Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Publish 8.2 Feedback: Death Watch Bunker
Meowkitty wrote:
I'm curious as to what the feedback from the test center was on this dungeon. Did anyone there manage to complete a single piece of armor?
Imaridril wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:
What is your opinion of this new adventure zone?
Until you guys get around to doing the combat rebalance, all you end up doing by added new content like the DWB is to anger more and more players. Its impossible to scale the difficulty of the dungeon properly when some combat proffessions are extremely overpowered while at the same timeothers are laughably weak.
That sums it up perfectly!
Tsalmaveth wrote:
<snip for length>
A very good analysis of the things you'd need here. Good tactical suggestions.
- Warren - good story, good difficulty for mid-level players. Replay value is pretty close to nil. You go once or twice, get your badges and that's it. The Warren is pretty empty these days.
- Geonosian Cave - no story really, good difficulty for high-end players, great amount of loot. Replay value is minimal. Campers like to stay there to collect the loot, groups like to fight through to Acklay a few times, but I think most people have "been there done that" by now. The sheer amount and utility of loot available is the real saving grace for this piece of content.
- Corvette missions - decent story, neat preliminary missions (good use of existing POIs), way too hard for all but the most elite players to fight through - way too easy to run through (destroy mission), loot ismosty undesirable (AV-21 excepted) and really rare considering it's a group mission. This content is completely dead-ended. Most people don't go, many don't go back, and the few that like it will eventually tire of it.
- DWB - minimal story, difficulty is...uhh...extreme, general loot is poor but the special loot is really desireable - the same rarity problem though, there's no good reason for 24 of 33 professions to even go to the bunker. Even though this dungeon only opened today it's plain to see that this will soon become underutilised as well. A select few powergamer groupswill throw themselves at it as many times as need be, but most will go once or twice and not return.
Content from this point on, including in JtL, MUST focus on continually renewable systems. Crafting is such a system - a crafter can continually ply his trade and not reach "the end" of his profession. Combat needs to be the same. Ideas such as territorial control in the GCW support this goal.
In summary, if this is the last dungeon publish focused on the elite player - that's fine. The Hutt casino has a lot to live up to in providing content for the largely ignored majority of the player base (in terms of these content mini-publishes). If the ISD "dungeon" is a return to the elite-level difficulty it will be very discouraging.
I don't know if any of the Devs played PnP RPGs, but if so:
1. Consider the interest level generated by a DM bringing home a module from the store, plunking it down and saying "ok, you're at the entrance to a mysterious dungeon...hee hee...you guys should see what's in here <insert maniacal laughter>".
2. Contrast that with a skillful DM weaving that same module into the existing story arc (the backstory of the world at large), giving the players compelling role-playing reasons to go there, carefully adjusting the module to cater to the skills of all players in the group (giving thenon-fighter typescritical things to do that add to the group experience), and overall making sure the players get a stiff challenge, one that they can surely overcome andhave a lasting impact on the world.
We are currently in the former scenario, interesting and fun gameplay (and therefore renewed subscriptions) lies closer to the latter. We all play RPGs to feel like heros in the world we play in - not to feel like another faceless number in a group whose presence is easily replaced by someone else with a weapon.
Pfft, wouldn't waste my time/money/armor/buffs going to this nuthouse for another broken sandstat loot drop.
But, I must say, I HUGELY APPLAUD the fixing of the overhead map and labels showing vendors, etc, so that everything isn't stacked on top of each other. Spending time and fixing things like this (errors, bugs, things that have existed far too long and shouldn't) - well, when I see these things fixed, it gives me hope.
P.S. Whoever came up with the idea for imp NPC reactions when you spit/slap/etc them, should be given a promotion. Not too often I laugh in this game, but damn, that's a great easter egg.
RaijinE wrote:
HimFan wrote:
So devs ARE reading this. To bad they cant say anything other then repeated informantion.
Why are we surprised when Dev's respond to posts in this board? Of course they are reading this. This area is to get feedback on a major new area that was just pushed Live. They worked long and hard on getting this out of course they want to know what we think. I am surprised when any red name drops in a post because a lot of times it is like throwing gas on afire. People go into attack mode. I think we should all take a step back some times and think about how much everyone has invested in getting even the smallest change pushed out to the community. Thanks for all the hard work Dev Team.
They don't care about feedback, and the only responses they ever post in these threads are repeated information from other threads, usually in response to a particularly stupid whine post to correct its misinformation.
Look at the corvette thread. 36 pages of "it's too hard" and "it's confusing" and "too many droids" and the only thing they did was make it HARDER because of the very few people who somehow managed to solo it. Now it's near impossible and they don't care any more.
They didn't do anything useful for the corvette, and I doubt if they'll do anything here either.
/agree
concerning the mando armor. this is soe's way to make things rare. make the items so frustratingly hard to acquire that only the uber leet powergamers will have them. that's a bigslap in the faceto us casual gamers. i would LOVE to have the mando armor and jet pack but i can't even get a power core for an AV-21. death watch bunker? not even going to try. i just hope jtls is good.
i forgot to mention that this new content breeds selfishness that i thought mmorpgs were trying to move away from. competing groups loot camping the keys andfighting over who's mando armor gets crafted. THIS IS FUN!
i've been playing the wow beta. they've somehow avoided (IN BETA NOW remember) the major mistakes that soe has made and continues to make with this game. if they don't make this new content more 'playable,' wow MAY take a serious chunk of the player base.