Fundamental Problems with Mabar, Crystal Cove

[Zaodon]

Responses in green above.

The winter games (created for the olympics) have been turned on many times since. So, I know they will bring back Mabar, and even Cove, at later dates, which don't correspond to the original "date/event" they were designed to celebrate.

So, once you accept that the "event" will be brought back again "just because", its a simple leap to just say "hmm, ok, lets just introduce this into the game, change the mechanics, and leave it on."

My suggestion was something new: a non-repeatable quest. Or, repeatable a limited number of times, if you will. There is no such mechanic in DDO. Sure, you can grind a quest till you get 0 xp, but you can still repeat it as much as you want. Rather than making these "event" quests time-limited, make them repeat-limited. Then, if a new player joins DDO 6 months from now, they can simply do the Cove their allotted "20 times" (or whatever the number is) and move on with the game.

In fact, Turbine could then add even more features such as "buying a 10 more runs of Cove" in the DDO Store. Or even, "Hey, we decided to celebrate, so we added 10 free passes to everyone's account for Mabar and Cove." which lets us run it again in the future.

i.e. the area doesn't phase in and out, but yet its still "runable" only a limited amount. Or if "x times" is bad, then do "x hours/days". Whatever.

And again, it does not have to be easier or harder to actually get the items. Just different. And really, not all that different. All I'm proposing is removing the "20,000 map turn ins to open quest for 40 minutes" with "Quest is always open, go in, complete, get doubloons, crystals, etc. from the quest, not from a farm-like pre-instance wierd server-wide flaggy thing-a-ma-bob."

[Carpone]

Fundamental Problems with Mabar, Crystal Cove

You forgot...

#4: Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggg gggggggggggggggggg.

Nothing says birthday celebration like server lag!

[kernal42]

My suggestion was something new: a non-repeatable quest. Or, repeatable a limited number of times, if you will. There is no such mechanic in DDO. Sure, you can grind a quest till you get 0 xp, but you can still repeat it as much as you want. Rather than making these "event" quests time-limited, make them repeat-limited. Then, if a new player joins DDO 6 months from now, they can simply do the Cove their allotted "20 times" (or whatever the number is) and move on with the game.

The idea of a non-repeatable quest is a wholly loathsome proposition.

So you go in once and don't perform perfectly - you have now forever lost the opportunity to improve your character in some way.

No other mechanic in the game works this way, which is a very, very good thing. Failure of any other quest means you pay the repair bill and write off the time as poorly spent. Having failures stick with you forever? Absolutely not.

-Kernal

[Jaid314]

1. Level 8 clerics do not get cometfall, flame strike, fire storm, or implosion. Stop being 20-centric. The event is for all players, of all levels, or is supposed to be. Your argument that DPS should control loot distribution WITHIN GROUP is patently shortsighted. It should not be based on DPS intra-group, period. To even imply that it should is silly.

2. Again, you seem to be defending the mechanic just for the sake of defending it. There is no logical reason to disadvantage off-hours players when the mechanic can be changed to NOT disadvantage them. Why do you insist that disadvantaging off-hours players BY DESIGN is good?

3. It will only be live from Thursday to next Tuesday. ~5 days. That is not a full week, and you have to be able to set aside any thing else you have in real life to PLAY A VIDEO GAME. Making a design where you can play the Event for any 5 days over 2011, and once you have 5 days of /played time, you are locked out, would be a BETTER DESIGN.

1) dang. if only there was some sort of low-level spell that deals AOE damage readily available to clerics... oh hey wait, there is one, and i already mentioned it. it's called sound burst. available at level 3. even a casual gamer should be able to get to level 3 reasonably fast. in the meanwhile, they can just run around attacking everything. i believe i did list that as an option, no? quite frankly, if they're just sitting there not doing anything until things go bad, then imo they're not contributing most of the time. they could also contribute by, say, helping things to not go bad in the first place. for example, by using crowd control. a single greater command will save you a lot of healing. even a soundburst can have the same effect.

2) just pointing out, it's no different from playing DDO normally. and the cove will still open occasionally, just a little less often.

3) yes, and if those things in real life are more important than playing a video game, well, guess what: it's a game. not having an epic ratkiller is not the end of the world anyways.

[sirgog]

Turbine, the DDO community has reported fundamental issues with the design of the Mabar event, and now its clear that those issues were not resolved in the Crystal Cove event. Below is a concise summary of the flaws.

1. Party Loot
It was revealed in Mabar, and still remains in Crystal Cove, that loot from kills (bone parts in Mabar, doubloons in Crystal Cove) does not distribute evenly to party members, and in fact, seems to CLEARLY be biased to DPS classes over support classes.

Extensive, detailed testing (results are reproducible) quickly reveals that the more actual damage you do will "weight" or "skew" the loot distribution to you, even when grouped in a Party. We formed a balanced group (3 melee, 1 rogue, 1 sorc, 1 cleric), and did rigorous tests, and it was blatently obvious that the more points of damage you dealt, the more doubloons you got, with the Sorc getting the most (used Cone of Cold, Meteor Swarm, etc.), the melees and rouge generally on par, and the cleric dramatically, and I do mean dramatically in last place. The average for 1 hour of play distributed loot as follows: (copper, silver, gold)
Sorc: ~2500, ~1200, ~600
DPS: ~1600, ~800, ~400
Cleric: ~200, ~80, ~15

As you can see, the difference in the Clerics loot is enormous. This cleric rarely, if ever, did any DPS, and mostly just healed and buffed. There were times when he did cast offensively or melee, but we wanted to test, so we made sure he kept DPS to a minimum.

This needs to be fixed. You can program loot to be distributed based on DPS to non-grouped members, that's fine (prevents kill stealing), but DPS should 100% be ignored between group members. Please fix this asap. Saying "you should just solo" is not an acceptable answer for an event in an MMORPG. (MM stands for Massively Multiplayer).

2. The "Old MacDonald" Factor
While I understand that the Epic game mechanic in DDO, while sorely lacking in its own right, requires farming, non-epic items should not require a similar amount of farming. There is nothing "casual" about this event (or Mabar for that matter). It requires hardcore, dedicated, nose-to-the-grindstone farming to obtain items, to then run the quest portion, to then get the rare items, to then buy the unique items. This does not mean it should be EASY. It just should not be so GRINDY. A "Special Event" should be enjoyable, unique, entertaining. Not grindy. I think you're missing the boat (pun intended) with the Mabar/Cove mechanics of flagging, loot grinding, and item purchasing. If you simply gave us the quest (the actual Cove, with torches and kobolds), let us run it as much as we want, and provide all of the doubloons, crystals, etc. in the quest, then we could run it once, or 100 times, at our discretion, and at least make the Event as casual or grindy as we want. The entire mechanic of grinding to open the quest, then doing it to get some ingredients, then re-grinding to open it, and then re-questing to get more ingredients, etc. is mindless and poor design.

3. Limited Event
The limited amount of days the Event is open seems to make sense given the fact that you're calling it "an event", and not "a new quest". But rather than "turning the Event on" and then "turning it off" and confining players to enjoy it only in that narrow timeframe, it would be a far better design to allow players to initiate the Event on their own time, and come up with some other way to limit the total length, such as but not limited to: a timer per character, a timer per account, limited number of runs (maybe sell more "passes" thru the DDO store), etc.


These are the three fundamental flaws that I see with the overall design of these special events. I realize that you want them to feel "special" and you want to tie them to certain times of the year to celebrate certain "real-world" events (halloween, 5th anniversary of DDO, etc.) and you want to be careful not to introduce too much "good loot" or make it too easy to get. I'm all for having it be a challenge, for sure. But people love the Shroud (for example) and its not a time-limited offer (available 365 days/year, subject to raid timer of course), its not nearly as "grindy" (has a "flagging" mechanic, so once you "flag", you can re-run it), and loot is fair (chest-based loot, your loot is your loot, any class gets just as much as the next). I'm not saying these need to work like Shroud, I'm saying you need to do some work to make them feel more like an Event (which one would "attend") and less like we just took a temp job.

/signed, except Shroud is a far worse grind than this event. Any toon that hasn't run Shroud 40+ times is just plain sub-optimal, and while it was a moderate challenge at 16, it isn't at 20. At least this event can be 'finished' completely in a reasonable number (10-15) of runs.

[sparty55]

I wonder how many people would have played the event if it didn't have a nice reward at the end? I know I wouldn't spend time killing things over and over for a jelly cake or a stormreaver cookie.

[underpants]

I noticed I was not getting that many coins then I started launching off offensive spells and the total increased but then I had low mana to heal. Would be nice if the cleric got bonuses for healing the parties,

/ I can dream

[TheTrang]

#1. I wholeheartedly agree with this one. I played my lvl 14 cleric on Argo for a couple hours last night (and yes, I was using cometfall, flamestrike, etc) during the cove event in a 12 man group and found these same things. I got *maybe* a few hundred dubloons during that whole time. I can't give exact numbers as I'm not logged in right now, but I can update later this evening when I do. UPDATE: I got 180 copper, 160 silver, and 80 gold dubloons. It is definitely not evenly spread through the group.

#2. Have to somewhat agree here. Again, a couple hours worth of play in the cove and only saw I think 1 compass drop the whole time. Pretty impossible if you have to play 24 hours straight just to get a drop to get into the event. (some of us are casual gamers and have jobs/school/families outside of DDO)

#3. Not a whole lot of opinion on this one, but would be nice to have it run a little longer.

[Bowser_Koopa]

Turbine, the DDO community has reported fundamental issues with the design of the Mabar event, and now its clear that those issues were not resolved in the Crystal Cove event. Below is a concise summary of the flaws.


3. Limited Event
The limited amount of days the Event is open seems to make sense given the fact that you're calling it "an event", and not "a new quest". But rather than "turning the Event on" and then "turning it off" and confining players to enjoy it only in that narrow timeframe, it would be a far better design to allow players to initiate the Event on their own time, and come up with some other way to limit the total length, such as but not limited to: a timer per character, a timer per account, limited number of runs (maybe sell more "passes" thru the DDO store), etc.

I browse the forums quite a bit and this is just a great idea I really hope someone at turbine backs this, i realize it takes away some of the "specialness" of event items but really it's almost similar to raid items anyways or epic grinding so I for one would not mind if these could be activated on demand per account for a limited amount of time and not be re-opened till a raid-timer like buffer of time passed. All in all it means more content and more doing what you want when you want to do it.

[gwenniez]

How to win DDO:

1. Roll a Wizard or Sorc.
2. Grind.
3. Avoid playing other classes.

this i agree on to a certain extend. It's much easier to farm stuf with a sorc or a wiz
and just wail around the island whenever you see more then 2 mobs out of sp.run to bar
rinse and repeat...

Don't get me wrong i did try it on my capped melee too but these cows seems to be meteorswarming
and throwing other electric spells at you.. and they hit pretty hard too.. so yea why go the hard path
if you can just farm stuf the easy way and transfer it to your shared account (bought on tuesday thanks a lot
turbine for that 50% deal on that .)

what does kind of concerns me is that i seem to be gotten items from lowbie player
spawns also.. wich isnt really nice if thats the case.. cause that will result in a lot of players
stealing kills from lower lvl players.

[kernal42]

I browse the forums quite a bit and this is just a great idea I really hope someone at turbine backs this, i realize it takes away some of the "specialness" of event items but really it's almost similar to raid items anyways or epic grinding so I for one would not mind if these could be activated on demand per account for a limited amount of time and not be re-opened till a raid-timer like buffer of time passed. All in all it means more content and more doing what you want when you want to do it.

Absolutely not. A raid timer means if you don't get what you want, you need to wait three days and try again. A "run-only-once" mechanic means that if you don't get what you want, you're boned. That is a terrible mechanic.

-Kernal

[Irinis]

1) there is no such thing as a support class that cannot contribute offensively in DDO.

Bard 20 Spellsinger with no melee, just CC and healing, unless they already have a staff of shadow or a dreamspitter and took hold person. I doubt you could even kill CR12 mobs with Greater Shout alone without running out of sp, much less the CR20 mobs.

Weaker offensively than a cleric for sure.

[DelverRootnose]

....find in the new even is that the dubloons and map piece notices are party chat messages. Why not just loot messages in the general tab. Cant type a conversation and play at all.

[xxScoobyDooxx]

not many healers gonna be running this yar event ......

[Bowser_Koopa]

Absolutely not. A raid timer means if you don't get what you want, you need to wait three days and try again. A "run-only-once" mechanic means that if you don't get what you want, you're boned. That is a terrible mechanic.

-Kernal

Perhaps I stated that wrong.

The way I had read the suggestion as that at your convince you could go to a quest giver/teleporter and request to go to the vent area for X amount of time. And you couldn't repeatedly go there for X amount of time afterwords. This would essentially make the Event areas similar to a raid and provide the benefit of doing them when you want not waiting till Halloween for Mabar etc. Sure it would have faults like not getting your epic item during the 1st run etc. But it would offer a convenience of being able to do the "event" year around.

I know I've rolled toons that could of benefited from Mabar items that I didn't make because I didn't anticipate TR'ing into another build etc and I would enjoy this. Even a store bought item that opened the event instance for X amount of time per use would work in this possibly but either way. I think being able to do an "event" on demand isn't terrible.

[Westerner]

I think they should bring the Mabar/Crystal Cove content back at some future date. I love having a public area to run around in and fight stuff with lots of other players. It's more social. And the Crystal Cove quest is a unique minigame all on its own.

The loot / grind factors can be tweaked as needed, but this content is just fun.

[Chai]

OP, it seems to me that the event is a limited time thing so the loot from said event doesnt flood the population and next thing we know everyone has a few items from the event on every toon. Your suggestion would allow people to farm the event just like they farm epics and everything else to get the event loot any time they want. Since the event loot is much easier to obtain than epic loot, but it is epic quality loot, with your suggestion we would have a game populace decked out in this stuff before long.

[Lorz]

Absolutely not. A raid timer means if you don't get what you want, you need to wait three days and try again. A "run-only-once" mechanic means that if you don't get what you want, you're boned. That is a terrible mechanic.

-Kernal

Kernal...that is a good point and even more to the point is that a one time quest would be a terrible investment of Turbine development time. If it cant be reused it probably not worth doing the first time from a coding cost / return on investment POV.

So yes it would be bad for players and even worse for Turbine....so i dont expect this to happen.
Like many of the points the OP brings out...yes he makes a good observation but try to remember they can NEVER please everybody...... and honestly if all you do is heal...you are already a waste of party space...even at level 8 or even level 1. It surprises me that OP who has been around a long time too....doesnt already know this or is just choosing to ignore the truth is...if all you do is heal....your a waste of space.

[azrael4h]

Perhaps I stated that wrong.

The way I had read the suggestion as that at your convince you could go to a quest giver/teleporter and request to go to the vent area for X amount of time. And you couldn't repeatedly go there for X amount of time afterwords. This would essentially make the Event areas similar to a raid and provide the benefit of doing them when you want not waiting till Halloween for Mabar etc. Sure it would have faults like not getting your epic item during the 1st run etc. But it would offer a convenience of being able to do the "event" year around.

I know I've rolled toons that could of benefited from Mabar items that I didn't make because I didn't anticipate TR'ing into another build etc and I would enjoy this. Even a store bought item that opened the event instance for X amount of time per use would work in this possibly but either way. I think being able to do an "event" on demand isn't terrible.

Turbine selling tickets to these events might be a cash cow. I certainly won't be running Crystal Cove much, if at all, as an event but I might consider it if I could, with just my guildies, hit it as a private instance. I'm just not willing to deal with the lag in addition to the grind. I've ignored Risia, Mabar, the egg thing, and I'll very much likely ignore this.

As far as the balance, they really should allow Blade Barrier and other spells in these event areas. It's not like we've got a complete and utter garbage MMO with open PVP, if it had then we wouldn't be here at 5 years. So there's no balance **** to worry about. It's also not like we'll be seeing huge numbers of people wandering into Delera's Tomb area just to drop blade barriers all over the place, and obviously the cove will be inaccessible after next tuesday, at least until the next event.

Of course, then we'll have melees whining about needing hjeals and how clerics and favored souls should only heal them, as they wait hours to fill a group due to waiting on someone to nanny them through.

[Vellrad]

The problem with spells like cause wounds, hold or others is that you can't target mob before dealing damage to him. An if he saves, or take no damage, he is no agroed, so he can't be target of such spells. In the meantime, there is something like 90% chance, that the monster is killed by someone else.
And don't mention that clerics can meele to start fight- some can, but imagine that some completely ignore meeling in character creation, because they don't want to be fighter with blue bar.