Why are Hounds spawning in Korthos Villiage?

[Marshal_Lannes]

And i just watched the twitch clip of a houd bug wiping a party.

Hounds de facto force everyone to play reaper since they function as both a Fear and Carnage reaper. If a person comes into a quest late and a Hound spawns on them it can and has wiped entire parties by putting the Dot damage on everyone. Hardcore doesn't mean, to me anyway, Diablo Hell mode. I enjoy HC for the full groups and team play. These hounds have cast a long enough shadow over season 6 that they have about ruined my fun. If I wanted to run reaper on Hardcore I'd run reaper. I don't want to run regular questing and face a combo reaper disguised as a dog for three months. This mechanic borders on an epic fail.

I do concur, I guess, with some of the points that it is better to find out about the Hounds with no time investment instead of them appearing in Feywild (although I still feel Korthos is too much and offputting to many players) when you have a day into the character. The Dot is a real issue. Anytime 90% of the deaths are coming from one source, then that source is overperforming.

[KoobTheProud]

The hound mechanic is an epic fail on SSG's part. They'll never admit it but they took a season that everybody had looked forward too for months and turned it into an elitist nightmare.

[Assassination]

Hounds should have just been a special reaper in reaper mode. It's embarrassing how poorly they are implemented and all of the bugs associated with them. But hey, do you think they actually play tested this stuff before they released it on the playerbase? Doubtful. I would call it a massive "mis-implementation". Hey, only 3 more months of it though, so not long lived mistake...

Another "Slow Clap" moment for SSG.

[Marshal_Lannes]

The hound mechanic is an epic fail on SSG's part. They'll never admit it but they took a season that everybody had looked forward too for months and turned it into an elitist nightmare.

This is another key point. The beauty of Hardcore was everyone rolls up a character, has no money or equipment, and starts at square one. Because the Hounds are so disproportionally powered in low levels the workaround is going to be loading up your characters with full gear kits, daily gold rolls, and 15 points in enhancement trees as a L3 doing Korthos. Of course that still doesn't remove the fact that people have to play with Fear reapers in regular questing anytime they aren't in a public area. I logged on today and already the instances are down from 5 to 2 or 3. Has there been that much attrition already on the server? Bet I can guess the reason. People don't quit when they die. They quit when they die in what is perceived as an unfair manner. And right, no one said things had to be fair, but as others have pointed out in this thread where does that slope stop and why is the unfair doom hammer set to strike the most vulnerable? After thinking on this for a few days, I believe Hounds should have been a new type of reaper (since they function exactly like one). Forcing reapers on everyone wasn't a good idea.

[Kayze]

This is another key point. The beauty of Hardcore was everyone rolls up a character, has no money or equipment, and starts at square one. Because the Hounds are so disproportionally powered in low levels the workaround is going to be loading up your characters with full gear kits, daily gold rolls, and 15 points in enhancement trees as a L3 doing Korthos. Of course that still doesn't remove the fact that people have to play with Fear reapers in regular questing anytime they aren't in a public area. I logged on today and already the instances are down from 5 to 2 or 3. Has there been that much attrition already on the server? Bet I can guess the reason. People don't quit when they die. They quit when they die in what is perceived as an unfair manner. And right, no one said things had to be fair, but as others have pointed out in this thread where does that slope stop and why is the unfair doom hammer set to strike the most vulnerable? After thinking on this for a few days, I believe Hounds should have been a new type of reaper (since they function exactly like one). Forcing reapers on everyone wasn't a good idea.

I don't agree with this statement. Hounds are fine without gear. Just communicate when they spawn, and have the hound target (not mark) kite in circles around the party.

Instances are always bound to drop as people level up. DDO audit shows that this season's first day spike is twice as big as the last two seasons', with normal decay.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

It is called

Hard Core League

It was never intended to be completable by everyone.

I love this new difficulty, finally players will EARN the rewards.
I love the fact that there will not be this show and blow 2 weeks
along with all awards earned.
This right now should be the MINIMUM difficulty for HCL.

I am not a fan of this type of sentient
and am very curious what rewards - if any - you've earned?

HCL is filled with thousands of great people - i get to meet hundreds of them and make
new friends - the community is absolutely fantastic. I love everyone - so anyone who relishes
the QQs i view with suspicion. Are you trolling?

this sort of tuff guy mentality is not what ddo's community or the hardcore league is all about -
anyone can do a perma-death guild on any live server at any time
with all sorts of apocalyptic rules - have at it -

HCL is at its core a very strong profit positive event for SSG's economy, a comingling
of all the servers into one player base with motive for that player base to purchase and upgrade to compete for pixel prizes -

but when the bar is set so high due to an RNG death mob that can kill anyone at any time,
that disincentivizes players from committing resources because they know
it is a bad risk.

Anyone with money knows about mitigating risk and making good investments. The hounds make season 6 a bad
investment because they are a risk that cannot be adequately mitigated.

Its that simple.

DDO has enough RNG already in the form of poorly performing servers, lag spikes, server glitches, client crashes, mob pathing bugs,
mob spell bugs, mob spawn bugs that make HCL already very difficult - +2 down from +4 is a huge meta shift and in itself would have
shaken many off. Random Doom mobs are unnecessary and bad form for the reasons I stated above.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

I don't agree with this statement. Hounds are fine without gear. Just communicate when they spawn, and have the hound target (not mark) kite in circles around the party.

Instances are always bound to drop as people level up. DDO audit shows that this season's first day spike is twice as big as the last two seasons', with normal decay.

But the problem is they are glitching out and killing everyone anyway -

glitching

we already have enough glitches during HCL with the client, the servers, the mobs, the spells, the login/log out, the chat server fails, the group fails, the infinit falling bugs, -

[Assassination]

But the problem is they are glitching out and killing everyone anyway -

glitching

we already have enough glitches during HCL with the client, the servers, the mobs, the spells, the login/log out, the chat server fails, the group fails, the infinit falling bugs, -

And they know this, but aren't trying to fix it, or to quickly come up with a solution. Maybe because it benefits them financially to do so? I don't know. But it's a bad look for sure.

I've survived 2 glitched hounds, but at only lvl 10, am nervous about what happens in higher lvls once they gain strength. Believe Strimtom said on a video that happens at lvl 11?

It's a fun server and playstyle for sure, but these hounds are a bit over the top. Good luck all.

[Assassination]

Another issue I don't think they considered is the wierd moment at end of quests when everyone is recalling. Heard of a lot of deaths at end of quests because a hound shows up and only a couple people are left and they get killed.

These are issues that should have been considered. If these hounds behaved more like reapers this sort of nonsense would not be occurring.

I've been in 2 groups where 3 of us were left to kill a hound because we were slightly slower on the recall button.

[Oxarhamar]

Another issue I don't think they considered is the wierd moment at end of quests when everyone is recalling. Heard of a lot of deaths at end of quests because a hound shows up and only a couple people are left and they get killed.

These are issues that should have been considered. If these hounds behaved more like reapers this sort of nonsense would not be occurring.

I've been in 2 groups where 3 of us were left to kill a hound because we were slightly slower on the recall button.

I agree that they shouldn’t spawn after the quest is complete

[Assassination]

Maybe once xp is awarded for completion of quest it would kill the timer for the hounds.

[Caver]

Ok Friday night my family group finally got to get together in HC. We play once a week as a group and some of us solo occasionally at other times. We are all VIPs and have been playing pretty much since the beginning, so 16 years, but we've only capped maybe twice and have about 5 or 6 TRs each. Obviously we are not your top tier players lol. We ran through Korthos on elite and lost two characters, my daughter who was late and grabbed a pre-made bard build cause she didn't want to hold us up ( we caught her back up on a better toon lol ) and her husband who got caught with half HPs and went down before he could catch a heal both to hounds. Other than that we had no issues and finished Misery's Peak on elite and capped at level three ( after my son-in-law burned his daily rolls XP). We killed probably 20 or so hounds with little trouble.

Tonight my wife and I played and made new characters and we died immediately in Heyton's on elite to a hound. This was of course stupid since there were only two of us and neither was my youngest son a huge disadvantage rofl. We then remade the same characters and ran the first four quests on normal and hard and the outside quests on normal but stopped before Misery's Peak cause it was getting late and we had just hit level 3. We killed at least one hound per quest and probably 6 to 8 in the wilderness no problem.

I don't understand why everybody is complaining this is so hard. It's not hard. It doesn't compare to reapers. You get plenty of time to get ready. I don't get it.

[DYWYPI]

I rolled my first HCL Season 6, Character, a fresh default Assassin today; soloing I met two Hounds in Korthos Village whilst Level 1, as it so happens they appeared in the final rooms: The Storehouse's Secret and The Collaborator. One of the Fey Hunt Hounds, was doing around 4 HP Cold damage for its initial attacks.

They do seem to be able to hit pretty hard compared to the rest of the regular mobs, which makes sense as they are (Current Quest Level +2).

I had Pierce Damage Reduction listed against the Hound's bite attack albeit I was only wearing the Grotto Battleworn Chainshirt and nothing else whatsoever.

Personally I found them uninteresting and more of an unwanted nuisance more than anything else. My heartbeat didn't increase with panic, excitement or anything. As I tend to prefer to lean towards relaxed play rather than rushing towards the end... I'm not going to alter my playstyle for some short-sighted hound spawn mechanic either.

I have to go AFK occasionally - I can get called away at random - and with the daily occurrences of the ongoing Chat Server connection issue, "(Error): The chat server is temporarily unavailable. Please try again shortly." I cannot really risk doing grouping. :-/

I am personally mostly indifferent about them appearing whilst you're Character Level 1. Although it probably wouldn't have harmed whatsoever (and made better sense) if the hounds had been configured so they wouldn't spawn until the Character was Level 2 or 3... or maybe reserve them and their frequency increase with difficulty setting.

There are plenty of unfortunates that somehow manage to get killed by Level 4 without the hounds anyway. Hardcore, a marketing gimmick name, is essentially just a permadeath server with some additional rules. The theme this time is the Hounds, which seem to bug occasionally in a very bad unwanted way, according to reports.

Having them in the Wilderness zones might sound good thematically, but there is no real benefit of them being there. About the only reason of them being the wilderness is to harass parties that weren't in cooperation, which is a weak reason anyway for having them in such a zone - leave that to quests.

The hounds were not choosy in their selection of victims: the Content Developers had almost as much to fear from them as did many players. ;-)

[Oxarhamar]

This is another key point. The beauty of Hardcore was everyone rolls up a character, has no money or equipment, and starts at square one. Because the Hounds are so disproportionally powered in low levels the workaround is going to be loading up your characters with full gear kits, daily gold rolls, and 15 points in enhancement trees as a L3 doing Korthos. Of course that still doesn't remove the fact that people have to play with Fear reapers in regular questing anytime they aren't in a public area. I logged on today and already the instances are down from 5 to 2 or 3. Has there been that much attrition already on the server? Bet I can guess the reason. People don't quit when they die. They quit when they die in what is perceived as an unfair manner. And right, no one said things had to be fair, but as others have pointed out in this thread where does that slope stop and why is the unfair doom hammer set to strike the most vulnerable? After thinking on this for a few days, I believe Hounds should have been a new type of reaper (since they function exactly like one). Forcing reapers on everyone wasn't a good idea.

Thou hounds may have some Reaper like mechanics they also have differances

Reapers have no warning

there do noy force anyone to play on Reaper

There is no Reaper xp in normal hard or elite also no reapers & no self healing penalth

The hounds are from the newish Fey raid hence the Fey theme prizes

YW

[sabella]

Hardcore is one thing, but making sure it isn't TOO hard still has to be factored in.

If they make it too hard, people will get frustrated and quit, which will mean less players, less groups, less money for them, less fun for us.

...

You all are making me feel like a much better DDO player than I'd ever counted myself as. LOL

We're *very* casual players - a family group we play once a week or so if we're not distracted by real life or squirreled to other games. Yes, we've played DDO almost since the beginning, but every time we got anywhere near top level, they raised the level cap. I remember struggling to get to 8, was it?

Here are all these other folks maxed out, playing completionist and they have to make end-game content for them because they've always done everything. And our group just isn't having that much trouble with the hounds. Yeah, we lost a party member or two (but one was playing a pre-built character and the other was low on hit points and didn't ask to be healed) but moving right along anyway.

I personally have never been above 7 on hardcore and here I am with my little necromancer and I've killed several dogs, both in solo and group play. I feel good - woot.

[sabella]

T
Considering the importance that the hound mechanic would play in this season's hardcore event, that such a mistake was allowed to slip through speaks volumes. (If it was purposely done......well.)

Oh good grief. How long have you been gaming? I don't know if whichever mechanic you're fussing about is a bug or not, but the concept that there aren't going to be bugs (or they must be doing it on purpose) is just ridiculous. This is a single game "event" added just to be fun in a really old game maintained by a very small group of people.

Big buck games come on the market with more game-breaking bugs (that they never fix or consider) than DDO ever thought of having. Here we have this fantastic game where you can climb ladders, true jump mechanics, thieves - all the other fantastic stuff DDO has and the worst bugs are sometimes things end up in the walls or (worst of all) lag and you're considering if there is a bug, they do it *on purpose*?

Geez, Conan Exiles shipped with the instanced dungeons so completely broken it was unplayable and so far as I know it still isn't fixed. And this is your idea of "how could they allow this to happen"?

[fatherpirate]

If anyone is just having an issue with getting out of lvl 1-3 alive
just make sure to hold off buying coin store buffs
for your toon until you get to at least level 4.

It seems most of the issue is with low level toons.

also, try to be max cap
don't go to level 2 dungeons until your ready to level up to lvl 4
( the max cap was reduced this season )

[gnarledmaw]

It feels like that DM in PnP no one wanted to play ...

Ive been thinking about this all morning for a couple of other reasons and was contemplating starting a thread on it. There is at least one individual that should only be coding what they are told and not making any other decisions that effect anything else in the game anywhere. Terrible DMing.

[Dmitrythewizzy]

If anyone is just having an issue with getting out of lvl 1-3 alive
just make sure to hold off buying coin store buffs
for your toon until you get to at least level 4.

It seems most of the issue is with low level toons.

also, try to be max cap
don't go to level 2 dungeons until your ready to level up to lvl 4
( the max cap was reduced this season )

I recommend dropping hirelings when you hear the howl... turn their attack on and then back out. The hound goes for them. Kind of cheesy I know but I was not gonna get wiped like I did in Mimic season.

[fatherpirate]

I recommend dropping hirelings when you hear the howl... turn their attack on and then back out. The hound goes for them. Kind of cheesy I know but I was not gonna get wiped like I did in Mimic season.

for this season, I call hirelings at the door
and in most circumstances have them on aggressive already.
most not all