute DPS=win instead of strategy, tactics, teamwork....

no puzzles, skill challenges like bluff/diplo/intimidate, teamwork levers/passages, traps to drop mobs into, etc... you know stuff to challenge the mind vs mash attack buttons...
Hopefully the game will not fully devolve from a brain challenge towards a first person shooter point and click game... we have xbox for that...
I get the impression they are losing focus on the core fundamentals of DDO.. (based on DnD)... a game that challenged the imagination and teamwork interaction for a group of people..

[Enoach]

bash bash bash, next set of mobs bash bash bash, rinse/repeat....
So they are continuing the trend of brute DPS=win instead of strategy, tactics, teamwork....

no puzzles, skill challenges like bluff/diplo/intimidate, teamwork levers/passages, traps to drop mobs into, etc... you know stuff to challenge the mind vs mash attack buttons...
Hopefully the game will not fully devolve from a brain challenge towards a first person shooter point and click game... we have xbox for that...

When I first came to DDO what kept me was the fact that puzzles and strategy and team work mixed with combat (Notice what was first). When you through 100s of mobs at players all with Max HP and Max DPS players will retaliate by pumping their DPS to 11 and then miss out on things developers could do.

I would love to see Turbine return to the idea that all quests be balanced to 4 characters. I'm not saying make it impossible to solo, but don't be afraid of puzzles and mechanics that work best if 2 to 4 characters work together.

If you make quests where DPS doesn't matter and can be solved by simply solving puzzles I think it would be going to the other extreme. The better answer is to mix it up, some quests more DPS and some more puzzle. In all cases strategy is an option.

[JOTMON]

When I first came to DDO what kept me was the fact that puzzles and strategy and team work mixed with combat (Notice what was first). When you through 100s of mobs at players all with Max HP and Max DPS players will retaliate by pumping their DPS to 11 and then miss out on things developers could do.

I would love to see Turbine return to the idea that all quests be balanced to 4 characters. I'm not saying make it impossible to solo, but don't be afraid of puzzles and mechanics that work best if 2 to 4 characters work together.

If you make quests where DPS doesn't matter and can be solved by simply solving puzzles I think it would be going to the other extreme. The better answer is to mix it up, some quests more DPS and some more puzzle. In all cases strategy is an option.

This is where creative thinking comes into play..
puzzles that drops the mobs into a pit, or activates a trap on the mobs instead of having to melee them directly. opens the gates to the unfed hounds that attacks them instead of us...
runes/levers/secret doors to bypass or lock mobs down...
alternative pathways, secret keys to open doors instead of having to beatfest down a hallway to go around the door.
freeing prisoners that attack the mobs...
items that can be utilized by certain pools of classes to open access to otherwise inaccessible areas..

...bring more bypass skills to the class not the player ..
Runes that bypass sections of puzzles based on certain stats.. barbarian cant figure out the rune.. hes a barbarian... so has to do the puzzle manually.. but the aligned class realizes its a bypass switch and can solve a whole section of the puzzle with the rune..
rusty grate doorway.. rawr str smash... or hang on... theres a spot to cast grease.... and next to the old rusty grate is a bypass trapped secret door..hey a fellow gnome made this bypass door..might be able to disable this trap without a rogue...
alternatives to rogues.. ranger (or class with high spot skill) can see a worn path down the trapped hallway ..says step where I step....
.. alternative paths if you do not have the ideal class to solve the specific puzzle.. has been an issue in quests like Tempest spine.. don't have INT/door opener/STR.. its an issue.. let us go a longer alternative route to get back to the same end result...

many of these have been used in old quests.. Haunted Halls was a great (sort of recent) one..

would prefer to see more quests setup so that a balanced party has alternatives to just pure brute dps bashdown..

bring this back to a game of brains, not just buttonmash brawn.

[Gremmlynn]

This is where creative thinking comes into play..
puzzles that drops the mobs into a pit, or activates a trap on the mobs instead of having to melee them directly. opens the gates to the unfed hounds that attacks them instead of us...
runes/levers/secret doors to bypass or lock mobs down...
alternative pathways, secret keys to open doors instead of having to beatfest down a hallway to go around the door.
freeing prisoners that attack the mobs...
items that can be utilized by certain pools of classes to open access to otherwise inaccessible areas..

...bring more bypass skills to the class not the player ..
Runes that bypass sections of puzzles based on certain stats.. barbarian cant figure out the rune.. hes a barbarian... so has to do the puzzle manually.. but the aligned class realizes its a bypass switch and can solve a whole section of the puzzle with the rune..
rusty grate doorway.. rawr str smash... or hang on... theres a spot to cast grease.... and next to the old rusty grate is a bypass trapped secret door..hey a fellow gnome made this bypass door..might be able to disable this trap without a rogue...
alternatives to rogues.. ranger (or class with high spot skill) can see a worn path down the trapped hallway ..says step where I step....
.. alternative paths if you do not have the ideal class to solve the specific puzzle.. has been an issue in quests like Tempest spine.. don't have INT/door opener/STR.. its an issue.. let us go a longer alternative route to get back to the same end result...

many of these have been used in old quests.. Haunted Halls was a great (sort of recent) one..

would prefer to see more quests setup so that a balanced party has alternatives to just pure brute dps bashdown..

bring this back to a game of brains, not just buttonmash brawn.

This would be great if they could give us a bunch of new quests to run every week. Else we just end up with quests that we know what to bring to after the first completion or so. Look at Tear of Dhakaan, we know to bring a temp wizzy or barb hire to get the first two pieces if nobody can make the scores, we know the rout and the rougher spots and the tricks to beating them. One thing about mindless DPS beat downs is they don't become automatic once figured out. They also don't only get played when a group happens to have the right skill set to make playing it worthwhile.

[lyrecono]

Deduction Puzzle (Riddles)
Found in The Crucible in Gianthold. This is the puzzle with six doors and you need to guess which door the horn is behind. Granted most people simply pick the same door over and over again until it is the right door, there is a way to solve this. If your wisdom is very low you will get DM text across the screen telling you which door the horn is in something like 10 or below wisdom. But that is also not possible for many players as tomes actually hurt us as it brings our wisdom up. But what people miss out on is that it gives you clues - Up to 3 which you can use to figure out which door you need to open. Of course the door numbers are on the floor and in Roman Numerals

Drink a "silver flame potion" and take of the wisdom item.
With the rarity of monks,caster druids and clerics, you're bound to have a toon in a full party whose stats drop enough to get the true dm hint.


As for the rest of this thread, i agree, DDO has become blend, i rather spend my time playing legacy quests for its better design and balance (350 damage AOE attacks spammed by hordes of abishai in lv 13 quests anyone?).

[Qhualor]

When I first came to DDO what kept me was the fact that puzzles and strategy and team work mixed with combat (Notice what was first). When you through 100s of mobs at players all with Max HP and Max DPS players will retaliate by pumping their DPS to 11 and then miss out on things developers could do.

I would love to see Turbine return to the idea that all quests be balanced to 4 characters. I'm not saying make it impossible to solo, but don't be afraid of puzzles and mechanics that work best if 2 to 4 characters work together.

If you make quests where DPS doesn't matter and can be solved by simply solving puzzles I think it would be going to the other extreme. The better answer is to mix it up, some quests more DPS and some more puzzle. In all cases strategy is an option.

I recommend listening to the DDO Players news that was on last night with Knockback. Some great information on dungeon design and puzzles.

[Eryhn]

Some great information on dungeon design and puzzles.

To somewhat set this misleading statement into perspective, knockback said, in reply to a direct question if in the future there would be more and new puzzles that yes, they would DO puzzles but NOT NEW puzzles for content updates like the current 3 f2p quests size - and that we MIGHT see new puzzles, possibly, in a larger update context.

Translate: we do not currently have development ressources to spend on stuff like this and if we were to code a new puzzle mechanic like we did in wyrm, then it would only happen in a bigger content update where it can be re-used multiple times to make it somewhat worthwhile.

nvm ...

[odheon]

When I first came to DDO what kept me was the fact that puzzles and strategy and team work mixed with combat (Notice what was first). When you through 100s of mobs at players all with Max HP and Max DPS players will retaliate by pumping their DPS to 11 and then miss out on things developers could do.

I would love to see Turbine return to the idea that all quests be balanced to 4 characters. I'm not saying make it impossible to solo, but don't be afraid of puzzles and mechanics that work best if 2 to 4 characters work together.

If you make quests where DPS doesn't matter and can be solved by simply solving puzzles I think it would be going to the other extreme. The better answer is to mix it up, some quests more DPS and some more puzzle. In all cases strategy is an option.

Game resources must be used.
- quest like rainbow in the dark with an item to illuminate a short distance.
- more quest with jumps, Swim, traps, puzzle.

[Ballyspringer]

bash bash bash, next set of mobs bash bash bash, rinse/repeat....
So they are continuing the trend of brute DPS=win instead of strategy, tactics, teamwork....

no puzzles, skill challenges like bluff/diplo/intimidate, teamwork levers/passages, traps to drop mobs into, etc... you know stuff to challenge the mind vs mash attack buttons...
Hopefully the game will not fully devolve from a brain challenge towards a first person shooter point and click game... we have xbox for that...
I get the impression they are losing focus on the core fundamentals of DDO.. (based on DnD)... a game that challenged the imagination and teamwork interaction for a group of people..

This - and the over-inflated HP of mobs needs to be fixed. Stop player power creep and stop the inflated HP! I was running LH shroud the other day again (wont even try LE due to lag) - and I honestly just got bored and wanted to quit in part one and had a hard time convincing myself to keep going due to just how much hp the portals have one after another after another, and then on part 2 with two ranged toons and 3 casters we had to two round the crystal to move on, re-prepping and re-killing the half a million HP red-names.... (which seems to never be a one time and it works thing with pug groups) it was just boring as hell.

For comparison I honestly could not tell you how many regular shrouds back in the day I've ran (one toon out of my 11 for example was at 200 completions before I TR'd him) because it was a fun raid to me - was a mix of hack and slash with puzzles/working together - now it's just hit auto attack, go make a pizza and come back rinse and repeat....

[Robbenklopper]

... And really, kobolds again? ...

Omg! Is this the truth? Kobolds? We are already Dungeons&Kobolds Online. Omg omg ... i´m so really really sick of them, kobolds!

Dear Devs, please stop that **** with kobolds!