Amber Temple

[Niminae]

One of the ideas we had for nerfing Amber Temple was to remove Madam Eva on Elite+ difficulty.

Instead we chose a kinder, gentler approach. You're welcome.

But if we continue to see exploitative behaviors... well... the nerfs will continue until morale improves.

I think that the objection with the greatest amount of justification behind it is that the nerf impacted difficulties below reaper. Not only has SSG made a statement that they were not going to balance the game around reaper, but the change appears to be prompted solely by the quick reaper XP that could be earned by completing the quest on R10 without bothering to 'finish' the quest in terms of gaining access to one or two of the possible named item chests available. SSG should not be concerned about a quick N/H/E completion, since those don't even grant named loot, and because there is no such thing as 'Elite 10' which grants a lot more standard XP for the quick completion.


A far better fix would have been to make activating the final event where Kasimir and Patrina do their thing and the defeat of the ex-[class] vampires Strahd summons in a prerequisite for quest completion.

[banjo174]

The statement that you can still complete R1 means about as much to me as my answer to your question seems to have meant to you. Your statement also seems to lack empathy for your fellow players, and also seems to have ideas that the game needs only be focused on your type of play. Perhaps you were simply having a bad day and didn't truly mean what you said here?

My type of play? You mean actually wanting to do good at the game? I don't regret anything that I say to anyone. I don't say anything on impulse. In fact, I usually hold back what I really want to say.
Look at the downfall of World of Warcraft, they are catering to the casuals, and ever since they started catering to the casuals, the player base has been going downhill steadily. Those who don't learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.
I don't particularly like people, in fact I find most people to be infuriating. Which is why I play solo most the time, if not maybe with 1 or 2 others. There isn't a single quest that I can't solo, or at least 2 man on R1. Which is good enough for me.

At least until I get all the past lives (116/135).

[Gabrael]

how about no reaper amber at all? would not be the 1st quest we do this

[SerPounce]

One of the ideas we had for nerfing Amber Temple was to remove Madam Eva on Elite+ difficulty.

Instead we chose a kinder, gentler approach. You're welcome.

But if we continue to see exploitative behaviors... well... the nerfs will continue until morale improves.

LOL, love it!

[SerPounce]

Which is why if you find good things.. don't share..

Laying out easy paths and patterns, puzzle solver, solutions in step by step walkthroughs on the forums is just begging to get the content screwed over.


Another reason not to pug...
Some incompetent nub brags on the forums about easy farms they found out about when they joined a group forcing Devs to overreact and squash the invested work done by the hard working players who spent the time to research and uncover paths and patterns.


kick that baby bird out of the nest... Let the newbs and noobs fail on their own and eventually find their own path, sharing does not help them become survivors...
The Dev's are not rewarding us for finding solutions and sharing.

Except most of the time it's the "casual +" types that screw around in the dungeons and figure these things out because they like that stuff. Then the "uber elite gamerz" learn from them and abuse the F*** out of it resulting in nerfs. Not to mention that the devs get completion stats directly, they don't need human "sources" to find out what quests are getting farmed. You guys aren't half as clever or as subtle as you think you are.

[Enoach]

Except most of the time it's the "casual +" types that screw around in the dungeons and figure these things out because they like that stuff. Then the "uber elite gamerz" learn from them and abuse the F*** out of it resulting in nerfs. Not to mention that the devs get completion stats directly, they don't need human "sources" to find out what quests are getting farmed. You guys aren't half as clever or as subtle as you think you are.

Good point, I've lost count of the times I've shown players aspects of a quest they never knew about, or were told by someone else 'it is not worth it', or teach them how to handle a situation if X skill is not available to a party. All without perching or using cheese tactics.

One of my favorite comments came from a fellow player when running a quest they have run since 2006 - "Wow, new content". They never knew there was a hallway there or even that the optional existed .

When Ravenloft first came out, my group spent lots of time in each quest seeing every corner and learning the layout and paths. I personally have more fun in quests when I don't know what is around each corner.

[banjo174]

I personally have more fun in quests when I don't know what is around each corner.

Then this game must be terribly boring for you a lot of the time. As there isn't enough content additions to always have quests that you don't know 100%. Especially since you started in 2006.

[FlimsyFirewood]

Am I trolling?

That's my secret. I'm always trolling.

Seriously, though, I am a little sad. I read through four pages of this thread. Personal attacks, anger, sure. We got that in spades. What I didn't see is a detached, reasonable analysis of why this latest change to Amber Temple was bad.

That's because it isn't.

Short term, yes, Amber Temple takes longer to run and you need to kill a few more things.

The bigger picture though, this was a shortcut that was messing up the rest of the game. Amber Temple does not exist in a vacuum.

If you choose to run AT over and over again, that's a detriment to other quests in the game, and to the game's community.

As developers, we want to provide you a variety of fun experiences. However, they need to be comparable.

Imagine a quest where you walk in, pull a lever and gain a level. Well, wasn't that fun. Let's do that again so I achieve all my goals and past lives and oh noes, the devs put a kobold guarding a door so now I have to kill it and open it and it's a waste of time and a slog and sadness all around, and all the elite exploiters are capped because of it and I missed the train and now I'm mad.

We don't want to devalue our content into a bunch of skinner boxes. It has nothing to do with monetization.

I've been on this project, on and off, for about a decade. What I can tell you after 10 years of my life dedicated to your enjoyment, is that our players are experts at ruining your own fun. If there were only two quests in the game, where quest A is full of fun and exploration and quest B takes ten times less time to run so you can get your reward, quest A would be 'one and done' and quest B would flood LFG. People would run quest B until their eyeballs bleed and their carpal tunnel is shaking the house at 7.0 on Richter scale.

This puts designers in an adversarial position to the rest of the playerbase. We have to butcher our own babies and get you all mad at us, just so you can experience the rest of the game. Thankfully, we're not elected officials, and we have to make unpopular decisions (daddy has to, baby, daddy has to...) and yeah, nerfs will continue until morale improves.

Cheers.

[lyrecono]

Look at the downfall of World of Warcraft, they are catering to the casuals, and ever since they started catering to the casuals, the player base has been going downhill steadily. Those who don't learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.

What evidence is there that it was catering to cassuals that caused the decline?
I haven't played wow but if it's like any other mmo/game/fad out there then it seems like a myriad of reasons for the decline are responcible.
Like:
Players grew out of it, grew up, got kids of their own, etc wow realy looks outdated in the latest pics compared to more modern mmo's,
Other games drew in the crowds, survival, shooters, etc seem to draw in kids like crazy,
The consolle crowd grew too,
It user to be a fad because it was unique at the time, cute graphics and easy to run, the marketplace is flooded with clones (including ddo).
The social aspect is often overlooked, logging innand noticing that your usual social group is gone and the hardcore players don't accept you because tou havent been running as much as they have (just like ddo).
Having your favorite build or playstyle crushed due to nerfs or changes in the meta.

Simular people have made claims like this, ddo got to easy etc.
Usually by people that maxxed out their past lives and were using exploit builds.
Using a first life platemail wearing toon and going into the reavers refuge endfights on elire is still daunting even without champs.
But getting of your main is scarry i guess.

The devs heard the cash till and rushed to bring us reaper mode, a veiled attempt to make more money.
Instead of making things harder across the board, they introduced another grind that can be eased with cash.

And the "top" tier crowd rushed to the oppertunity to aquire power (not a challenge) with whatever builds and tactics got them the best power gains per minute.
Something that could have been avoided by not introducing reaper trees and making reaper mode challanging to all builds and playstyles. Having the benefit of ranged instakills and ranged dps has always been something the devs have refused to accept or deal with,. Even way back when the cap was 20.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, the devs can't get rid of them even if they suddenly developed ethics, the player backlash over the lost reaper trees would burn down the game and forum.

The unwillingness to deal or even accept the responcibility of the mess they created has only lead to blanket sollutions, catch all sollutions that d more harm then good.
The fix in amber is such a good example of the his. They get reports of a quest being farmed to quickly for reaper exp.
The sollution? Screw up with all difficulties.
I jst ran this an hour ago with some pugs on heroic elite at level to test it out, it's a tedious, boring ordeal, just as bad as tea partty and wizards of the wine and the respawns make this things worse.
I hopped on my healbot and stayed back, only functioning as a spare battery for their hp.
They are a group of avr players, not stellar, not bad, they normally can handle elite without issues, all tr's, going in blind.
An assasin rog, FB barb, elec sorc, bard, 2hf kensai fighter and me on a healbot
They had a frustrating time.

Some of them are vip and will likely use their vip status to skip this one during a saga run

Looks like a job well done devs!
Blanket sollutions for everyone!!! Whoot!

[Xgya]

I've been on this project, on and off, for about a decade. What I can tell you after 10 years of my life dedicated to your enjoyment, is that our players are experts at ruining your own fun. If there were only two quests in the game, where quest A is full of fun and exploration and quest B takes ten times less time to run so you can get your reward, quest A would be 'one and done' and quest B would flood LFG. People would run quest B until their eyeballs bleed and their carpal tunnel is shaking the house at 7.0 on Richter scale.

While I disagree with the changes to Amber Temple, mostly because it was meant to stop Reaper farmers, and hindered Elite players by that very same move, I totally agree with the above quote.

For anyone that doesn't feel concerned or cannot find a good example of what Flimsy's talking about, I'll just say that the Temple of Elemental Evil is a huge undertaking, several unique assets and large expanses of exploratory goodness, with hidden perks and voice lines you can't hear anywhere BUT that Temple. And only gets run once in a blue moon because found quicker ways to achieve their goals and left the poor quests behind.

[Kza]

Am I trolling?

That's my secret. I'm always trolling.

Seriously, though, I am a little sad. I read through four pages of this thread. Personal attacks, anger, sure. We got that in spades. What I didn't see is a detached, reasonable analysis of why this latest change to Amber Temple was bad.

That's because it isn't.

Short term, yes, Amber Temple takes longer to run and you need to kill a few more things.

The bigger picture though, this was a shortcut that was messing up the rest of the game. Amber Temple does not exist in a vacuum.

If you choose to run AT over and over again, that's a detriment to other quests in the game, and to the game's community.

As developers, we want to provide you a variety of fun experiences. However, they need to be comparable.

Imagine a quest where you walk in, pull a lever and gain a level. Well, wasn't that fun. Let's do that again so I achieve all my goals and past lives and oh noes, the devs put a kobold guarding a door so now I have to kill it and open it and it's a waste of time and a slog and sadness all around, and all the elite exploiters are capped because of it and I missed the train and now I'm mad.

We don't want to devalue our content into a bunch of skinner boxes. It has nothing to do with monetization.

I've been on this project, on and off, for about a decade. What I can tell you after 10 years of my life dedicated to your enjoyment, is that our players are experts at ruining your own fun. If there were only two quests in the game, where quest A is full of fun and exploration and quest B takes ten times less time to run so you can get your reward, quest A would be 'one and done' and quest B would flood LFG. People would run quest B until their eyeballs bleed and their carpal tunnel is shaking the house at 7.0 on Richter scale.

This puts designers in an adversarial position to the rest of the playerbase. We have to butcher our own babies and get you all mad at us, just so you can experience the rest of the game. Thankfully, we're not elected officials, and we have to make unpopular decisions (daddy has to, baby, daddy has to...) and yeah, nerfs will continue until morale improves.

Cheers.

Plz come to sweden and be a Swedish politician, we badly need a few that can do impopular decisions for the big picture.

[Enoach]

Am I trolling?

That's my secret. I'm always trolling.

Seriously, though, I am a little sad. I read through four pages of this thread. Personal attacks, anger, sure. We got that in spades. What I didn't see is a detached, reasonable analysis of why this latest change to Amber Temple was bad.

That's because it isn't.

Short term, yes, Amber Temple takes longer to run and you need to kill a few more things.

The bigger picture though, this was a shortcut that was messing up the rest of the game. Amber Temple does not exist in a vacuum.

If you choose to run AT over and over again, that's a detriment to other quests in the game, and to the game's community.

As developers, we want to provide you a variety of fun experiences. However, they need to be comparable.

Imagine a quest where you walk in, pull a lever and gain a level. Well, wasn't that fun. Let's do that again so I achieve all my goals and past lives and oh noes, the devs put a kobold guarding a door so now I have to kill it and open it and it's a waste of time and a slog and sadness all around, and all the elite exploiters are capped because of it and I missed the train and now I'm mad.

We don't want to devalue our content into a bunch of skinner boxes. It has nothing to do with monetization.

I've been on this project, on and off, for about a decade. What I can tell you after 10 years of my life dedicated to your enjoyment, is that our players are experts at ruining your own fun. If there were only two quests in the game, where quest A is full of fun and exploration and quest B takes ten times less time to run so you can get your reward, quest A would be 'one and done' and quest B would flood LFG. People would run quest B until their eyeballs bleed and their carpal tunnel is shaking the house at 7.0 on Richter scale.

This puts designers in an adversarial position to the rest of the playerbase. We have to butcher our own babies and get you all mad at us, just so you can experience the rest of the game. Thankfully, we're not elected officials, and we have to make unpopular decisions (daddy has to, baby, daddy has to...) and yeah, nerfs will continue until morale improves.

Cheers.

You make a valid point. AT is not in a vacuum and any quest the detracts from the rest of the game should be reviewed and adjustments made.

[banjo174]

Am I trolling?

That's my secret. I'm always trolling.

Well its official. You're my favorite dev!

[FlimsyFirewood]

Plz come to sweden and be a Swedish politician, we badly need a few that can do impopular decisions for the big picture.

Funny thing is, one of the designers who used to work on DDO moved to Sweden recently. He works on Stellaris now.

[J1NG]

Seriously, though, I am a little sad. I read through four pages of this thread. Personal attacks, anger, sure. We got that in spades. What I didn't see is a detached, reasonable analysis of why this latest change to Amber Temple was bad.

Gave you that in spades in previous replies on Amber Temple and the changes implemented and where it really needs to go further, but sure go cherry pick your responses within this one thread where it's been going on a while (multiple threads with no response) and take a **** on players who were willing to help.

But hey, at least we now have your full blessing to use that invincibility exploit now you guys made Amber Temple EXACTLY what we need despite warnings before on one way to go about triggering it. Who needs to farm just one quest? When after a bit of faffing around in Amber Temple, you can daily zerg farm them all on R10 eh?

Changes are fine as I've always said. But certain changes are quite simply, rubbish. And I have given plenty of reasons in a calm manner previously in another thread on the matter. But maybe its fallen on deaf ears because it's not about everyone. It's "Us" and "Them" instead.

J1NG

[Iriale]

Am I trolling?

That's my secret. I'm always trolling.

Seriously, though, I am a little sad. I read through four pages of this thread. Personal attacks, anger, sure. We got that in spades. What I didn't see is a detached, reasonable analysis of why this latest change to Amber Temple was bad.

That's because it isn't.

Short term, yes, Amber Temple takes longer to run and you need to kill a few more things.

The bigger picture though, this was a shortcut that was messing up the rest of the game. Amber Temple does not exist in a vacuum.

If you choose to run AT over and over again, that's a detriment to other quests in the game, and to the game's community.

As developers, we want to provide you a variety of fun experiences. However, they need to be comparable.

Imagine a quest where you walk in, pull a lever and gain a level. Well, wasn't that fun. Let's do that again so I achieve all my goals and past lives and oh noes, the devs put a kobold guarding a door so now I have to kill it and open it and it's a waste of time and a slog and sadness all around, and all the elite exploiters are capped because of it and I missed the train and now I'm mad.

We don't want to devalue our content into a bunch of skinner boxes. It has nothing to do with monetization.

I've been on this project, on and off, for about a decade. What I can tell you after 10 years of my life dedicated to your enjoyment, is that our players are experts at ruining your own fun. If there were only two quests in the game, where quest A is full of fun and exploration and quest B takes ten times less time to run so you can get your reward, quest A would be 'one and done' and quest B would flood LFG. People would run quest B until their eyeballs bleed and their carpal tunnel is shaking the house at 7.0 on Richter scale.

This puts designers in an adversarial position to the rest of the playerbase. We have to butcher our own babies and get you all mad at us, just so you can experience the rest of the game. Thankfully, we're not elected officials, and we have to make unpopular decisions (daddy has to, baby, daddy has to...) and yeah, nerfs will continue until morale improves.

Cheers.

But the nerf you have made is incredibly wrong. It's not about killing a few more mobs. You've turned amber temple into a toee version, another quest that could have been very good at not having a mindless excess of mobs, and one of the most hated quests in the game. Amber temple was an excellent exploration quest, with a different air, and now you have completely ruined it. If you wanted to prevent players farm that quest excessively, you only had to have arranged how the experience ransack works.

Honestly, your solution was cheap, lazy, and very badly thought out. The worst approach you could have taken. Yes, even removing Eve would have been better. That did not harm the exploratory aspect of the quest. Feel proud: in my opinion, amber temple was one of the best quests of the game, and now has fallen to occupy a prominent position by the tail.

And by the way, they are not a few more mobs. They are TOO MANY more. It has become the most difficult quest to pack. And also the most absurd, and that despite the fact that in some quests of the third chain you had already finished the inspiration and ended up designing toee-style quests (wizard of wines, wrath of the earth)

The fact that this nerf also comes a year and a half after releasing the quest is also tremendously ridiculous. If it has not been a priority to improve this before, what's the point of fixing it so late? The feeling it gives is that you cheat your customers.

As developers, we want to provide you a variety of fun experiences. However, they need to be comparable.

I want to highlight this, Flimsy. What variety are you talking about? In this game there is an excess of linear quests and with too many mobs. Amber temple was enjoyable because it was DIFFERENT. It could be played in a non-linear way and it did not have an excess of mobs crowding the corridors, nor an excess of red names bloated with hps. Now it's a quest of the bunch, with a bias towards the TOEE style quests or Curse of the sky, which have TOO MANY mobs.

Sorry, Flimsy, but with this nerf you have REDUCED the game variety. Even thinking that a year and a half later is NOT the time to modify the quest, if you were going to do it at least you could have opted for a solution that did not change the original spirit of the quest. Here have been said much better solutions than the one you have implemented, which is not difficult, because you have opted for the worst possible fix.

Of course the players are outraged. And even more so when we see that the designers, instead of taking into account our feelings, dedicate themselves to making fun of us and behaving like jerks with super-bloated ego. Be more aware of your consumers. We pay your bills, after all.

This puts designers in an adversarial position to the rest of the playerbase. We have to butcher our own babies and get you all mad at us, just so you can experience the rest of the game. Thankfully, we're not elected officials, and we have to make unpopular decisions (daddy has to, baby, daddy has to...) and yeah, nerfs will continue until morale improves.

With that attitude, you are more likely to lose consumers. One thing is to put nerfs to improve the quality of the game, and another to punish your consumers. I can not express how wrong this attitude is

In any case, amber temple nerf has worsened the game from any point of view. A nerf really badly thought and executed. You could have gotten a much better fix.

[FlimsyFirewood]

Gave you that in spades in previous replies on Amber Temple and the changes implemented and where it really needs to go further, but sure go cherry pick your responses within this one thread where it's been going on a while (multiple threads with no response) and take a **** on players who were willing to help.

But hey, at least we now have your full blessing to use that invincibility exploit now you guys made Amber Temple EXACTLY what we need despite warnings before on one way to go about triggering it. Who needs to farm just one quest? When after a bit of faffing around in Amber Temple, you can daily zerg farm them all on R10 eh?

Changes are fine as I've always said. But certain changes are quite simply, rubbish. And I have given plenty of reasons in a calm manner previously in another thread on the matter. But maybe its fallen on deaf ears because it's not about everyone. It's "Us" and "Them" instead.

J1NG

I remember making adjustments based on your feedback from the other thread. Specifically, I moved some of the new flaming skulls away from the doors so they don't ambush you when you open them.

What's up?

[FlimsyFirewood]

...because you have opted for the worst possible fix.

Is that... a challenge?

[lyrecono]

Am I trolling?

That's my secret. I'm always trolling.

Seriously, though, I am a little sad. I read through four pages of this thread. Personal attacks, anger, sure. We got that in spades. What I didn't see is a detached, reasonable analysis of why this latest change to Amber Temple was bad.

That's because it isn't.

Short term, yes, Amber Temple takes longer to run and you need to kill a few more things.

The bigger picture though, this was a shortcut that was messing up the rest of the game. Amber Temple does not exist in a vacuum.

If you choose to run AT over and over again, that's a detriment to other quests in the game, and to the game's community.

As developers, we want to provide you a variety of fun experiences. However, they need to be comparable.

Imagine a quest where you walk in, pull a lever and gain a level. Well, wasn't that fun. Let's do that again so I achieve all my goals and past lives and oh noes, the devs put a kobold guarding a door so now I have to kill it and open it and it's a waste of time and a slog and sadness all around, and all the elite exploiters are capped because of it and I missed the train and now I'm mad.

We don't want to devalue our content into a bunch of skinner boxes. It has nothing to do with monetization.

I've been on this project, on and off, for about a decade. What I can tell you after 10 years of my life dedicated to your enjoyment, is that our players are experts at ruining your own fun. If there were only two quests in the game, where quest A is full of fun and exploration and quest B takes ten times less time to run so you can get your reward, quest A would be 'one and done' and quest B would flood LFG. People would run quest B until their eyeballs bleed and their carpal tunnel is shaking the house at 7.0 on Richter scale.

This puts designers in an adversarial position to the rest of the playerbase. We have to butcher our own babies and get you all mad at us, just so you can experience the rest of the game. Thankfully, we're not elected officials, and we have to make unpopular decisions (daddy has to, baby, daddy has to...) and yeah, nerfs will continue until morale improves.

Cheers.

Your blanket sollution affected people that don't run reaper, that's the issue, you again missed it by aiming for reaper but hitting everything from heroic normal to legendary elite&reaper.
As sean Connery's character alan quartman would have put it, you shoot like an american. (Fun movie, go watch it)

As for morale, what caused it?
The few playees that constantly run high reaper on dedicated builds or the devs for attaching yet another grind that can be eassed by buying pots? And then you turn around when people try to make the best out of those precious minutes those pots provide?

And you're suprised people got angry? Why don't you (as in, the dev team) upgrade the exp in more quests so they get a chance to be run? Why do you think people gravitated to epic dailies on hard in the first place?
Did it have something to do with the unballanced epics and the good exp these quests still gave to people whos playstyle wasn't complimented by the stupidly harsh EE quests? Combined with a stupid amount of exp required to get to 30.

Who caused the situation in the first place? The players trying to get around the best way they can or the devs make the content and seem to have lost their grip on ballancing the game?

I don't like the situation anymore then you do but you(again as the dev team) have put enormous bariers down to segregate players innthe past. With these reaper trees players feel forced tobfarm them in fear of loosing out on their social groups they desperately need for raiding.
I have seen many players turn their main into a tool to farm these to best of their abilities, often running builds they don't even like, leading to more frustration.
Was that the intent of the dev team?

[FlimsyFirewood]

Your blanket sollution affected people that don't run reaper, that's the issue, you again missed it by aiming for reaper but hitting everything from heroic normal to legendary elite&reaper.

This is wrong. Only elite and reaper should be affected by this change.