Neuter the Hounds

[Aelonwy]

I hope the devs are having a meeting about the egregious DoT Hound bugs.

If they can't fix hounds spawning incorrectly and being unattackable/unkillable the DoT needs to go. Remove the DoT leave the vulnerability. Why are they not Orange-names so we can use CC? Seriously why is DPS the ONLY thing that matters? Why are they champions that never drop champion chests?

And spare me the legalese. If they could not work out or fix these issues then putting them in the game at all was bad-faith with the player base especially on Hardcore. They know how players spend money to advance characters or make them more durable... these bugs seem tailor made to waste peoples' time and money. Prove to me it wasn't intended, because I am loosing goodwill in this game and this company.

[Dandonk]

How much is that doggie in the water
The one with the horrible dot
How much is that doggie in the water
I do hope that doggie's a dud

[Driss]

Alternatively you could improve as a player. If the Devs cave to your demands you never will.

[KoobTheProud]

Alternatively you could improve as a player. If the Devs cave to your demands you never will.

This is a classic obtuse response.

[Cernunan]

Alternatively you could improve as a player. If the Devs cave to your demands you never will.

It's always hilarious when a brand new player tells a player who's been here since the game started to "get gud", especially when she is addressing a bug that is affecting people's fun, people who spend on the game.
Hey new guy, go to the HoH. You will find an NPC named after Aelonwy.
Please proceed to the part of the game that has seats. And have on.

[SiliconScout]

It's always hilarious when a brand new player tells a player who's been here since the game started to "get gud", especially when she is addressing a bug that is affecting people's fun, people who spend on the game.
Hey new guy, go to the HoH. You will find an NPC named after Aelonwy.
Please proceed to the part of the game that has seats. And have on.

+1 could not agree more

[SiliconScout]

Alternatively you could improve as a player. If the Devs cave to your demands you never will.

when the hound spawns, can literally not be attacked and hits you with dungeon wide AoE DoT's and vulnerability about 2 times a second there's not much you can "get better at". You literally have less than 2 seconds to recognize what's happening, hit ALT-F4 and pray that in 10 minutes when you log back in you are still alive.

If it spawns one someone who's not with the group who doesn't say anything or while you are already in a fight then it's pretty much a TPK right there. I saw 2 of these just today playing and I feel bad for the players.

Their skill or knowledge didn't let them down, a bugged out mechanic did.

[Oxarhamar]

Alternatively you could improve as a player. If the Devs cave to your demands you never will.

Apparently the Devs realized that there are bugs with it just like they did with reapers

Hello! We are actively looking into this issue. It appears to be caused by a very old failsafe system meant to handle monsters falling too far that makes a few baseline assumptions about monsters that are not accurate in the current game. We're working on a fix! Additionally, we're looking at adding some effect cooldowns to make sure that if any other similar situations are floating out there, you can't get stacks of the DOT and vulnerability much faster than the normal rate.

We don't have an ETA for fixes yet, but we will keep you all posted as that develops!

(P.S. Before anyone asks, we're also looking into Hounds not becoming attackable on spawning, no updates there yet.)

[Assassination]

SSG's silence is just defeaning. Maybe time to turn a new leaf SSG. Claim your mistake, fix it, and come up with a remedy to the players you have griefed with this mess. Otherwise I hope this hardcore season is

a big Failure for you all. Time to step up.

[Oliphant]

Alternatively you could improve as a player. If the Devs cave to your demands you never will.

Equivalent to: The only way you can improve is this specific game bug.

Because reasons.

[Lynnabel]

SSG's silence is just defeaning. Maybe time to turn a new leaf SSG. Claim your mistake, fix it, and come up with a remedy to the players you have griefed with this mess. Otherwise I hope this hardcore season is

a big Failure for you all. Time to step up.

You might be interested in this post right here TLDR: We're actively investigating this and a few more Hardcore bugs, and should have more information soon. Thank you!

[Assassination]

Thanks Steelstar and Lynnabel. Maybe the two of you should be running the company. I think the playerbase would appreciate it if some of this stuff was tested before release.

That's a management issue, one of this companies real weak points... that and customer service.

[Driss]

It's always hilarious when a brand new player tells a player who's been here since the game started to "get gud", especially when she is addressing a bug that is affecting people's fun, people who spend on the game.
Hey new guy, go to the HoH. You will find an NPC named after Aelonwy.
Please proceed to the part of the game that has seats. And have on.

Dont be deceived by the fact Cordovan bans me monthly. Ive been playing since launch. I am level 23 on HC and have yet to feel the need to complain on the forums, because I am a competent player.

[Vordax]

Thanks Steelstar and Lynnabel. Maybe the two of you should be running the company. I think the playerbase would appreciate it if some of this stuff was tested before release.

That's a management issue, one of this companies real weak points... that and customer service.

This is 100% tested. Not sure if you have noticed though, this is a very complicated game. There are so many possible edge cases that covering everything would be near impossible. I would love more testing but this costs money, which I don't think they have in abundance. I know this game has issues, still love it anyways and will continue to play, and pay. I honestly thing they are probably doing the best they can with the resources available to them.

[Yavool]

You might be interested in this post right here TLDR: We're actively investigating this and a few more Hardcore bugs, and should have more information soon. Thank you!

The "bugs" are the fact that you, the Devs, thought that making these annoying can't-play-around hounds red named was a good idea, and then used the first few weeks of the Hardcore season to have us "playtest" them.

PLEASE switch the hounds to orange named mobs so that we can theorycraft, create functional builds, and have some chance to use crowd control against their ridiculous power, frequency, DOTs, and overall lack of fun. Otherwise, HC Season 6 is going to be a ghost town within the next ten days! This season is already a failure; it's not too late to salvage your integrity, Devs! Thank you!

-yav

[Aelonwy]

Alternatively you could improve as a player. If the Devs cave to your demands you never will.

Clearly my demands such as they are, are warranted. https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...e2#post6530813

If you enjoy playing with such game-breaking bugs that is your prerogative. Please do me the favor of setting my forum account to IGNORE and I will favor you likewise.

[Aelonwy]

You might be interested in this post right here TLDR: We're actively investigating this and a few more Hardcore bugs, and should have more information soon. Thank you!

Thank you Lynn, I am very happy to read that these bugs will be fixed ASAP.

[Vespero]

I was looking forward to this season. Last season I got my 5k favor, which is FAR harder than just hitting lv20. Because of the hound nightmare, and foreseen issues with teleporting murder hounds in many quest scenarios, my guildies do not want to waste their time this season.

Now to hit 5k favor you kinda need a dedicated group, as you will need to do almost every quest. It is almost impossible to do pugging it the whole way. So, I guess I don't get any wings. ...because SSG decided to change the rules....because 5k favor on one life isn't hard enough I guess. I mean, EVERYONE has bloody footprints, right? It was so easy to get them. I believe lowering the level differential by 2 would have been enough of a challenge increase.

I buy supreme tomes. Not this season.

By the way, customer service is sub par. Guess what. I can claim my footprints, the 2nd favor reward, but he tells me I don't have enough favor for the first (from season 5) I didn't bother reporting it because that is how much faith I have in support nowadays. It took you 2 months to fix not being able to claim the footprints that I earned.

[Cernunan]

Dont be deceived by the fact Cordovan bans me monthly.

And that is all anyone needs to know about you

[Blastyswa]

I couldn't agree more. Personally I played a lot and enjoyed hardcore in season one, and then seasons 2-4 all had "gimmicks" that just made the experience way less fun in my opinion, homogenizing builds as you're forced to meet certain requirements to counter mechanics that are introduced for the first time ever in a hardcore server. Season 5 was great, I got my footprints, played a bunch of fun and diverse builds, made it to (the very bottom of) the favor leaderboard, and really felt like they were bringing hardcore in a better direction.

I just don't understand as a company, or as developers, why the idea of introducing non-playtested mechanics for the first time on a HARDCORE server makes any sense. I don't blame them at all for having bugs and issues, because that's expected if you're rolling something new out: I don't blame them for having this season's mechanics really punish "slow and steady" playstyles, soloers, trying to grind gear solo, and having builds that aren't completely focused on "I have high max HP and good burst damage.", because while I don't think that's a good decision I get the logic behind making it and think it's an understandable approach, much like changing the lockout from +4 to +2. And I don't really like or care about the cosmetics that much, but I was still planning to aim for 5k at least just because I really enjoyed HCL1 and HCL5.

What I do blame SSG for is trying to have these gimmicks in hardcore league in the first place. For the month leading up to HCL6 dropping SSG staff would be consistently coy about any mechanics coming out, so that when the league dropped anyone who didn't happen to choose a build that excels at bursting down high HP boss mobs needs to reroll or make sure to group with people who did choose those builds. I just don't understand why they feel the need to add these massive features to the hardcore leagues that completely change how they play instead of having it be hardcore with a little twist.

In any case, I got my first jiggle-hound death today, activated my teleport item as soon as I saw the hound spawn poorly and died before the item finished getting halfway. I could reroll into an FvS and wait a few weeks to a month for them to finish using us as beta testers and have the hounds slightly balanced, but it still isn't going to be fun, so I'm just doing my loot character transfer back to Cannith and calling it good. I'll come back to HCL if they have another season where there isn't some tedious gimmick that forces you to play in a certain way, but until then I'll have fun playing DDO and not "DDO, but what if there were random hounds too".