Citadel of the Worldslayer

[Ydiss]

You're mixing up existing npcs with the new ones. The new ones aren't in place yet.

You may have caught x2 drops if you were lucky. I was editing tables and for about 15 minutes one of the live tables was duped.

All npcs with id 471xxx aren't in yet.

I changed the table to x1. Though it would still have dropped I'm sure.

[Nizzy]

Ok thanks.. I wasn't sure how to figure out which NPC number was live or not honestly.

Will report back if it doesn't drop anything on the next run.

[Nizzy]

Trying not to give this away.
You hear a clear ringing bell on the last portion before the clanging gong.
Can we add 10 more seconds on to the Red/Green before rotation? I am spending more time resetting and starting over or just sitting watching colors so I don't fail.

[Ydiss]

Adding 10 seconds trivialises this for any group played by more than one person.

I'd look to maybe add a little extra time but the point of these tasks is to challenge team work whilst still being possible for single player boxers to complete. It's supposed to be hardest in that latter scenario though.

When trying to introduce something that's a little new and innovative to give groups a fun task, there's possibly a slight concession to be made for those who do the same task without others.

It's definitely possible solo with the right preparation and I'll admit that it's much easier to fail solo but there's a wide line between keeping things tedious and accommodating solo players for a repeatable challenge that's pretty difficult to do every time and mq2 can't help you with (ie I think it's better than needing to run cotw multiple times to hope you randomly get the right four items every two runs and instead needing to potentially redo a sequence of kills because a solo player is attempting a group task).

I'd like to add that there was some ooc talk about these new tasks yesterday and I noticed some discussion about the drops related to these tasks, specifically around the drops you now get. This was a little confusing.

So, just to clarify this fully, as the patch notes suggest, this quest can be completed with one play through. That means all four drops required now are located from distinct npcs. Two of those npcs existed already prior to the revamp. They now always drop the same items.

The other two items are obtained through the two new tasks/puzzles that you've triggered. One item from each.

That should be 100% the same every play through now. Each of the four required items drops from the exact same npc every time you run the zone.

If you're not seeing this behaviour, please note which npc drops what and petition it and I'll correct it.

[Ydiss]

Thinking about the red/green task, I might change it a little. I can alter it so once you're at the final step, failure won't reset you to the start. It'll just reset the final stage and eject everyone to a safe spot to try again.

Does that sound better?

I want it to be challenging but I don't want players to fear just going for it.

[Nizzy]

On the OOC talk that was me getting confused on my drops due to what I had looted before the change and trying to keep up with everything, I had not read all the patch notes to see I could complete one per run. I was zoning in killing the first elite, zone out reset zone and restart that did not help either since I kept getting the same drop off the first elite.

While I do welcome the change to to the charm quest to complete one per run I had been doing this multiple times to farm pieces. To make it easier on me I just deleted everything that had already been looted and not completed and can run them though one at a time. On the change though keeping in mind I had completed a handful of these already it was once said to me "after some people including myself have put in the hard work to finish a quest, making it more easy for others who never did isn't really a supported idea".

How would you feel after multiple TOV and ST clears for pieces if the drop rate was increased to 25% suddenly or added to a 100% table on minis in there? I can now personally answer this question, that is what has happened to me with this zone and the change, multiple runs with only two pieces dropping and 14 toons to complete it and only had 5 100% done before the revamp and still have another 8 toons to do it on.
I am not complaining on this just offering a point of view, since I can now truly grasp why that was said to me.

Making the red green not do a full reset is an acceptable compromise. Honestly that was no "fun" at all and seemed more like a task that I will be happy not to repeat again.
For some of us our idea of fun is tank and spank, get phat lewts, then same Bat Time and same Bat Channel ~22 hours later and do it again.

[Ydiss]

I think it's helpful to discuss these things openly so everyone can get a better understanding of what we want and how we think.

Don't get me wrong, we like seeing players talk about things and working stuff out. In this case I just wanted it to be clear so that players don't get put off trying the quests. The aim was to make it less tedious.

I do understand the idea of feeling negative if you've completed something the hard way and then it's made easier for others later on. There are examples of other THF quests being made much easier following player feedback; one obvious example is another charm quest, in tov coincidentally, where the drop rate was increased some 9 years after it was created. Despite having completed that quest about 50 times the long way I was really happy it was changed. Mainly because I still had to do it another 12.

Making something drop faster is a request we have to weigh up carefully and this negative feeling is one factor we need to consider.

In this case, I feel the positives outweigh that particular negative. Mainly because the quest has only been about for a year and players only actually started doing it from October last year.

I could have just upped the rate. That would have been really easy. But instead I wanted the quest to pose a challenge.

And that's the other topic (some players just like tank and spank).

When designing this new content, I did so both as a player and designer. Historically, the advanced content on thf has needed to be ultra complicated in order to challenge those players who reached it. I believe that complexity is welcomed by some players (in some cases it is probably necessary). I personally enjoyed it up to a point and that point is what I've set out to avoid with this new content.

But there's no challenge in just upping the damage and hit points thresholds indefinitely, if that's all we did and nothing else. We could actually do this without any thought (eqemu supports automatic scaling). So I think some element of puzzle solving is fun but I think it needs to be logical and "readable"

We won't get it perfectly the first time and I'm happy to revisit the new events to make sure they're fun and not tedious. Tedium is absolutely the opposite of what I want so I want players to tell us if anything gets too frustrating.

We are also planning something following a new major mechanic peterigz is working on at the moment. We recognise that some players just like to plough through harder and harder content so we're going to introduce something that'll be perfect for that preference.

Puzzles aren't for everyone. I personally love them, particularly if they're logically written. My absolute favourite Everquest zone was actually in Eq2; Nektropos Castle was a group instance and the first half of the zone was a story with puzzles (think pulling candle sticks to open up hidden passages). Our group did that ourselves because there was no wiki at the time and it was the most fun I've had in this type of game. We definitely want to create something along those lines and have the perfect zones set aside for it.

But I know that's not for everyone. There will be things someone has to work out once before putting it on the wiki for others and maybe not everyone wants to do that. But it's been that way on THF for a long time now and I think it's a better server for it, personally.

But we'll work with you to improve things that maybe don't start out perfectly Sometimes that might just be upping Bixt's drop rates, others it might be rewriting a quest or changing the fail routine for a puzzle.

We probably won't often just make things easier for solo mq2 players if it might make things far too easy for actual groups of players though That might fall into a similar category of negative feeling you described above. But there's usually always a compromise and the best people to usually come up with ideas is the players so keep up the feedback.

I'll try to rewrite the red green fail routine today. I'll keep you posted.

[Ydiss]

All changed:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14696

Let me know what you think.

As an aside, there is an optimal approach to this as a solo player that should negate failure. Definitely now.

[Nizzy]

First day back playing since the changes. It was doable now but still took too much time.

Let me also ask this question this is supposed to be a Tier 7 zone correct? If so then the mobs really need to be looked at. The reason I say this is if I am pulling more than say 4 or 5 Othofrako is instantly spanked.
Compared to say DSK2 on the way up to Xeru, I can do the spiders going to Xeru with just Nizzy with no problems.
In other words a T8/T9 tank with donors should not be getting one rounded by trash mobs in a T7 zone, just my opinion.

[Niixnec]

Have completed the red/green puzzle now 4 times. Personally, I don't not find it a great time. The best I have been able to do is complete in 10 tries, the longest closer to 35, average probably in the 20 range.
After completing 12+ HoH access quests, 10+ Chaos access quests before the change and when spawns were 24 hours and challenged, 26 VT access quests, I can honestly say this is by far the most frustrating.
Not only having to do this part of the quest but go back and complete the first parts of the quest since haven't used a charm for anything in years.

If you planned this for multiple people to complete why only have one drop per mob? Wouldn't something similar to DSK1 drops of 3 per boss/mob be more appropriate?

regards,
Niix