HoH post-changes feedback and suggestions

Hey,

(please note that I've been running it on midgard only, so my experience only covers that)

As a quick introduction, I just wanted to state that I've been running HoH since its inception and went from liking it to finding it rather boring when done using the latest midgard-pbaoe group composition.
When we first ran HoH on midgard, we used trolls to kill things, that's what they're good at after all

Then, considering there was no CC, we decided to try to pbaoe them, and things went south fast.
Trash pulls became considerably easier, and some boss mechanics could simply be ignored.
I'm thinking about the brothers here; they were a great fight, with good coordination required and all, and
suddenly became pushovers.
People started to even push the idea further going with more and more pbaoe, up to 5 SMs and using a... skald (!) to tank.
We went from speed-runs lasting about 40 mins to runs below 30 mins with little effort.
That was bad; instance became too easy, and I fully agree that some balancing was needed;
because it didn't become easier only as we learnt how to do it better, but because we found a way
to bypass some of the mechanics through sheer damage.

Now onto the current state of the instance.

Beluna: wasn't changed, was actualy one of the hardest to do with pbaoe groups.
Brothers: wasn't changed, still piss easy with pbaoe. the real change on this one actualy comes from the enhanced HP on tanks that makes healing the 95% gaze harder.
Halgartha: quite harder; doable with pbaoe, not sure how that would fare with a melee group (aka would the melee be able to kill adds before they heal the boss).
(for that one too the tank HP boost is actualy nerfing us more I'd say as the healer has to pump a bunch of power into the group after the culling)
Maschunga: bit harder; doable with pbaoe, not sure if melee would be able to cope up with the HP up of the adds (probably).
Mother: wasn't changed. why ? she was already by far the weakest of all. I even tank her with a 2H so my healer doesn't die of boredom. we killed her with only 5 persons and probably can with 4.
Szregoo: became super hard, even with pbaoe - I barely see this guy being killed with a melee group w/o using some advanced form of kiting, was that the point ?
Ogoga: lightest change I'd say; still largely doable

And now onto my conclusion/observations/suggestions.

I believe the real balancing that was needed was to prevent the instance from being farmed so heavily using pbaoe groups (at least on midgard).
But the changes you decided to implement don't solve that problem at all imho; they make some of the bosses pretty much impossible to kill with a more classical melee setup, which means people will simply have to use higher realm rank pbaoe or completely skip some bosses, as most groups already started to do.

One change that I believe would have been more efficient and probably not so hard to do is give all bosses and possibly all trash some form of resistance to aoe damage; hence negating part of what makes the pbaoe so stronger than anything else.

For the brothers, you could also make it so the troll doesn't simply unspawn when Zorsch dies; that might be enough to force people to actualy play the (nice) mechanics you created for those guys.

Though that is unrelated to the current changes, one other thing that was slightly 'abused' is the character change for Ogoga.
As the Ogoga fight was rather annoying to do with pbaoe, most groups swapped pbaoes for melees.
That probably should be blocked one way or another (such as locking the instance to a given character/account pair).

As a last note, I'd like to say that this doesn't reflect my opinion only, but that of several friends I've been running the instance with a lot.
Please, think again about those changes, and do something 'better' than the current state.

Thanks for the hard work, Skal.

Sun 17 Nov 2019 7:33 AM by Freedomcall

I ran HoH in alb with reaver setup once after the patch, and thought melee setup in hib/mid would be very tough to do the job.
Fight became way longer, and thx to necro battery, healers could bare that long fight.
Before patch, necro was helpful but not a mendatory.
But now, I'm pretty sure your healers will go oop very fast without battery.

We had a very close fights on Halgratha, Maschunga basically because healers lacked power.
And on Szregoo, it became a mess with 10+ adds. 2 reavers died and I barely managed to kill the boss.
Was a bit more entertaining thou

I think some kind of nerfing pbae was needed rather than boosting hp of the boss.
Now ppl started to ask bombs to take WP5+ instead of changing the tactic or composition, and I don't think this is what devs intended.

Sun 17 Nov 2019 7:59 AM by skaloo

Thanks for your insight.
And yeh healer has a hard time on Halgratha now (but as I said, imho moore because of the HP boost than the boss up).
We went once with a healer who was full SC but rather low rank and no (or very low) instance bonus and he just couldn't keep up (even with potions, chunk and all).
Pumping 3k HP into the main tank after the culling (and the rest of the group) was a pain for him.
This 'indirect' healer nerf is what hurts us the most on this boss;
and the result is that ppl with no instance bonus will simply be rejected more now.

And on Szregoo, even groups fully filled with 'strong runners' struggle to get him down. As I said in the first post, some 'advanced kiting' seems in order but I doubt the fight was initialy designed for kiting. We all believe that fight was designed to be a simple DPS check - kill him before you get overwhelmed - but right now it's close to be impossible using anything but an army of high rank pbaoe and some luck - which is the perfect opposite of balancing that we needed.

S.

Sun 17 Nov 2019 11:07 AM by JUSTNSANE

Szregoo is almost impossible even with a great group. Usually to kill we have to have shaman kite and run back after wiping. The difficulty of this boss is so not worth doing and destroys the want to even go to the dungeon anymore.

Wed 20 Nov 2019 1:02 AM by

gruenesschaf

HoH and maybe DS will be looked at again sometime this or next week.

It is likely that there will be some general change to deal with pbae stacking, however, this still requires internal discussions, there would be 3 potential solutions
1) Allow only at most 2 of each class in a group, this is a bit heavy handed but would have the advantage of making any kind of class stacking impossible
2) Have some trash and/or bosses have some pbae stuff
3) Have alternating melee and magic resist on trash / bosses to force hybrid groups

As for the individual bosses:

The fight duration on Halgratha seems fine now, a potential change here might be to make targets that are affected by the heal debuff to not be affected by the culling as well. In turn we would then break the daoc spreadheal mechanic on this fight and have this heal debuff affect it as well. I kinda would prefer it if there were a lot more emphasis on killing the adds but no idea how to do it without making it a tight dps race.

Maschunga seems fine now.

Rorsch / Zorsch will likely see more of a rework, most likely candidate right now would be both having their own mark requiring that the mobs (or the groups) switch sides multiple times throughout the fight, for that the meteor would be changed to something that wouldn't result in rng insta gibbing when combined with the mark tick but still require everyone to pay attention and act, the other would receive something comparable. It's likely that the hp of both will be noticeably increased, in that case their mark will also be a power heal so that the execution becomes once again the important part and not the resource constraints due to the hp increase which itself is only to not have it cheesable / to require multiple switches.

Szregoo is now more in line with what we had in mind when making it, the difficulty was always supposed to be dealing with the adds.

Ogoga might see a small hp reduction again and may or may not receive another mechanic. Right now the difficulty is basically that it's somewhat boring yet requires one to pay attention for a rather long amount of time, the hp increase actually made mistakes a lot more likely :p

Mother should see an update, the basic encounter idea is rather problematic however and not entirely sure yet what an updated version might look like.

Belluna seems fine, rather easy with many options to kill it.

Wed 20 Nov 2019 1:47 PM by Lanathir

And what - after some people having hoarded gazillions of feathers - really is the point in the recent (and up to come) changes?

Feathers will be getting even scarcer for John Doe or Mr. Freshman who need to buy their feather gear even more than now mostly for plat. Perfect match to the fact, that with the latest gold farming nerfs plats will get scarcer now also. Casual players or those new to the game will face an even harder time to get temped because their class, gear and/or skills cannot match up the needs/wishes of "New-HoH"-groups, which will be needed to do the "enhanced" instance. I only see a shift of one meta to the other without doing any good but making things worse.

Wed 20 Nov 2019 2:13 PM by Razur Ur

This artificial market intervention by currency I think is an absolute joke and it is no wonder that more and more players left this server. iam sure that 70% of DAOC players just want to run rvr and not farm pvm or be exploited by others who have more luck and time for the game!

Wed 20 Nov 2019 3:29 PM by Chaskha

You need a test server... or long tests before going live.

Honestly, stop nerfing things some have enjoyed for months and therefore new-to-it are screwed in comparison.

5 weeks ago I planned a slow Reroll Session on Midgard, one evening per week and convinced everyone to first make a SM so we can equip the team.
I will not threaten to quit phoenix or start a prophecy of doom, it's still a great server and the constant energy your team puts in it is fantastic, yet some nerf/boost decision are really annoying and somewhat depressing (from an in-game pov, I still sleep well).

HoH is meant to be hard. Fine. Make it so there are strategies to figure out (which you did). have a ratio in mind feathers/hour and once a setup appears on top of the rest, just lower a bit in function of the feathers/hour you had in mind.

Plan a dungeon for 8 to be done in 90 minutes and be worth 20k. Players find a way to do it in 30 min, nerf to 10k feathers for instance.
Remember you introduce the instances as race against the clock too, you should be proud of those who actually find strats and compo to fight the dungeons that fast instead of trying to stick it up the a$$ of "dungeon-newcomers" somehow... I know, I know, that's not what you want to do but it sure feels that way.

Honestly, if you want something for melees mostly, do another dungeon, that will for sure make everyone happy and you can introduce a melee friendly mechanic just for it. Just one option from the top of my head, that should hopefully not be too difficult to implement, add a double gauge for melee damage and magic damage and if the magic gauge is too big compared to melee gauge, the boss enters in rage or cast a random one shot or suck someones mana.... This gauge system could trigger effects and be reset so the magic would need to hold to cautiously avoid the next devastating effect and so on. But really, once something is live, don't nerf the players power vs mobs; let them enjoy if they found a way and move to the next instance.

Wed 20 Nov 2019 3:58 PM by Runental

Delete all Instances and promote classic raids with fixed and higher droprates. Stop that feather only economy, thx!

Wed 20 Nov 2019 4:12 PM by Sepplord

Chaskha wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 3:29 PM
[..]

I'm a bit confused when you mentioned nerfing the feather rates...imo that similarly punishes late-comers as they can't farm as others have done.
If that is the alternative i prefer them reworking and rebalancing the dungeons regularly to get closer to a overall balanced experience while maintaining the reward/time ratio.

Splitting melee dungeon and magic dungeons only makes sense on paper. There is almost no way to balance them against each other, even in theory.
The settled farmers wouldn't switch to a new melee-dungeon if the yield is "just the same" and newcomers that could focus on either will go where they find more groups.
And that is assuming that both are balance in theory

Wed 20 Nov 2019 5:09 PM by Layuth

gruenesschaf wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 1:02 AM
HoH and maybe DS will be looked at again sometime this or next week.

It is likely that there will be some general change to deal with pbae stacking, however, this still requires internal discussions, there would be 3 potential solutions
1) Allow only at most 2 of each class in a group, this is a bit heavy handed but would have the advantage of making any kind of class stacking impossible
2) Have some trash and/or bosses have some pbae stuff
3) Have alternating melee and magic resist on trash / bosses to force hybrid groups

As for the individual bosses:

The fight duration on Halgratha seems fine now, a potential change here might be to make targets that are affected by the heal debuff to not be affected by the culling as well. In turn we would then break the daoc spreadheal mechanic on this fight and have this heal debuff affect it as well. I kinda would prefer it if there were a lot more emphasis on killing the adds but no idea how to do it without making it a tight dps race.

Maschunga seems fine now.

Rorsch / Zorsch will likely see more of a rework, most likely candidate right now would be both having their own mark requiring that the mobs (or the groups) switch sides multiple times throughout the fight, for that the meteor would be changed to something that wouldn't result in rng insta gibbing when combined with the mark tick but still require everyone to pay attention and act, the other would receive something comparable. It's likely that the hp of both will be noticeably increased, in that case their mark will also be a power heal so that the execution becomes once again the important part and not the resource constraints due to the hp increase which itself is only to not have it cheesable / to require multiple switches.

Szregoo is now more in line with what we had in mind when making it, the difficulty was always supposed to be dealing with the adds.

Ogoga might see a small hp reduction again and may or may not receive another mechanic. Right now the difficulty is basically that it's somewhat boring yet requires one to pay attention for a rather long amount of time, the hp increase actually made mistakes a lot more likely :p

Mother should see an update, the basic encounter idea is rather problematic however and not entirely sure yet what an updated version might look like.

Belluna seems fine, rather easy with many options to kill it.

I know what you can do to fix everything! Limit Theurgists to 3 pets...oh wait...

Wed 20 Nov 2019 6:57 PM by Chaskha

Sepplord wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 4:12 PM
Chaskha wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 3:29 PM
[..]

I'm a bit confused when you mentioned nerfing the feather rates...imo that similarly punishes late-comers as they can't farm as others have done.
[snip]

I gave an example. If a dungeon is designed to give 20k feathers / 90 min and people successfully do it in 30 min, nerf to 10k per run (it's still rewarding people more per hour).
As per the gauge idea, it wouldn't necessary split, it's just an idea to easily trigger events based on the setup type of damage and therefore can be used to make it more melee friendly or mor magic friendly or balanced. Not saying it's perfect but I believe it's a good idea (obviously)

Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:04 PM by skaloo

gruenesschaf wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 1:02 AM
...

Thanks for your answer.
About the 3 possible solutions, I kind of like the first and third ones the most.

The potential change for Halgratha seems fine to me; a bit less pressure on the healer to heal the main tank, which would allow more rookie (has in not-instance-capped) healers to be up to the job. In order to emphasis killing the adds, you have to fine tune the TTK which can be done the same way I was already suggesting with some magical resists in order to balance between melee & mage groups.

For the brothers, for me it's really important that the troll doesn't simply unpop when the 'goblin' dies. Unless it was intended from start but then I'd say it's a pity :p
I really enjoyed that fight when we discovered/did it the first weeks, and the current blittzkrieg that's applied to kill the goblin fast (while ignoring the troll) makes me sad.
The problem with simply increasing HP is you raise the TTK both for melee & magic classes, which doesn't 'solve' the unbalance between the 2 methods (hence why I suggested magical resistances - specialy to aoe - in my first post).

About Szregoo, it seems you initial intend was some kiting mechanics while I misunderstood that for a DPS race. My mistake then.

Ogoga unfortunately quickly falls to the side of the boring fights, though there's always some semi-afk guy to entertain us with an instagib and the following endless snarky remarks :p
I'm looking forward any addition you do to that fight, though it might be hard to add anything that doesn't change it into a RIP fest :p

Not sure what can be done for the mother w/o some strong new mechanic added to her. It's true that with a melee group she's not that trivial, but she was already the easier of all no matter what. The nearsight as it is has almost no impact because stacking on her has no negative impact on the fight; looking around that could be a lead.

Thanks again for your answer and all the hard work you put into the server, S.

Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:35 PM by

gruenesschaf

skaloo wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:04 PM
For the brothers, for me it's really important that the troll doesn't simply unpop when the 'goblin' dies. Unless it was intended from start but then I'd say it's a pity :p
I really enjoyed that fight when we discovered/did it the first weeks, and the current blittzkrieg that's applied to kill the goblin fast (while ignoring the troll) makes me sad.

We don't have the concept of an "encounter", instead there are only individual mobs. All epic mobs that spawn something remove all their spawns when they die or reset, this is to allow people to retry with a clean slate without buggy mobs hanging around. In this particular case it's undesirable, however, until we have the concept of encounter multi mob fights will always be implemented by one spawning another. The alternative, 2 separate mobs, would mean if you kill one then wipe the killed one would still be gone. Having some overarching encounter concept is something we'll eventually get around to, this would then also allow us to implement proper phases where things could spawn or even ability sets for multiple mobs could change (right now that's only possible on a per mob basis and we haven't really made much use of it so far), there could even be stuff like multi mob encounter where the kill order affects the abilities of the remaining mobs.

skaloo wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:04 PM
Not sure what can be done for the mother w/o some strong new mechanic added to her. It's true that with a melee group she's not that trivial, but she was already the easier of all no matter what. The nearsight as it is has almost no impact because stacking on her has no negative impact on the fight; looking around that could be a lead.

A cheap "fix" could be to add some silence pbae pulse to the adds / mother and give the adds slightly more hp, alternatively the adds could spawn separately some distance away, both would most likely significantly change how the encounter plays without really changing all that much.

skaloo wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:04 PM
Ogoga unfortunately quickly falls to the side of the boring fights, though there's always some semi-afk guy to entertain us with an instagib and the following endless snarky remarks :p
I'm looking forward any addition you do to that fight, though it might be hard to add anything that doesn't change it into a RIP fest :p

Something that might make the fight more dynamic would be some root that's not affected by det so that fixed camps for the colors aren't possible as one person is always rooted thereby forcing the camp of whatever color that person gets to be around that person, however, this would then make voice a hard requirement while also leaving very little reaction time after that person announced their color although that time could obviously be changed.

Thu 21 Nov 2019 12:23 AM by skaloo

About the brothers ok, not as simple as it looks to solve this one. Thanks for sharing the details.
Interesting ideas for the mother, would definately ramp up the fight.
[edit: forgot Ogoga] That would definately change the way we handle the fight, though I believe the frequency of the charge mechanics would then probably need to be somewhat lower and/or as you said, slightly slower.

Forgot to mention something in the previous post.
Someone suggested a test server;
While I'm not sure a whole test server would be necessary, testing changes in a 'test instance' could help you fine tune the changes before applying them and I know several people who'd definately be interested in helping you with that (including me ^^).
I'm pretty sure you guys already run such internal tests, but more people might give more strings to follow

Enjoy your time, S.

Fri 22 Nov 2019 7:13 AM by Lanathir

And still: What would be the good of all this??

Mon 25 Nov 2019 2:51 PM by Expfighter

gruenesschaf wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:35 PM
skaloo wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:04 PM
For the brothers, for me it's really important that the troll doesn't simply unpop when the 'goblin' dies. Unless it was intended from start but then I'd say it's a pity :p
I really enjoyed that fight when we discovered/did it the first weeks, and the current blittzkrieg that's applied to kill the goblin fast (while ignoring the troll) makes me sad.

We don't have the concept of an "encounter", instead there are only individual mobs. All epic mobs that spawn something remove all their spawns when they die or reset, this is to allow people to retry with a clean slate without buggy mobs hanging around. In this particular case it's undesirable, however, until we have the concept of encounter multi mob fights will always be implemented by one spawning another. The alternative, 2 separate mobs, would mean if you kill one then wipe the killed one would still be gone. Having some overarching encounter concept is something we'll eventually get around to, this would then also allow us to implement proper phases where things could spawn or even ability sets for multiple mobs could change (right now that's only possible on a per mob basis and we haven't really made much use of it so far), there could even be stuff like multi mob encounter where the kill order affects the abilities of the remaining mobs.

skaloo wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:04 PM
Not sure what can be done for the mother w/o some strong new mechanic added to her. It's true that with a melee group she's not that trivial, but she was already the easier of all no matter what. The nearsight as it is has almost no impact because stacking on her has no negative impact on the fight; looking around that could be a lead.

A cheap "fix" could be to add some silence pbae pulse to the adds / mother and give the adds slightly more hp, alternatively the adds could spawn separately some distance away, both would most likely significantly change how the encounter plays without really changing all that much.

skaloo wrote: ↑
Wed 20 Nov 2019 11:04 PM
Ogoga unfortunately quickly falls to the side of the boring fights, though there's always some semi-afk guy to entertain us with an instagib and the following endless snarky remarks :p
I'm looking forward any addition you do to that fight, though it might be hard to add anything that doesn't change it into a RIP fest :p

Something that might make the fight more dynamic would be some root that's not affected by det so that fixed camps for the colors aren't possible as one person is always rooted thereby forcing the camp of whatever color that person gets to be around that person, however, this would then make voice a hard requirement while also leaving very little reaction time after that person announced their color although that time could obviously be changed.

As I stated before, Horrible Changes ALL the way around!

1 thing to consider as stated in another post, the healing of the toons is what makes these new encounters more difficult even with mcl2, instant power pots, chunk of legion! BUT Albs have a solution that is NOT available in other realms giving albs the STRONG advantage, and that is the power transfer of the Deathsight Necro, Removing that in HoH and DS would equal the realms chances at completing the dungeons!

Mon 25 Nov 2019 3:04 PM by Valaraukar

Lanathir wrote: ↑
Fri 22 Nov 2019 7:13 AM
And still: What would be the good of all this??

The good is that NOW no one will be able to farm feathers, after months and months of endless farming by a few (selected?) people that have now millions of feathers that will double their value, since no one is able to farm them. Does it make sense? No, it does not.

Mon 25 Nov 2019 9:52 PM by Bumblina

My points that i tried to make on Discord still stands and more so with the changes today.

You have now made it virtually impossible for anyone with any low realm rank to get any feathers (without paying for the feather items with cash from the people who where lucky enough to have the encounters from earlier on in the life of the servier) now that we don't have the population that we had in the server at the beginning. Because TG/encounters cannot be run every day and completed bleh bleh bleh etc. Raids cannot be guaranteed, we know all these arguements. I do not need to go into these details of whys and wherefores.

These instances are now what you wanted. Which is high end PVE. (I talk from Mid point of view, they are now virtually impossible for the normal player to complete) In fact, they are likely going to be impossible for much of ANY midguard group to complete. i am sure. Though I do hope I am wrong and groups still try to complete it, because, it WAS a fun dungeon to run through. I never tried to run the fastest or the best, I always tried to take new people, so that they could learn it and they could lead others through the Dungeon.

Personally, I have gone from playing about 40/50 hours a week, to 2 hours a day maybe just to restock my merchant. Because I have now lost my PVE side of the game, that I enjoyed. Where I helped others get the feathers that they needed to go out and RVR an enjoy their side of the game.

I was going to make a big post about how I thought you had screwed up HoH but I actually dont see the point.

There were other ways to make this dungeon harder, without making it impossible. You have today made more changes to put out fires and in the process have now built larger fires.

Also, i woud suggest that you reset the Leader board, which now is obsolete. For those who DO speed run.

Tue 26 Nov 2019 12:25 PM by Lanathir

Guess you finally screwed HoH for nearly everybody, except maybe for some very few who have some weird scientific interest in this new dungeon setup.

Tue 26 Nov 2019 11:19 PM by watbrif

Lanathir wrote: ↑
Tue 26 Nov 2019 12:25 PM
Guess you finally screwed HoH for nearly everybody, except maybe for some very few who have some weird scientific interest in this new dungeon setup.

This is the same mentality that DAoC suffered from during TOA's heyday (when casual players quite because they didn't want to spend hours on hours doing the trials and levelling artefacts). As far as I remember the instances on this server were announced as "a challenge". This only breaks the game if everyone thinks that it is absolutely necessary to run and complete this part of the game over and over again. If people just went into RvR (and hopefully people will just do that with new toons etc.) without feeling obliged to farm for the ultimate, uber template, then everyone would have more fun at the end of the day.

Wed 27 Nov 2019 8:15 AM by Sepplord

watbrif wrote: ↑
Tue 26 Nov 2019 11:19 PM
Lanathir wrote: ↑
Tue 26 Nov 2019 12:25 PM
Guess you finally screwed HoH for nearly everybody, except maybe for some very few who have some weird scientific interest in this new dungeon setup.

This is the same mentality that DAoC suffered from during TOA's heyday (when casual players quite because they didn't want to spend hours on hours doing the trials and levelling artefacts). As far as I remember the instances on this server were announced as "a challenge". This only breaks the game if everyone thinks that it is absolutely necessary to run and complete this part of the game over and over again. If people just went into RvR (and hopefully people will just do that with new toons etc.) without feeling obliged to farm for the ultimate, uber template, then everyone would have more fun at the end of the day.

i disagree on that...daoc has never been about farming an uber template....but it has been "get a capped competitive template easily" for a pretty long time

Wed 27 Nov 2019 9:38 AM by Fenork

I agree with sepplord.

In this game u want a smart/fun leveling phase and a doable pve phase when u gear up ur char for rvr.

Phoenix pre patches was perfect.

I still love this server cause i got a tped char and some feathers.
For a new player it will be so hard, even with friends help.

U make HoH nearly impossibile for newcomers and casual.
Increase feather gain in RvR then, so ppl can gear up their chars in nf. Atm the only way for gain some feathers in rvr is PvWalls, so boring

Wed 27 Nov 2019 12:10 PM by

Uthred

Fenork wrote: ↑
Wed 27 Nov 2019 9:38 AM
U make HoH nearly impossibile for newcomers and casual.
Increase feather gain in RvR then, so ppl can gear up their chars in nf. Atm the only way for gain some feathers in rvr is PvWalls, so boring

For someone who is playing on this server for some time according to your post above, you are missing some points.

First, you dont need feathers at all. You can build a nice and perfect template without any feathers items in it. Yes, I know and I do admit, there are some very nice to have items on the feather merchants but you can easily compete in RvR having a template without any feather items in it.

But as most people think that they cant win a single fight when not having a 300k feather template, you still dont need to farm feathers as you can buy every feather item from other players for a prize. Yes, I know this will get expensive, but it is possible.

Also not an option for new players? Maybe, depends on the player. But -surprise- there are more ways of getting feathers to build the blink-blink-template of your most naughty dreams. To remind you and to help new players (yes, we like new players) I will be so kind and list them for you:

1. RVR - You already mentioned that and yes, I know it is boring, but hey, running with 19 anis or 21 SMs through HoH and pressing just one button is more fun than pveing walls as you called it? I highly doubt that. Im not 100% sure but you get either 3k or 5k daily feathers for raiding keeps and trying to kill enemy players.

2. DF - You dont get much feathers there from killing high level mobs, but it is another option to earn a small amount easily. On a funny sidenote, you can first get feathers via raiding keeps and opening DF for your realm and then get additional feathers for killing mobs inside. I wonder which of the DEVs came up with that amazing idea? Aaaaaand before someone is saying, screw DF, way to less feathers there. Ever heard about HIGHLORDS? The high in it doesnt stand for the high amount of feathers you can get there, but yes, you can get there about 10k feathers per hour per person if you farm them. And did someone say Legion or Beliathan? Probably not killable with one group (except your groups contains out of 1 cleric and 1 necro and a lot of time), but hell yeah, gather some friends and start a raid on them.

3. Dragons - Probably not doable with just 8 men but 3 or 4 organiszed group can kill it and you will even get a nice title for killing it. I saw it myself multiple times when I was stalking players with my GM toon. Also there is another mob (Maldahar/Moran/Yar) in every realms dragonzone that drops feathers and nice items too.

4. Lyn Bafog, Raumarik, Cursed Forest - Each of these zones has up to 8 different mobs that drop feathers and that are doable with less then 8 players.

5. SI-Mainlands - Outside the epic dungeons there are several mobs that are worth feathers. Also killable with less than 8 players.

6. SI Epic Dungeons - Every boss and every trashmob drops feathers there. During this week the amount will be doubled. If you didnt know yet.

7. SI Dungeons - Besides the epic dungeons, the bosses in the other SI dungeons also drop feathers.

8. World Bosses - Green Knight, Glacier Giant, Evern, the 3 realm bosses (Champion of the Grove, Lady of Albion, Beastmaster of Midgard). All of them drop feathers, some are doable with a fg, some need more.

9. PoC - All bosses inside the PoC and all bosses in Summoners Hall are worth a nice amount of feathers.

For a detailed overview, just read this sticky thread: https://forum.playphoenix.online/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3216

As you can see, there are multiple options for nearly any kind of grpsize to get feathers.

New Players. That argument is also very interesting. Especially when I daily read in every realms /lfg that people are mostly searching "experienced players" for DS/HoH. But it is the staff which makes it impossible for new players to run those instances. I really lilke that kind of humor. Not. Oh, did I forget to mention that there is high bonus because of new players that run DS and HoH for the first ten times for everyone in the group running with them? I wonder why we put that in. Maybe to encourage "experienced" players to invite new players to their groups? /ponder

Dont get me wrong, to a point I do understand that you are not happy with those changes. But we have always said and we will always say, that those instances are meant to be difficult and challenging. If you want an easy featherfarm, just check the list above and you will find a lot of alternatives to running instances.

Wed 27 Nov 2019 1:58 PM by Fenork

First of all, i want to thank u for the deep reply, ive ryl appreciate it.

I understand ur pov, and i know, my whine bout ur changes seems so dumb. Eng is not my first language, so my reply are not so articulated.

You wrote a detailed list of ways to farm small quantity of feathers, when for months ppl farmed 15-20k in less of 40mins.
Are they abusing mechanichs? Sure, but Maybe u need to stop it months ago (closing istance until u fix it Maybe?).
Now old farmer got large stack of feathers, and they can sell it for insane prices atm.
Other players are frustrated cause they Now need hours for farm the same 15/20k.

I want to be honest, i play here since september (unfortunately i discover ur server a bit late) and i got 3 full tped chars in mid(5 lv50 here) , 1 on hib and some plats /feathers in my vault.

Im fine, Im not worried for me cause i love rvr (not pvwalls).
I love this server and my fear is the drop of pop. Ur last leveling-istance changes maybe are quite right, but lots of ppl feel it like a qol-nerf

Im sorry again for my english

Fen

Wed 27 Nov 2019 4:14 PM by Gudbrand

>>>>"New Players. That argument is also very interesting. Especially when I daily read in every realms /lfg that people are mostly searching "experienced players" for DS/HoH. But it is the staff which makes it impossible for new players to run those instances. I really lilke that kind of humor. Not. Oh, did I forget to mention that there is high bonus because of new players that run DS and HoH for the first ten times for everyone in the group running with them? I wonder why we put that in. Maybe to encourage "experienced" players to invite new players to their groups? /ponder"<<<<

Most of us that lead Halls in the past took 1-3 new players in at a time to teach them the dungeon. That was doable. The problem now is that taking more than one new player, depending on class, almost guarantees a fail because the dungeon is nearly impossible even with very experienced groups. The newcomer feather bonus was a great idea....but wiping= 0 feathers and a lot of frustration. I used to like doing an instance or two before or after rvr, but I think Halls, on Mid at least, is not worth the time commitment anymore when we can just do DS.

Sat 30 Nov 2019 11:21 AM by skaloo

As a foreword I want to say I still haven't been able to try the last modifications (couldn't get a group going - hope to be able to do that this week-end), so this post will mostly be the result of theorycrafting and suppositions. I was holding on answering because of that, but the difficulty of making a group is in itself kind of a proof that's something isn't right imho.
If the balance between the 2 instances is so wrong that noone want (or worse, is able to) do one of them, there's imho a problem.
I'm completely ok with the instances being a bit hard, but they should be doable with RR4ish SC'd characters (even if it requires respeccing RAs specificaly for PvE); it's the case for DS, even on midgard. I don't think it's currently possible with HoH (ok that's largely suppositions as I said I didn't run it in the current iteration). I'm basing this opinion on the fact that it was rough with a melee group this summer when it was released; it was rough and already required high enough chars; and now it's been upped quite a lot for some of the bosses - the brothers for isntance were tough sauce and now they've been upped and upped.

I see 3 main reasons for people to go in these instances:
1) feathers - for whatever reason (money gain, skins, helping out, ...)
2) the challenge of a more interesting PvE in DAoC (as opposed to classical braindead PvE that DAoC generaly is associated with)
3) having their name on the leaderboard for speedruns

I think that's pretty much all and most of the people will do the instances only when at least 2 of those boxes are checked or if point (1) is so strong that people feel it's required. Feathers ? if you can't finish or if it becomes too much of a pain to finish (too long, too hard, ...) the feather gain becomes unappealing or insufficient - or people find a shortcut and farm the mother over and over for quick feather gain w/o actualy giving a shit to the full instance. Challenge ? pretty much the same. And you can't have speedruns if you can't finish it in the first place. I'm kind of a platypus myself, and I'm happy if I only get point (2) - but DAoC is mainly a PvP/RvR game and most players won't follow me on this.

So, here's my opinion on the latest changes - bearing in mind I didn't actualy experience them first-hand yet:

The brothers: with all due respect - and I understand that my first proposition possibly requires too much rework - I highly doubt giving them both the 2 big spells solves anything. It seems to me it's going to make the fight a coin flip nightmare for healers. aka something tedious and boring where you might wipe anytime even with ppl doing the things properly.
Proposition for the brothers: what we want here is force people to fight them both, in order to actualy use the 'tauntable' mechanics and all. an idea would be to enforce the group fighting them alternatively, through some near-invulnerability for instance, that they could 'trade' in time slices.
such as: fight starts, troll pops but is near immune to damage. group has to focus on goblin while troll is offtanked. after some time (or probably better at a given life %) goblin casts a 'spell' that trades the near-invulnerability between his bro and himself. that 'spell' could eventualy also trade the abilities (instead of them having both nuke abilities all the same time). so the group now has to damage the troll some, while the goblin is offtanked. you can repeat this mechanics a few times along the fight. if you put the limits on proper life % boundaries you can easily enforce the troll to be down first.

Mother: with no info on the new spell, I can't comment; no matter what, she needed a up, so we'll see how that one goes :p

Halgratha: that's a nerf of the boss - might not have been needed ( just needed the healer to stop trying saving the whole group when it wasn't useful :p ) - makes the fight pretty much a DPS check on the adds and a kite-check for the shamy on midgard

- I kind of ignore the spread change as the healer who used spread there was OOM in no time in the last iteration and I don't think it's going to change anything for us practically (though imho it's actualy a good thing that healing debuf works on the spread in this fight).

Szregoo: there's no change but I wanted to comment on it anyway; since I now have done that fight a few times. I got it that you wanted this fight to be a kite fest (you said somewhere that adds were not meant to be tanked or killed). So, yet another kite. 3 bosses in the same dungeon requiring kiting. Not sure that's much fun. Ok, I'm admitedly a founding member of the kite-is-evil club so my opinion is a bit biased. Imho that fight was rather fine when we did it with 2 tanks crossguarding. The 2-chars-per-class change is enough to make it impossible to AoE him into oblivion I think. The tanks have enough of a job taunting left and right, the healer keeping the 2 guys up. So imho the up is not required *anymore*.

Ogoga: lack of details on the root (frequency, duration) and possible modifications on the charges makes it hard to comment. it seems to me though that it's going to enforce voice chat - even if most people already use it, enforcing that might be a mistake - and more precisely require a quite insane coordination making the fight near-impossible to complete with a real 'PUG' and/or new people who possibly don't talk the same language. I admited in my previous post that Ogoga's fight could become slightly boring once people knew what to do (and you still had pretty much everytime one guy who died to it, but at least he died alone); but I'm not sure this 'fix' is cutting it. Not sure what you could add to the fight though; may be throw one guy up & away randomly at every cackle or something.

As a conclusion, I would say that I logged quickly this morning on an alb char and I saw 0 DS run and 0 HoH run since the changes. Yesterday I did the same on hib and there was like 2 DS runs and 1 HoH (or so, forgot to note). Last evening on mid there was 3 DS runs and 0 HoH. Of course that doesn't account for *tries*.
Before HoH was released, on midgard we had about 5-6 daily DS runs (on euro times) minimum (often more). The week HoH was released (I was lucky enough to be in the 'beta test' run), I was receiving a dozen tells a day minimum asking for how to run it or if I was running it and had room etc. People were interested in doing it, and that was before the feather bonus mechanics (while feathers are probably the strongest incentive for many people, that kind of prooves some people were simply interested in running it).
Now it's kind of dead. And it's sad (insert sad panda face here).

Hope you guys find a middle ground with all that; thanks again for the hard work and enjoy your time. S.

PS: I'll come back here to adjust as soon as I could run it

Sat 14 Dec 2019 4:31 PM by Bumblina

Still zero completed HoH runs on Midgard!

Fri 3 Jan 2020 6:13 AM by Isavyr

skaloo wrote: ↑
Sat 16 Nov 2019 11:28 PM
Szregoo: became super hard, even with pbaoe - I barely see this guy being killed with a melee group w/o using some advanced form of kiting, was that the point ?

I could see a melee group rotating the entire group around the room with the boss, with the offtank still peeling. That being said, I haven't tried this but I imagine the movement of the entire group will make it easier to peel for the off-tank, while keeping the melee train relatively safe overall.

My feeling, from using a PBAOE setup, is that the fight is neither well designed, nor fun, but I keep in the back of my mind that I'm missing something about this fight. I struggle to be positive but I can't think of redeeming qualities around the way Szregoo is currently designed. He appears to be both a control and a DPS fight--which is largely nonsensical combination, in my opinion. As other posters shared, it seems to rely on luck too heavily.

Fri 24 Jan 2020 2:04 PM by jhaerik

Ever time I think I'm about ready for some more DAoC.. I come back and read the forums.. within an hour I've changed my mind again.

DAoC was at it best when you leveled to 50.... PL'd your friends to 50... spent a few days getting a template going by mindlessly killing push over mobs and salvaging.... then went and did RvR. DAoC is NEVER going to have good PvE. It's either painless and your done with it... or annoying. Were the the Dev's huge ToA fans or something?

Fri 24 Jan 2020 5:07 PM by Azrael

jhaerik wrote: ↑
Fri 24 Jan 2020 2:04 PM
Ever time I think I'm about ready for some more DAoC.. I come back and read the forums.. within an hour I've changed my mind again.

DAoC was at it best when you leveled to 50.... PL'd your friends to 50... spent a few days getting a template going by mindlessly killing push over mobs and salvaging.... then went and did RvR. DAoC is NEVER going to have good PvE. It's either painless and your done with it... or annoying. Were the the Dev's huge ToA fans or something?

It is still pretty easy(templating). They made the instances for a pve challenge not for farming easily feathers. So they adjusted it after it was farmed in about 20 minutes. Not that hard to understand, right?

Fri 24 Jan 2020 7:22 PM by chryso

jhaerik wrote: ↑
Fri 24 Jan 2020 2:04 PM
Ever time I think I'm about ready for some more DAoC.. I come back and read the forums.. within an hour I've changed my mind again.

Good. You never did anything but whine and complain anyway.

Mon 27 Jan 2020 11:43 PM by Came

The HoH instance has become unusable on Midgard. Pity

Tue 25 Feb 2020 1:56 PM by RealIseultPlayer

I've just read some of the posts on this forum and for how excited people were about HoH and the changes to it, I think the current state is a little bit sad, as almost nobody runs HoH anymore across the 3 realms.
I still try to get groups going for it on hib and I know a couple of guys on mid that are trying the same.
HoH can be done <30 mins on hib easily and we even figured out how to get DS done in around 20 minutes, on hib, but most people dont bother with HoH cos they think its too hard or dont understand how easy it is.
On hib we run a hero as main tank, warden as offtank, light menty for single dmg and off healing (on brothers he goes with the hero to one end while the rest of the group deal with Zorsch), druid and 4x pbae ench/eld.
I suppose we are doing the instance similarly to how the mids used to do it with 4x SM that can just pbae everything down before any danger arises, and apart from when we are getting terrain bugs at mother of ice and halgratha, we rarely have any problems except for the mistakes people make when not paying full attention or whatever, the mechanics are really easy, and we can often even compensate for mistakes that people make with having very good dps, healing and tanking so it doesnt become that big a problem.

Belunna is still really easy. We have the warden tank her now and let warden get 6-7 taunts before the bombers start bombing. When the first set of adds spawn, the hero slams them and the bombers can keep bombing. On the 2nd set the hero taunts the adds and drags them away, so the pbae can finish Belunna without actually having to mind the adds that much (except for the couple of interrupts from the adds CC).

On brothers, the warden grabs Zorsch and runs him to the group, while the hero grabs the big guy and drags him to the other side of the room, where he will just be a punching bag the whole fight without actually doing much and same goes for the light menty who is just healing him. The group stacks up on one end and just pbae Zorsch down, while obviously making sure to get away from the stack once whoever is gazed at. Normally we have Zorsch down by or before 4th stack, sometimes the 3rd stack, because having 4 bombers with wild power 5-9 just melt him down quick enough that we never have to consider swapping positions.

For Halgratha, we have the hero tank it, and the warden kiting the adds. Normally we wont have to kill more than just the first add that spawns, cos the pbae are making quick work of Halgratha anyway and kill the boss before the 2nd set of adds reach him. The hero can save himself from the healing debuff with purge or moose so we dont all that often have to have one of the casters /taunt it off him.

The harder thing with Maschunga is actually the trash just before, cos that's an easier fight to mess up than the actual boss fight, and we normally just run straight in on Maschunga after the trash is down because of how easy it is, even with people being at half power etc when fight starts. Place pets around the edges of room, have light menty and druid be away too, and we maybe wont even have to move once to get out of the pbae mechanic.

On Mother of ice, the warden tanks it, while the hero guards him and slams the sisters when they spawn. Once the adds spawn the casters just run in and pbae them down after the warden has dragged the Mother away to the side and its a really easy and boring fight, very repetitive. We can even afford for the druid to run all way back of room sometimes to dodge the incoming nearsight, its not required but its possible to never get nearsighted as a druid on this fight.

On Zsregoo, its really easy as well. The warden tanks it, and the pbae just pbae, but they stop and run the adds down to the hero as they spawn, and the hero just kites them around the room while the group finishes the boss. Protect on the druid and let the warden again have like 6-7 taunts before people start bombing, and its gg.

Ogoga is now easily the most annoying boss partially cos its almost an insta group wipe mechanic, but since everybody been falling asleep up until now and then having to pay attention to colours and if anyone is actually required to run to the opposite side of where they were supposed to, thats the challenging part, but like someone else already said its actually a really easy mechanic if people just pay attention. It took some tinkering and we tested out all sorts of strategies for the boss but once that code got cracked its become very easy, but only if you have a mic and some voice communication.

I dont know what changes should be made to the instance, but sometimes I was wishing that ok its supposed to be the end-game maybe hardest instance to do, but the mechanics overall are kind of simple and on hib at least we have the advantage of 2 pbae classes.

We even went to mid some of us and got a couple of test runs in without making them speedruns just to see how it would go. With a warrior, a skald, healer, zerker, and 2x rm and 2x sm and if we all had been higher than like rr2 it would again have been all too easy.

I like the instance and I really hope that people will start trying them out again also because theyre very nice feathers, drops and the stacking 1% xp bonus.

Mon 9 Mar 2020 4:11 PM by skaloo

You kind of oversee the main problem here: hibs are the only one able to go in with 4 pbaoe.
So yeah, they do now what people were already doing before all the nerfs. The main difference being they're the only ones able to do it.
As several persons already said, HoH has become a chore (unless you're hib) and people don't want to do it anyore, whereas most players I've talked with considered it more interesting that DS (before the pbaoe galore).
Remove most of the various nerf layers (most have prooved uneffective anyway), and add something that avoids pbaoe to be OP and HoH becomes good again.

Mon 9 Mar 2020 6:18 PM by Forlornhope

skaloo wrote: ↑
Mon 9 Mar 2020 4:11 PM
You kind of oversee the main problem here: hibs are the only one able to go in with 4 pbaoe.
So yeah, they do now what people were already doing before all the nerfs. The main difference being they're the only ones able to do it.
As several persons already said, HoH has become a chore (unless you're hib) and people don't want to do it anyore, whereas most players I've talked with considered it more interesting that DS (before the pbaoe galore).
Remove most of the various nerf layers (most have prooved uneffective anyway), and add something that avoids pbaoe to be OP and HoH becomes good again.

albs can set up the similarly since necro's also have a pbaoe spec.

Mon 9 Mar 2020 7:15 PM by Ashenspire

Forlornhope wrote: ↑
Mon 9 Mar 2020 6:18 PM
skaloo wrote: ↑
Mon 9 Mar 2020 4:11 PM
You kind of oversee the main problem here: hibs are the only one able to go in with 4 pbaoe.
So yeah, they do now what people were already doing before all the nerfs. The main difference being they're the only ones able to do it.
As several persons already said, HoH has become a chore (unless you're hib) and people don't want to do it anyore, whereas most players I've talked with considered it more interesting that DS (before the pbaoe galore).
Remove most of the various nerf layers (most have prooved uneffective anyway), and add something that avoids pbaoe to be OP and HoH becomes good again.

albs can set up the similarly since necro's also have a pbaoe spec.

219 delve vs 325 delve is a pretty significant difference.

Mon 9 Mar 2020 10:02 PM by skaloo

Forlornhope wrote: ↑
Mon 9 Mar 2020 6:18 PM
albs can set up the similarly since necro's also have a pbaoe spec.

necro pbaoe is quite a lot lower.
I never tried it so I can't say if it's enough or not. but I kinda doubt it.
[edit added] I was checking the debuf for the necro (spirit); it seems only the caba has that, and I highly doubt you can have one in the group. so crap damage all along.