Amber Temple

[Iriale]

Is that... a challenge?

the worst I can think of, but with you I will not bet, I could lose. You have a special talent for that.

Honestly, I think your attitude is very discourteous.

[Arkat]

Is that... a challenge?

Why did SSG not implement the experience "ransack" mechanic for Reaper content like Turbine did for non-Reaper content?

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

Why affect Elite? I get why you wanted to modify the Reaper version.

[Iriale]

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

elite is not reaper.

And the change is still tremendously stupid, try again, you can do better if you spend a little time thinking about the changes instead of going to the easy.

And by the way, what if you also fix TOEE? That quest has been broken for years because of his stupid number of mobs crowding the corridors without any logic, and it could be another great exploration quest. How about giving us that varied experience you were talking about earlier and fixing this? Or is it that this quest does not serve to sell experience pots?

[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?

There's been more than the thread where you read about my feedback previously. It's likely the thread that Cordovan as skipped over and advised to stay away because of most of the hate within most of the posts there. But the gist of it was this:

1. Love the changes to the front door. That was great, players weren't being cheaped out on. No changes needed there as it gives players something to contend with but doesn't overly swarm too much so long as you deal with them. Possible issues on Reaper difficulties due to possible extra Reapers increasing alert. But if you can't handle only a few mobs, less than 5 that rush you after aggro'ing them at the start, then you really have no business to be in there on that difficulty.

2. Some skulls are not needed. I totally get why you have skulls guarding the upper West door, to prevent leapers going across from the middle. But the issue is that you have placed mobs onto a breakable platform area. And that's overly harsh because not only do you need to worry about combat, especially for melee, but because the plaform can break, melee will have an unfortunately harder time than necessary to clear those two skulls in front of a door that has mobs behind them already. Removing these two skulls won't speed things up a lot, and the kill count needed in the quest on an average low kill run (which I average around 45 kills) won't reduce by much either.

3. And Melee players who are suitable for Elite that attempt that part, who ends up falling, will also aggro the Skeleton Caster and its posse of Skulls AND the Ghasts by the Treasure Room door instantly if it was not cleared initially. I suggested that we move the Skeleton caster and the Skulls further into the West Corridor because there's nothing there anyway trash wise. And this will help players going down the left stairs down and not get ganked straight away from multiple directions who are also mostly casters or very well hidden. And because if it was the first place that players go down, if they attempt to find a better location to engage the enemies, they won't then accidentally trigger the OTHER set of Ghasts in the Eastern Treasure Room door, and the other trash that often gets alerted as well from the Eastern Corridor then it all goes to pot because trash are too close together. Then the Dungeon Alert starts to fly for no good reason other than the mobs were too close.

4. Incidentally, the corridor behind that goes from that door to the The Hooded room is simply too packed with mobs along with the breakable floor, I counted around 7 with 3 skulls and at least 4 ghasts. So the mystery of the Treasure Chest and the breaking floor tile is lost over the fact that players are forced into an encounter straight away after opening the door, unless you fully intend to have players use that breaking tile to then plink the mobs who fell down instead? Keep the skulls, but remove the Ghasts so players opening the door have a chance for the DM to talk about the Chest and players to comprehend that something is amiss. Something that's totally missing right now because "mobs".

5. Also, that door to the The Hooded one room now you implmented? Lose it. It doesn't happen often, but on Reaper, it is entirely possible for Icon to be in that room with The Hooded One card, and the extra mobs and the trash added, with a Reaper or two is enough to Green Alert and lock the door. This prevents players from progressing and the only way to open the door is to wait out Dungeon Alert or kill the mobs on the other side of the door in the room. But since you can't get in there because the Alert is up... I think you can see where this is going? Remove the door, the trash inside is already enough to stop and slow players down some, but you may want to move them closer to the teleporter pod so they can see players coming in.

There may have been more, but these were the biggest things I can remember off the top of my head.

J1NG

[banjo174]

elite is not reaper.

No... But it might as well be...

Elite and Reaper always have the same amount of monsters, except for reapers being in well... Reaper.
Reaper chests are the exact same as elite chests, except for reaper bonuses on named items.

I still would really like to see what builds all of the complainers are running lol. I literally have no problem doing the quest... I think the devs should try harder to make the quest... harder.

[Iriale]

No... But it might as well be...

Elite and Reaper always have the same amount of monsters, except for reapers being in well... Reaper.
Reaper chests are the exact same as elite chests, except for reaper bonuses on named items.

I still would really like to see what builds all of the complainers are running lol. I literally have no problem doing the quest... I think the devs should try harder to make the quest... harder.

I am not interested in your attempts to brag as a great player, and they are not interesting for this topic either.

I do not have problems finishing the quest on any difficulty. The problem is that they have ruined a great exploration quest. Certainly now I will not think of trying to play the quest with that spirit, it is no longer enjoyable. Now it will be the same as the others: finish as fast as possible by the shortest route.

Bah.

[TitusOvid]

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?

So you read the other thread. That's good. But the only thing you got from that thread was moving some new flaming skulls around. That's really sad.

[blerkington]

snip

There have been several threads about this now and they contained some very specific and useful suggestions about how this could have been done differently and better.

There were suggestions about how to adjust existing objectives to make the quest less farmable without ruining its character as well as adjusting the xp ransack mechanism so your concerns are addressed here as well as in future quests where you depart from the normal formula for length, monster density and the requirement to kill a red-named boss for completion. But rather than identify those suggestions and show how they're worse than what you did, you've chosen just to wave them all away as somehow not being detached and reasonable analyses.

Your response also completely fails to address the questions of why these changes are being made now after over a year and why your solution produced the most collateral damage for the players who have never 'exploited' the quest. These issues have been raised again and again, and still we aren't hearing anything like a plausible explanation for them.

For these reasons your last post just reads like a bunch of self-serving nonsense to me. Complaining about community anger and personal attacks after deliberately provoking us and then lamenting how you have to butcher your babies when there are other better solutions than the one you chose deserves zero sympathy at all, at least in my book. I cannot imagine a less sympathetic and productive way to go about a discussion of this issue than the one you've chosen.

Really poor stuff, SSG. Just pitiful.

[J1NG]

So you read the other thread. That's good. But the only thing you got from that thread was moving some new flaming skulls around. That's really sad.

No, that was the first thread and thank goodness the front door trash was at least moved.

The subsequent multiple other threads about the Temple were at best glossed over if looked into at all. But I distinctly remember Cordovan posting in there to say the Devs were going to stay away from that thread because it was toxic (filled with hate posts), so any suggestions and recommendations were also thrown out along with the thread I'm guessing.

J1NG

[banjo174]

I am not interested in your attempts to brag as a great player, and they are not interesting for this topic either.

I do not have problems finishing the quest on any difficulty. The problem is that they have ruined a great exploration quest. Certainly now I will not think of trying to play the quest with that spirit, it is no longer enjoyable. Now it will be the same as the others: finish as fast as possible by the shortest route.

Bah.

I am no where near being a "great" player lol. I am literally saying that I can solo R1. Thats not great at all... There are people who solo R10. I mean... If my ability to solo R1 appears as "Great" to you, then I doubt your ability to solo it on R1.

[Thar]

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.

I agree a change was needed.

mobs around every corner wasn't the answer. making someone do the straud fight was the easiest answer and kept the dungeons original feel. having to kill 50 mobs with the agro mechanic pulling things from all over to get to the first password is silly.

[Iriale]

I am no where near being a "great" player lol. I am literally saying that I can solo R1. Thats not great at all... There are people who solo R10. I mean... If my ability to solo R1 appears as "Great" to you, then I doubt your ability to solo it on R1.

almost everyone in this topic can solo r1. That has nothing to do with our complaints.

I did not say that you are a great player. I do not know you and I do not know if you're good or bad. I said that your attempts to brag as a great player are not of interest in this thread. You do not know anything about me or my characters, so also save your value judgments about my quality as a player.

[Anuulified]

Why did SSG not implement the experience "ransack" mechanic for Reaper content like Turbine did for non-Reaper content?




Why affect Elite? I get why you wanted to modify the Reaper version.

Level 35 will fix all of this...

[banjo174]

almost everyone in this topic can solo r1. That has nothing to do with our complaints.

Sure, coming from the person complaining about elite difficulty getting harder. Honestly... I am glad they are adding to the difficulty of content.
I wish they would add more champion diversity to the game.
More diversity in mobs in general.
random trap placements.
a new harder tier of champions.
more monsters in general.
more respawning mechanics.
more healing curses.
a new alert, purple alert maybe?

and more!

[Fivetigers33]

I had seen the Amber Temple threads for the past week or so and thought, people must be overreacting, there's no possible way it's as bad as people are making it out to be. Well I ran the quest again last night for the first time post patch and wow. It's comically different.

I was in a group steamrolling chains 1 and 2 on R3 and then we get to this quest and the party nearly wiped several times. I didn't check the completion time, but I'm guessing it was around 35 minutes. I think when I went through the first door and turned right, I saw something like 5 skulls and 4 reapers. Ghouls appearing out of nowhere, etc. The rest of the quest was more of the same.

I understand the reason for the change, but it's literally impossible to fathom how anyone thought this was a good change. What makes it worse, is SSG's habit of never undoing any change. It's like someone read one of those 'how to succeed in life' self help book written by one of those jerks that tells his readers "Never admit when you're wrong because it makes you look weak. Always stand by your decisions, even if you're wrong." Basically the Increasingly Poor Decisions of SSG.

[ahpook]

Is that... a challenge?

I know you joke but lets go back to what you were saying before: The quest reward to challenge was out of whack with the rest of the game and causing too much other content to be ignored (I paraphrase I hope accurately).

In a case such as that, the answer must be to not make the quest less fun. If you find that in order to make other parts of the game more attractive you need to remove fun from somewhere you are forgetting that you are providing a game. Adding mobs just makes the quest less fun. (Certainly Amber Temple was not a skinner box so that reference was misplaced.)

ToEE has been brought up a few times in this thread and it should be a warning poster put up in your studio. It is a good quest but it is a slog due the excessive mobs (ask the player base). ToEE should have been a show piece quest but instead it is not run because the fun was drained out of it. If you have done the same to Amber Temple you have made the game worse. Balancing the game in such a way is moronic.

[SerPounce]

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.

Lot of truth here. Not going to be popular though. The truth hurts.

[GramercyRiff]

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

This is why the change is bad. Elite has nothing to do with people getting reaper points.

[Iriale]

Sure, coming from the person complaining about elite difficulty getting harder. Honestly... I am glad they are adding to the difficulty of content.
I wish they would add more champion diversity to the game.
More diversity in mobs in general.
random trap placements.
a new harder tier of champions.
more monsters in general.
more respawning mechanics.
more healing curses.
a new alert, purple alert maybe?

and more!

I have not complained about that. I said that Flimsy is not right when he denies lyrecono's words. And that the designers lied when they said that reaper would not affect non-reaper

And I keep saying the same thing: you do not know my characters, so save your judgments about my worth as a player.

[CSQ]

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.

I'm not trying to defend some people's reactions, but...

I think my comment on how the changes penalize people running elite and reaper the way that the quest is apparently meant to be played (thoroughly instead of skipping straight to the icon) and encourages the very behavior that is supposed to be "fixed" by the change and that the other proposed solution, removing the card on elite+, actually fixes the problem by making players explore for the icon was detached and reasonable, or at least not a personal attack. Maybe a bit angry, but that's because I ran heroic elite Amber a few days ago (twice, actually, on two different characters) and was annoyed by flameskulls out the wazoo (to borrow Jeet's expression) on one of them. The other had night shield and 46 (if I remember correctly) fire resistance, so they weren't a problem to that character, but on my first life iconic they were a serious pain in the behind. Pulling 4+ flameskulls simply isn't viable for people who aren't familiar with the enemies and equipped to deal with their attacks. I certainly think part of the anger does come from the wording of the original post as this being the "kinder, gentler" solution, as for most people it simply isn't. On the other hand, the proposed solution that wasn't implemented did at least sound a lot better to people (like myself) who don't typically speedrun the content and felt penalized for the sins of other players. Meanwhile, if you want to speedrun, you simply kill a few more mobs and move on. Yes, there were a few people hitting exactly 10 kills and then moving on, but for flower-sniffers the changes mean your odds of getting bad RNG on champions/reapers and having unavoidable death rooms is so much higher that you're basically incentivized to skip as much as possible to avoid any chance of a wipe, especially on solo runs or builds that can't deal with magic missile and fire damage.

I'm not saying that unpopular changes are always bad, but when you literally list a better solution (at least in my opinion) and then dismiss those of us who would like that as angry and bitter, I don't think that's a productive response. I think if you had people vote on which of the two they would have liked, I feel confident (and maybe it's just being part of the forum mob) that removing the card on Elite+ would have been preferred to making the quest a massive difficulty spike- I already dread Amber on certain builds because of the flameskulls (not so much now as when they were new and I didn't know the "answers" to them, but still a bit), but I don't mind actually running what is a very interesting quest.