U38 Preview 2: Disciples of Rage Adventure Pack

[The_Human_Cypher]

Does SSG not have an editor or proofreader on staff?

Seriously, the poor grammar/spelling and the outright inaccuracies of some of the dialog and information is downright distracting.

The lack of accurate dialogue text in quests is an ongoing issue.

I hereby volunteer to be an unpaid proof-reader for new DDO content. I am willing to sign an NDA and everything. I am a published author and have a strong grasp of the English language, so I would be a good candidate for this volunteer position.

[zehnvhex]

I think part of it is with how quality most of the Ravenloft quests are (C3 is a little lackluster, but C1 and C2 are rock solid), this just feels like a return to the old form we had from SSG of last year. Newcomers, Black and Blue, the MoT chain.

I mean, the idea behind the quests is great if you enjoy the Xoriat storyline. The pacing is okay. But the dungeons themselves suffer from a significant lack of oomph.

Like you go and do Ravenloft and between Death House, Bonegrinder and Invitation it -really- sets the tone and you're like "Oh my...."

It isn't until the 3rd quest in this series that I actually start to feel at all invested. They should start Q1 with the Terrace event and really punch it up. I mean this should be a huge bigly bad thing and instead I didn't even realize anything had happened at first because at no point is your attention drawn to the beacon.

[Vorachtin]

quests are great.

the one with all the giants, objectives could be clearer imo. not a bug just feedback.

and if only there was an armored beholder at the end of Rage

[Arkat]

The lack of accurate dialogue text in quests is an ongoing issue.

I hereby volunteer to be an unpaid proof-reader for new DDO content. I am willing to sign an NDA and everything. I am a published author and have a strong grasp of the English language, so I would be a good candidate for this volunteer position.

I'd be willing to do it, too...but not unpaid.

Good luck to you, though.

[vms4ever]

and if only there was an armored beholder at the end of Rage

I agree. Rage was fun (soloing it on Elite), right up until destroying the book. Small room, barrier, armored beholder with (apparently) a huge amount of hp who seems to be addicted to CC? Not fun. And then I died and didn't try to re-enter. But it was a nice quest, linear but nice.

[The_Human_Cypher]

U38 comes with 5 new dungeons! Bear in mind, in this preview they are in varying states of feature completion and polish. The regular questgivers will be located in House Jorasco once U38 is released to the live servers, however, for this preview the only way to access the quests is from a "The Questgiver" located in the center of the Test Dojo. You can purchase the adventure pack from the DDO store using DDO points granted to you by "Lord Poincelot" who is also located in the center of the Test Dojo.

The five U38 dungeons are level 14 in Heroic and Level 31 in Legendary. For this preview the quests can be completed in any order, however, when they reach live you will need to complete the intro to Flag for the middle three and you will need to complete all of the middle three (in any order) to flag for the Capstone. The quests are:

• Night Falls on Stormreach Intro
• Quarantine
• The Madness of Crowds
• The Age of Rage
• Toxic Treatment Capstone

Let us know what your first impressions are!

The Madness of Crowds quest title is a reference to an early work in the field of psychology, 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrao...ness_of_Crowds

[Knockback]

The Madness of Crowds quest title is a reference to an early work in the field of psychology, 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.'

It is - though it's also taken directly from Eberron lore. "The madness of crowds" is the literal translation of "Du’rashka Tul," the curse afflicting Xen'drik. That's from Secrets of Xen'drik, page 53. Apparently someone at WOTC was a Charles Mackay fan!

[lyrecono]

Night Falls on Stormreach Intro
1 archer next to the throne is stuck in the wall
Goldscuttle doesn't speak.
Some npc's repeat each others dialoge

Quarantine
lots of ledges got me stuck, on the squire near the npc llorowith, the invisible walls were the culprit.
at the end fight, the harbor looks terribly vague.


The Madness of Crowds
There is a text on the splash screen, however, i can't read it, it lasts only half a second.
the quest didn't advance the first time, though i did get a quest reward.
It didn't advance during the second time.
nor the third, the door doesn't open, with or without doing the optionals and exploring the map

The Age of Rage
The "potential clue" (a scroll on the table) is full of errors.
the "bedrooms" are empty, just a few mobs but no beds.


Toxic Treatment Capstone
no end chest?
every quest that had bear traps had them lying about in the open (all were visible a mile away)

So does this mean we're seeing xendrix content soon? Since the stormreach flame was taken to sharn.
Are we getting a new crafting system?

Are we going to see more lore specific Eberron culture specific references?
Sure, house J are into healing but what about (dino riding) halfling barbarians? (they are considered as such in the players handbook)
preferably with a barbarian overhaul.


Do something better with the bug reporting tool.

[Aelonwy]

It's kind of sad reading the early reviews of the new ones to come in u38 and comparing them with the Vale quests. I really get the impression the Ravenloft quests were largely so good because they were more or less copied from existing PnP material and the spike in quality is just going to be a momentary aberration.

It sounds like u38 will be taking us back to the copypasta corridors 'n' clumps approach. I'd be very glad to be proved wrong about this return to business as usual but what I've heard so far doesn't sound good at all. Doing consistently good work in a creative field isn't easy, but the bar really needs to be raised some even if it's not reasonable to expect everything to be gold from now on.

Thanks.

This is a comment from General Discussions... the part that concerns me is :

It sounds like u38 will be taking us back to the copypast(e) corridors 'n' clumps approach.

Please say this isn't so?! Does this need to become a meme like Ghostbane in order to see a change in direction? ToEE is rife with it. Dragonblood Prophecy suffers from the copy-paste mob groups. Mines of Tethyamar has some issues with it too but doesn't feel nearly as repetitive as the hallways of Black and Blue. It breaks immersion and makes questing dull.

Player 1 - "Oh look its that same group of mobs we fought in the last room, so how do you want to fight them?"
Player 2 - "Same way we fought them 2 minutes ago."
Player 1 - "What do you think is in the next hallway?"
Player 2 - "Probably this same group of mobs..."

I never once felt this way playing Ravenloft even in Mad Tea Party or Fresh Baked Dreams where the mob types do get repetitive, it still feels like they have good reason to be there.

[Andu_Indorin]

One quick suggestion. The Madness of Crowds is a rather large, open area that some players have had difficulty navigating (i.e., finding Brawn Pits). I'd suggest you add the purple diamond icons to each of the altars before release as an aid to navigating this map.

[Andu_Indorin]

After Ravenloft, which obviously had much more work go into it, this is quite a let down. One thing that makes for a good adventure pack is a strong central narrative. Ravenloft had that in spades. I never quite picked up the narrative thread in this set of quests. Nor did I really get any sense of urgency from the atmosphere of the chain. Why are we doing this again? Two days after running the chain, I could not even remember the contents of the Age of Rage. "Cut, copy, and paste" is a pretty good way to describe this adventure pack.

In many ways, the Sorrowdusk adventure pack is a better product than this latest release.

It would be nice if we, the players, could get a sense of that Stormreach -- the events, history, politics -- was building to some sort of climactic confrontation, a destiny of some sort. That's one way to keep player interest up ...

[Jetrule]

I ran all the quests on heroic elite with a first life lvl 15 character with gear from the dojo and a supreme tome. Some I ran on legendary 1 skull reaper with my main re-incarnated first as a melee wolf and then as a melee arti. The dojo needs to see the guild buff giver return by the way I missed my fast public movement and other guild buffs.

Night Falls on Stormreach:

This Quest left me feeling drawn in to the story line. There is obviously some quest giver dialogue missing, since we dont have quest givers yet. Still the feeling was strong in me that Xoriat was behind this new menace Though I suspected Yalthoon somewhere in the quests afterwards. I liked the opening lamp lighting and the chat with the giant the throne, the dismissive arrogant guard. Its like he was clueless to all my coin lord favor. LOL. The Terrace scene was dramatic and could be made more so with a great voice performance.


Quarantine:

I loved the ability to subdue the plague victims without killing them. There should be some quest xp tied to this. The stung faced Vulkorim High priest was disturbing with his dialogue. The hack and slash was pretty easy.


The Madness of Crowds:

A gorgeous area. Reminiscent of "A small Problem" for obvious reasons. The graphics are much improved over A Small Problem though, and the quest story and action are solid.

The Age of Rage:

This quest shifted the difficulty up several notches. I was running a experimental fire caster elemental druid level 15 on elite I had to get spell potions from the fake DDO store and I died three times any way. It is the same way I ran all the other quests with a total of two deaths. I pushed my way through the book with real trepidation. I wanted to destroy it but curiosity was stronger than fear, barely. Well done. Great difficult hack and slash. good map for tactics, This was the most fun i had in the quests,

Toxic Treatment:

The quest seemed the most empty but I liked that it wasn't a kill fest. I liked the intelligence trial having a shroud type puzzle not available in puzzle solvers. The Mushroom hunt left me searching and getting stuck for a long frustrating while for my last mushroom. That will be a first time experience for many I suspect. The end fight was satisfying. The quest series left me looking forwards to heading to Sharn. Well done overall Not Awsome like Ravenloft but well done. I like several pieces of loot. I was shocked by the low experience point awards.

[Ahwaric]

Please say this isn't so?! Does this need to become a meme like Ghostbane in order to see a change in direction? ToEE is rife with it. Dragonblood Prophecy suffers from the copy-paste mob groups. Mines of Tethyamar has some issues with it too but doesn't feel nearly as repetitive as the hallways of Black and Blue. It breaks immersion and makes questing dull.

I did not run the quests (focused on druid changes instead), but this post caught my attention as well.
Please, do not copy and paste encounters!!! It is really boring and makes qests run less. And it feels lazy. If you do not have manhours to polish the quests and make encounters varied, just add less quests - but do it instead. It will be better for the pack and game as a whole. Even if it is too late now for U38, please, oh, please, remeber it next time.
For now, I still hope the encounters were placeholder and it will get fixed before release. And please, make it more like MoR, and less like Slavers/ToEE. I hate Slavers and it ruins my memories of ToEE.

[HuneyMunster]

Are you ever going to make some epic dungeons? As best I can tell you've made lv 30+ dungeons for over 3 straight years (going on 4). Most everything 20 - 29 is regurgitated old stuff to begin with.

It would be nice to have something else for a change in the 20's.

The problem with that is unless xp is great most people will still run the dailies/orchard/thunderholme outside of 1st time bonus. Also capped charracter need new content to have incentive to remain at cap.



The only way I can see it working is releasing Heroic, Epic and Legendary versions of new content.

[AbyssalMage]

Yuck, hate Xoriat style packs. Others love them. Bleh.

Came to see what the excitement was about. Now I am not excited

[Yesenia]

Are you ever going to make some epic dungeons? As best I can tell you've made lv 30+ dungeons for over 3 straight years (going on 4). Most everything 20 - 29 is regurgitated old stuff to begin with.

It would be nice to have something else for a change in the 20's.

OH GOD PLEASE DON'T SAY THAT! Whispers: The endgame fanboys will come out with th..their pitchforks! They're Scary!! Seriously I agree with you but unfortunately some ppl are of the mindset that the 30+ quests of Legendary/Lvl 30 isn't enough to keep the capped crowd busy enough.. And while the rest of the game suffers all future upcoming packs, loot, etc should be catered to them, you know, because nobody TR's anymore to get more lives and bonuses under their belt.. That's crazy talk! How dare you ask for more content for the rest of the epic lvl's.. Shame on you! If I wasn't a Silver Flame fanatic i swear! hehe Seriously though I 100% agree with you and argu....debated my heart out on this issue in the other thread but as i say, ppl seem to not think there's enough endgame content

[Jetrule]

This thread seems to be going off the rails with concern over too much max level content. I have already posted my review of the quests, as to the level... It was not all that long ago, I think when reaper was introduced or racial TR's that many people were upset about the lack of end game content and no reason to stay at cap. I think that 22 or 24 new legendary quests have arrived since then counting this pack and 2 or 3 raids. I for sure have done 2 epic lives since Ravenloft came out I ran a few of the old epified quests and once through MOTU But by and large I ran Ravenloft sagas all through epic levels. Just sentient food farming and filigree collecting provide motivation for that. The quality of the content and the availability of pugs and the nice saga reward provide out the rest of the incentive for me.

This quest pack needs its experience per quest increased or it will become nearly as un popular as Mines of Tellamar. The gear here is good and many builds will benefit from some of it. But for re playability and putting it into play for players seeking epic past lives the experience should approach something like we see in Devils Gambit. Put interesting new content forward as something rewarding to run on many levels, which will increase the lfm postings for it and the SSG profit. While you are at it boost Mines of Tellamar experience to something approaching Devils Gambit. O)n Cannith at any rate I regularly see Gambit quest LFM's, Mines LFM's have nearly disappeared despite better loot being available there. It doesn't have to turn into a Experience point bloat situation but a big cut to experience points is putting some fun, nice new content in the grave yard f forgotten quests. Dont let this new pack bee doomed to the graveyard.

A interesting option is a nice quest arc reward choice with a chance for a 100k EXP stone to appear and/or a guaranteed random rare filligree. Carrots are nice, sticks are not and the low xp in this quest arc is a big spiky stick. The loot and quality of the quests are carrots but those carrots loose value over time the stick never looses its disincentive value.

[Marupal]

Only ran the one quest - Age of Rage. Enjoyed it.
It had a natural feel to it. Like others have said, things belonged there, it was a realistic DM'ed environment.
Layout was fun. Repeat friendly in the same way Lords of Dust is.

This is one of the few quests that should be able to activate the PVP flag. Randomly or quest driven, it doesn't matter.

Last, a huge missed opportunity in this quest: at key points around the quest there should have been oatmeal raisin cookies. Nothing symbolizes despair and rage like an oatmeal raisin cookie does.

[Arkat]

Last, a huge missed opportunity in this quest: at key points around the quest there should have been oatmeal raisin cookies. Nothing symbolizes despair and rage like an oatmeal raisin cookie does.

This is DDO, not Disney!

[Yesenia]

This is DDO, not Disney!

Could've fooled me, especially with the fact they are actually taking the request for bear dyes into serious consideration.. Just Sayin'