Are you having fun in HC6?

[landerk]

I'm soloing exclusively on an Assassin, I chose not to use any Guild buffs or join a Guild. Neither will I make any Store purchases.

The Hounds at low level 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).

Personally I find them uninteresting and more of an unwanted nuisance more than anything else. 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'm having fun giving people advice in Chat channels when they decide to function. :-/

So my answers essentially are; the Fey Hunt Hounds make me less motivated to continue because they conflict with my playstyle. It's not so much their poorly implemented difficulty; albeit that could have been fine-tuned. It's the dreadful tedium of them repetitively spawning being a distraction - you don't even get a token reward for them dying.

I prefer diversity and tactics rather than just blind focus on power and damaging mobs or one button bashing. The Hounds are as appealing to me as: shooting blindfolded fish in a barrel. In other words they do not excite me in the slightest. :-/

I am one the people whom actually enjoy playing stealthy rogues with the game. I am meaning the "stealthy aspects" rather than damage output. Having the hounds materialise doesn't seem like its beneficial; for stealth play (what a surprise).

In fact: I have decided, I won't bother continuing to quest in Hardcore this season after today, for the above stated reasons. :-)

I find the hounds annoying as well and solo 99,% of the time. So having a safe zone would be nice especially when you just have to leave the game for something. Thematically and universally a good option for a safe zone might be at a Shrine. I don't see how that would change the game a lot and give you a chance to check on screaming kids or take a bathroom break and such just long enough to get back into the game.

[Bobilar]

I am having fun. I have died three times, at level 3 to a hound in a Borderlands quest, at 9 to a mud geyser in the Kopru Temple and just this morning at 5 to a hound in Tangleroot.

Dying is frustrating for sure, and the level 9 death hurt a lot as I had nearly 2.5k favour and had completed a lot of long and difficult quests like The Pit, ToEE 1 and Slavelords.

But on the bright side there are still plenty of low level groups, it doesn't take long to get back up in levels, and it's certainly exciting.

I enjoyed my first hardcore (4) with the mimics and weird champions (LEGS!!) but more or less skipped 5 as I felt it was too soon and too easy. The challenge is definitely back in 6 and gets a thumbs up from me.

I'd love to get 5k favour but if I die again I may just power up to level 20.

If you see a (Name) in a Green Hat, that's me.

[vryxnr]

Are you having fun in HC season 6 with the hounds and the base +2?

Yes, yes I am enjoying HCLS6 so far. I do miss +4, but I adapt and overcome.

[Karthunk]

I really dislike the hounds. Not being able to afk while in a dungeon to take care of RL quickly has soured the experience.

I got my 5k favor and lvl 20 so I am done for this season. Please don't bring the hounds back.

[balvix]

I really dislike the hounds. Not being able to afk while in a dungeon to take care of RL quickly has soured the experience.

I got my 5k favor and lvl 20 so I am done for this season. Please don't bring the hounds back.

Yeah, its really annoying when you are in a quest and have a knock at the door as happened to me yesterday. My dog was going berserk, and my kids were yelling at me and the person at the door would knock for about 3 seconds then wait 3-4 seconds and knock again. I was in a quest with a group, and only options were continue and ignore the ruckus, or step away and risk my toon at 4500 favor. I really think these dogs were not well thought out.

[KoobTheProud]

I've been solo all season and frankly it has just sucked. Given the number of people complaining about grouping with the +2 limit my guess is that this has been one of the least satisfactory seasons for the player base as a whole.

Being on an artificial timer in a quest just blows chunks. Zerging all quests blows chunks. Avoiding optionals to avoid hounds sucks but is clearly the right move. Sitting around before a boss fight 4 minutes into a quest until a hound appears sucks.

Hopefully next HCL will have some respect for solo players because this one clearly does not.

[adamkatt]

Yes i had fun and now im done.

[marinersfan]

I ended up dying at about 3200 favor. That's the first time on hc I've died beyond level 2. In previous seasons I'd probably have rerolled and tried once more to make it to 5k. However, I had 4 issues with this particular season that made it kind of mediocre, and drained my motivation to try again:

1) not enamored with the wings. I doubt I'd ever have equipped them, but the competitor in me still wanted to win. If the 5k reward was something I was interested in, I'd probably be logged in and grinding right now.
2) hounds started out stupid hard, then became tedious. I didn't like the "wait around while it spawns, then everyone hit it with your strongest attack and kill it in 1 second", "wait for hound before boss fight", "hope it doesn't spawn in a dumb spot that wipes party (though this was mostly fixed)". I think these would be a very fun event on live servers with some sort of collectible awarded
3) +2 level lockout. I'm mixed on this - from a difficulty standpoint, it was the right call. +4 is too easy. However, +2 makes it hard to find groups, even on the most populated HCL server. My experience (putting up MANY LFM's) is that nobody joins for a looong time, then once you get about 3 in group, it fills super-fast. People -- if you need the quest, join before the last second! I had so many times where I'd wait forever, just to have to deny 2 people because I'd get 4 requests at the same time, trying to fill out the last 2 spots.
4) inability to afk. This is probably the main reason I hung it up after my toon died. I have 2 young kids and it's nothing short of a miracle if I can play for more than like 30 minutes uninterrupted. I resorted to staying up 1-3 hours later than usual every night to try to crank out the favor, which was starting to negatively affect me around the house and at work.

[kmoustakas]

Update: this season sucks. There's a ton of groups but none for you because of the +2 limit. This is TERRIBLE. Unless you're in a static group or have 5 hirelings and a pet

[balvix]

Update: this season sucks. There's a ton of groups but none for you because of the +2 limit. This is TERRIBLE. Unless you're in a static group or have 5 hirelings and a pet

Yeah, I'm stuck doing a ton of soloing and the only way I can do that reliably is with 4 hires or so. I don't think they care if you have kids or are maybe handicapped and need a break for a sec or two. Like I have been saying, I don't think they really thought about the hounds concept very much, most likely someone said, "hey lets have things appear at random and attack players". Then the person running the meeting said "Everyone stop thinking! Were going to go with this amazing idea!" *Applause suddenly erupts through the entire company* Probably about how it went.

[KoobTheProud]

Yeah, I'm stuck doing a ton of soloing and the only way I can do that reliably is with 4 hires or so. I don't think they care if you have kids or are maybe handicapped and need a break for a sec or two. Like I have been saying, I don't think they really thought about the hounds concept very much, most likely someone said, "hey lets have things appear at random and attack players". Then the person running the meeting said "Everyone stop thinking! Were going to go with this amazing idea!" *Applause suddenly erupts through the entire company* Probably about how it went.

What they didn't think about was the pace changes the hounds would force.

For groups it didn't matter much because groups almost always zerg with stops around particularly deadly traps.

For solo players it completely changed the pace of the game and the change was unwanted by the vast majority of solo players.

It would have been better from my perspective as a solo player to spawn a hound with the boss at the end of each dungeon. I could have planned and built around that much better than I am able too with the current timed spawn hounds.

[Aelonwy]

What they didn't think about was the pace changes the hounds would force.

For groups it didn't matter much because groups almost always zerg with stops around particularly deadly traps.

For solo players it completely changed the pace of the game and the change was unwanted by the vast majority of solo players.

It would have been better from my perspective as a solo player to spawn a hound with the boss at the end of each dungeon. I could have planned and built around that much better than I am able too with the current timed spawn hounds.

From the way it started and the way its playing out I would hazard a guess that they didn't think about much except the theme of the players being hunted. Which sounds cool, I'll give them that, but the implementation is awful. Add the +2 level adjustment cap and its effect on grouping and this is just the most tedious, most stressful, most unfun HC experience I've had so far... and because of it I fervently hope they NEVER develop anything I ever want from HC again.

[kmoustakas]

I liked hardcore because it was easier to find groups.

This season's hardcore is actually harder to get groups than in empty main server :/