Official Shadow/Wall of Fire Feedback thread. - PLEASE KEEP ALL DISCUSSION HERE.

[DZX]

Very good post MT. It seems all we get nowadays are bandaid fixes for every problem.

[Kerr]

We realize that the changes to how Shadows respond to fire spells is an important issue right now. In an effort to keep feedback in a thread we can read, please post it here.

All feedback on this issue will be moved to this thread to help us track it.

Quarion, the issue isn't the firewall. The issue is the incorporeal AI is so flakey, buggy, and downright IRRITATING that no one wants to stand around swinging at something that may or may not appear just at the right place. This is something I and others have been saying for some time. Firewall was the only AOE long duration spell that made dealing with incorp mobs manageable.

[MysticTheurge]

/sigh

This is very disappointing.

[Symar-FangofLloth]

Do we need to have the Incorporeal != Ethereal talk? I probably should go ahead and do so since many of you seem to be confusing the two.

Meh, sorry, was confused at what the spell actually did, I guess.
So, what spells do stop things from... 'phasing', then?

[MysticTheurge]

Um... why has the "Taming the Flames" thread been merged into this thread? It has absolutely nothing even remotely to do with this topic.

[MysticTheurge]

So, what spells do stop things from... 'phasing', then?

Ghost Trap forces everything into corporeality.

Corpse Candle removes the miss-chance, but I don't have the book handy to see if that also turns them corporeal.

Incorporeal Nova just kills them all.

[Catlyn]

Simple matter is, if they wanted to put in doors they would have. This was quick, cheap, and the only casualty was irritating and alienating a fair segment of their customer base. And who really care about a silly little thing like that?

Lets not lose sight of the fact, and I do include myself in this, that only the minority come to the forums and read, much less post.

The average gamer does not care one way or the other. The average gamer does not know that these changes have even been made. The average gamer logs in for their few hours and plays the game, happily oblivious to the changes.

After monday's patch myself and my guild leader kept getting asked about the changes because most people couldn't be bothered to come and read about it themselves.

I guess what I am trying to say, I don't think this change alienated a fair segment of their player base. It alienated the forum readers and power gamers.

That being said, do I think blanket immunities are the way to go? No.

Do I have the answer that is best for all? No.

That is why I go to work everyday and earn my paycheck so I can pay to play someone elses game.

Sure they changed it and nerfed the random chest. They have done that before and the powergamers have adapted and found other ways and other places to loot. I am sure they will adapt once again.

[Kisaragi]

All I will say about the first post is "You've never played a caster up to 14 have you?"

There is nothing easy about those spells. Half the time I'm casting firewalls I'm dancing around like a mexican jumping bean on crack. The other times I'm standing behind the meatshield in the doorway, down the hall, and hiding in a corner.

The only thing I cast that's easy is Finger of Death, and that's only when I actually hit.

[DZX]

Instead of adding mobs and making them immune to firewall why didn't they just change how the doors work? Drop doors everywhere and have them lever operated. Having them close on you a few seconds after you open them(like many other quests) would make it hard to herd the mobs up. As a side note my sub runs out tonight so this will be my last post. no other games seem worth it so I'll just play PS3 until the next round of MMO's come out.

Because that would have required more than 15 seconds of thought (Yes I am being a jerk and at this point I could care less)

[Mourn]

As a wizard I like wof, it has its uses.

Personally instead of making the shadows immune to fire, perhaps adding a fire resistant monster would have been a better way to go. You could have picked hell hounds and brought them in by the dozens, maybe even fire resistant skellies or demons. At least those would be somewhat believeable. Shadows immune to fire, just wrong.

A poor attempt to fix what was a design flaw in the quest that should have been seen coming.

Please correct the fix with some other more useful fix, nothing lame this time though.

[ccheath776]

I have already stated my position.
This should not have been done. there were better ways to deal with the design issues in Temple of vol.

[Oran_Lathor]

Quarion, you missed my thread on this subject which I think has some decent ideas contained in it although it's not gotten as many responses as some others. Here it is:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=125085


(I hope I did that right, never linked anything before)


Anyway, in the meantime, here here are my own (slightly edited for context) posts from the thread:

I'm writing this after reading in the general forums that certain shadows have been given a blanket immunity to wall of fire (presumably & co.) for balance reasons. Like many players, I am inclined to call this change, for lack of a better term, "cheese."

Going forward, it seems simple to me that you should have your NPCs fight magic with magic. Why should those shadows need to be immune to fire? Aren't their high CR vampires in the quest? Have them cast Break Enchantment on our Walls of Fire, or throw up a Globe of Invulnerability when engaged. The fights will be more difficult, and you won't have an angry player base accusing you of cheating.

That's not enough? No problem. Code your Walls of Fire as targettable entities (like Flaming Sphere) and make them extinguishable by things like Ice Storm or Cone of Cold.

I understand that the quest was far too easy with Max/empowered wall of fire (as is the case in a great many places, btw), but your solution is a poor one. In fact, in retrospect, I think your decision to put Wall of Fire into the game was likely a poor one. It is simply too powerful relative to other spells, and borders often on game breaking, but I'm sure it's too late to remove it now, so do something interesting to bring it in line - make it counter-able - as opposed to just tossing out immunities where none should exist.

Beyond that, give some thought to the (often repeated) suggestion that mobs be scripted to move out of damaging lingering AOEs. There need only be distinction between effects on a mob between environmental effects and applied duration effects. IE whenever a mob takes dmg, if it's source is tagged as "environmental" (a la Wall of Fire) it will make an effort to move out of it, or at least have that affect its behaviour in some manner (ie, Ouch it burns here! I'm gonna whack that other guy over there instead).

I really hope that you guys read this and consider, if not these, then some other options for dealing with this sort of problem.



I just want to point out that I'm not saying any of these are perfect as stated, but rather trying to encourage discussion of viable options to "make them immune."

I agree with those of you who say we can't just give them a simple "it burns get out" script, for the reasons you posted. However, as sad as it is, I think that would probably be better than what we have now - which is of course - "Ow that hurts, I'll stand here and die in seconds, to no good effect." At least, if they ran out of it and we had to kill them with range, it would take longer - haha. What I would suggest is a slightly more complex script that would have the mobs react differently, perhaps based on archetype. Casters would move out and attempt to dispel 'environment' effects. Mellees would shift agro based on relative distance from the "Owie," and rangers would of course retreat to range, as they more or less do.

Other options exist too of course. For example, Metamagic enhancements could be disabled for Wall of Fire. As the spell, per PnP is effectively a form of crowd control and not a damage dealing magic, this could be justified I think. Maybe in this case make it into an object again like a Flaming Sphere, or something, and have it 'pulse' an antipathy effect which the mobs would have to save against in order to build the nerve to pass through.

Just some more thoughts, do you agree? disagree? Come on guys, let's give the devs some conversation here, because it's pretty obvious by now that Max/emp walls of fire are getting out of control.

[Ganak]

Ran Vol twice yesterday, first time since Monday's fix.

Mission successful, it's no longer a cakewalk.

It's also been relegated to the list of quests we do just enough to get it done or get what we need.

Having the gates close at every room until the vamps within were dead would have perhaps been better.

Quests like Invaders, wiz-king and PoP set good examples. A solid, dynamic challenging quest every run with excellent payout.

With two guaranteed chests and a not-guaranteed chest, and a high pain in the rear, unfun factor, Vol now does not exhibit the challenge/reward characteristics.

RIP Vol runs, we hardly knew you.


On another note, on my wiz for my two vol runs last night. Firewall would once in a while appear to damage the shadows. I'm pretty sure of this, but it was hard to take note while being pummelled by shadows. However, even though my firewalls didn't touch the shadows, my wiz kept their agro, even when I would cast nothing else, and melee would take down every hp of the shadows. Bugged I suspect. I don't care to go back and test.

[Kerr]

Another idea, how about having WOF interact with the environment to create something that is bad for the characters? Burns the floor and causes smoke clouds to reduce vision, burns some nasty stuff and causes poison gas, causes barrels of explosives to blow up. Make there be consequences to make a billowing wall of fire in some environments. Even if the wall itself won't hurt us, use the impact on the environment against us.

You could even use something like a Spot check to see if you smell the elevated Methane gas deposits in a swamp or something. Make it random locations to keep people guessing.

[Symar-FangofLloth]

Ghost Trap forces everything into corporeality.

Corpse Candle removes the miss-chance, but I don't have the book handy to see if that also turns them corporeal.

Incorporeal Nova just kills them all.

Ghost Trap: Cleric 6, Sorc/Wiz 7. 1 minute/level, 5ft/level radius centered on you. All incorporeal creatures become corporeal, nothing in the area can become ethereal or enter the ethereal plane, and nothing on the ethereal plane can affect the material plane.

Corpse Candle: Sor/Wiz 3. 1 minute/level. A ghostly candle reveals all hidden, ethereal, and invisible creatures and items in a 5 foot radius, though you can direct the candle to move around for free. The miss chance on incorporeals is removed.

Incorporeal Nova: Cleric 5, Sor/Wiz 6. 50ft radius burst. Destroys 1d4 HD worth of incorporeal creatures per level (max 20d4), but affects no creature with 9 or more HD.

I like Ghost Trap, but the other two are kind of meh for DDO.

[adamkatt]

What was so wrong with having one easy quest out in the orchard?!?!?!?!

[Borror0]

What was so wrong with having one easy quest out in the orchard?!?!?!?!

QFT

[Yaga_Nub]

On another note, on my wiz for my two vol runs last night. Firewall would once in a while appear to damage the shadows. I'm pretty sure of this, but it was hard to take note while being pummelled by shadows. However, even though my firewalls didn't touch the shadows, my wiz kept their agro, even when I would cast nothing else, and melee would take down every hp of the shadows. Bugged I suspect. I don't care to go back and test.

Not to derail this thread but allow me my sidetrack....

Nope not bugged, working as intended. All creatures in DDO instinctively know which member of the party is a caster (cleric or arcane) and will ignore all damage to itself to get to the caster even if the caster hasn't cast a spell. The devs have said this is valid because we do the same thing but the problem with that is the targetting and description system. We WOULDN'T know who the casters were if it wasn't listed on their description. So please remove "Drow Priest" from the clerics in VON3 and we won't know which ones to target until they actually cast a spell. Just list them all as "Drow" and do the same thing for every other mob in the game that has a class descriptor. I think you should be able to have the descriptor has just the class of creature and not list the subtype as well. Well that's assuming that you started with xxxx creature type and then have sub-types but that makes the most sense.

[Vorn]

RIP Vol runs, we hardly knew you.

Stormreach (SNS)--The Stormreach fire department is proud to announce the installation of automated sprinkling systems in a number of ancient structures. The prototype was installed recently in the Desecrated Temple of Vol and has received rave reviews. "We were finding that tourists in this ancient building were just doing too much damage...the intense heat of their passage was inflicting an inordinate amount of structural damage," reported the Fire Mashall. "Without this new system the building would soon be a shadow of it's former self. We feel this is a highly successful program...a follow-on, if you will, to the flame resistant wrappings made availble to our mummy citizens in the desert a few months ago." Look for further developments in public safety in the very near future.

[GrayOldDruid]

A simple timer would solve that. End of story. If you make a 2nd or 3rd attack within X amount of time it is at a penalty. This simple change would profoundly balance the game.

Oh and no friendly fire. While I would support it in spirit the truth is ******** players would use it to grief.

I think that is kind of already built in. Some characters swing a lot slower than others. I've noticed that my characters' 'attack speed' increases as I level, some better than others. My 9th level ranger can swing six times in six seconds, while my 5th level Sorcerer can barely get in two, maybe three.

I would have to look at the combat log closer to see if it gives the roll numbers, +'s and such.