Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Publish 8.2 Feedback: Death Watch Bunker
I actually like the Bunker itself, the story behind it, and the atmosphere within its tunnels. The challenge of making it to the bottom is good, in theory, but seems to be overdone.Most casual players will not have the time needed to work their way to the bottom in a group, let alone any progress solo. So, my feedback is:
* The SBDs are WAY too strong, as echoed by the large majority of responses over the last 20 pages. There's no reason for so many to be there, spawning so fast. It's just a time waster, really. Spending 20-30 minutes pounding away at one is just boring. Remove most or allof them (leave a couple at key points if you must) and raise the respawn time to 10 minutes or more, 4minutes is too short. The BDs alone are deterrents, and the NPCs have some high HAMs and insane resists, anyway.
* Seems that stuff gets stuck in walls again, making it so you can't target them. Saw it happen a few times last night.
* Loot drops just plain stink. Credits, credits, more credits, and oh, the occasional locked container. The art pieces I got in the chest were more interesting than anything I got off of the Black Suns and Death Watch, and they're crafted by architects! I did loot a schematic (Hack), but it's a single-use schematic to make an item that's worse than a scythe.
* I was there almost 3 straight hours last night and never saw the NPC spawn to drop the first key. His spawn rate seems to be too long.
*Using TAB to targetthrough enemies does not really work here, I am standing above ground looking right at a SBD or Black Sun and hit TAB and get something 2 levels below and further away.
* I had no problem with lag, because the place was pretty empty. I went late at night (11pm CST), true, but have people already given up on this place after trying it once? Maybe not, because it was a weeknight, but still it had me worried. If so, the Devs really need to re-assess their view on its difficulty and loot drop rate. These are the things that draw people in - a good story with an achievable goal; good loot to impress others and improve themselves; and a decent challenge. So far, I don't see any of the three being met: it's a good story, but the goal does not seem worth the level of difficulty; very poor loot; and the challenge is there at first, but it either becomes too hard, too fast, (it should build up to a bigending, like the Acklay at the bottom of the Geo Cave, not SBDs in the first doorway)or mind-numbingly boring.
Two out of five stars in my book.
Thunderheart wrote:
Have you made it out to the bunker yet?
yes
What were your experiences?
we got our groups out there, 30 people or so organized, and started getting into private chatroom stuff then things started crashing.
What is your opinion of this new adventure zone?
too much activity for the game to handle
Have you made it out to the bunker yet?
No, the furthest I got was to the first large room with 2 SBD's 5 Black Sun Henchmen, 2 Black Sun Assassins andsome death watch guy in tow before I went from full buffs in 80% comp to 0 in about 30 seconds.
What were your experiences?
I am a master pistoleer and a master SL. Pistoleer was thoroughly useless. I have posted many times one the pistoleer forums that we need special attacks to replace our disarm 1 and disarm 2 which have never worked anyhow, with attacks that would effectively up our AP by 1 and 2 at increased levels vs NPC's specifically. Almost everything started at med. armor which means that 90% of everything in there we are already at 50% reduced effectiveness, on top of the fact we dont do much damage anyhow. the SBD's are way beyond my ability. As a Squal Leader my bonuses to melee and ranged defense were worthless because of the accuracy of all the creatures far outshadowed my bonuses. Volley Fire never worked the few times I tried it. Nothing dizzied or intimidated anyone in the group of 20. I died 9 times, and spent tons of money rebuffing. In the end I came out with one DE-10 barrel (which I was looking for) and a DE-10 schem which I had to buy off of another player that had already got one, because I didnt stand a chance of looting and begged enough that he felt sorry for me. On top of that the selling price was far from cheap. The only encounter I could handle was the Blacksun Henchmen. Everything else was way out of my category. No one in the group got even one piece of bounty hunter armor. I am pleased that the schem drop seemed to be frequent. However with the pieces produced limited to one use, many weaponsmiths have refused to make it, but offer to buy it off of me because they wouldnt be able to sell it. Then even finding one that can be trusted is another thing. Too many horror stories out there to trust just anyone.
What is your opinion of this new adventure zone?
Just too powerful. The SBD's should definitly be brought down to 1 per area. The spawn rates need to be reduced and loot needs to be increased. The SBD's which are the most powerful dont even drop loot. I don't know if I will go back unless it is patched. The cost and time involved is far too high. I think that everyone in a group being able to loot the same item from the same guy is essential. Too many bad feelings occur because of this. Rare loot drops? Ok fine but everyone in the group who has worked so hard need a piece of it too. Because of the current state of both of my classes there is no way I can stay in the front which are where the looters are. I only managed the one barrel I looted myself because I went to a room where the other people were busy with 2 SBD's 1 blacksun assassin and a couple BS henchmen, when another BS henchmen spawned and was able to loot him myself.
Crank down the power a couple notches and work on the loot issues for everyone's benefit.
-Asmodeus- wrote:
Yup what a Joke FunniestThread replyi ever saw is the one single post telling everyone to stop complaining because a "group of dedicated TC players crafted the 1st piece of Mando Armor" and therefore they have decided that all is in order, well balanced, and well planned out dungeon/Quest, all i t takes is perserveirence (i know i can't spell) and 2 Wookiee's wearing NO ARMOR. Great ok you Uber TC guys answer me this. Is one piece of Mando worth ruining 20 peoples "Best" composite armor (1 Mill a pop average with slicing + SEA's and AA's), 10k each on Doc buffs, 6k each on entertainer buffs, all the food you used to help you, the wearing out/using upof your Uberest weapons, getting little to no loot, and at best 400 creds in 1 out of 10that divided by 20 people, oh and did I forget to mention ZERO experience for killing 30 Super Battle Droids?
Okay, wait up, amigo. We never said this dungeon was all 'in order, well balanced and well planned' out. You're putting words intesters' mouths (something else some Live players are notorious for whenever one of these publishes gets pushed out the door from TCand the playerbase finds it unsatisfactory). We voiced our concerns about the design issues weeks ago and they can be found by searching the Test Center forums for the 'Death Watch Bunker: A View From The Bottom' thread.
Is one piece worth all of that? Well, as anyone could tell you, it's in the Eye of the Beholder. To some people, it is; to others, it's not. It's like asking someone if FSCS was worth holo grinding, or asking a weaponsmith if it's worth the trouble to collect months of resources to produce top-quality weapons they'll never be certified for. It's all up to the individual. For us, it was worth it-- one, because wewanted it that badly, but more importantly, we wanted to make sure the crafting process wasn't bugged, because our job on TC is to test, and we take it seriously. We couldn't in good conscience let this publish go out without a piece of Mandalorian Armor having been player-crafted-- we told the developers this, we told the QAs this, as well, and we were ignored. We watched begrudgingly as it made it's way to Live.
Well, now the lid is off, all the components are dropping, all the quests are (supposedly) complete. And the end result of our hard work is a piece of arguably average-quality armor. Bottom line is, to us, it wastotally worth it, and isn't that all that matters?
BTW, we didn't reallyruin anything-- last night, I ran point for half the dungeon and only lost 2-3k condition on my chestplate. Used less than one whole stack of brandy and about 4 or 5 stacks of Ahrisa. We got our own doctors to buff us and we got our own entertainers to hit us up, as well.A lot of Live guilds probably have more resources at their disposal than we do. As for loot, this is SWG, what did you expect? 
have a fewthings tocomment on inthis dungeon
-giving something Heavy armor, 80's resists and 200k+ ham and having them spawn every 4 minutes is like running a marathonbarefoot on ice uphill, with hte wind against you in a snowstorm.. well you get my drift. that some things have these resists are ok krayts for instace i can understand that, since you rarely run into 8 krayt's at the same time + you can hit a krayt with intimidate, stun, blind and so (its hard but you can) , the SBD has 80's resists against everything Except Electricity and Acid if my memory isnt failing me. The LLC and the LBC are both AP1, so is the vibrolance, out of the weapons that do acid damage the only really effective one is the tenloss, and against popular belief i have to say not all players are riflemen. Personally i see 3 ways to inprove this
- Either Lower the Ham or the AR of the Super Battle Droids (gotta choose you forced my def to be capped at 125, now either make the SBD 75 - 125k ham and medium resists or 50 - 75k heavy resists, also play at little with the different resists 100% blast? a damn Rocket launcher doesnt scrach em. Keep them at 225k ham and Heavy AR but drop ALL resists to 50% or lower. if i last ditch this thing with my FWG5 for 150 damage its first reduced to 750 then to 375 then a total of 75 points of damage hits it.)
- Increase the AP on the Electricity weapons and Acid weapons to at least medium (though im more in favor of the former sollution another is to "upgrade the LLC to medium AP, and hte HLC to Heavy AP, and the vibrolance to medium, it makes no sense to me that a low resist should be to weapons whos damage is already severly cut, increase the DX2 to medium, the rifle to heavy and the carabine to heavy. but doing this would unbalance even more)
- Finally decrease the spawn rate for the super battle droids to every 30 minutes( going to the janta cave i have to wait 60 minutes for some darn jantas to spawn, but these mandalorians have 600k SBD's stashed around the mine? come on it ok to have genotians or Kwi's spawn at this rate they are 40k ham at most and only medium resists, the dungeon should be "easy" to enter but getharder as youprogress down 8 SBD's? maybe right outside the room where the forge is to make the armor hard to obtain. A 30 minute spawn would alow players a chance to heal and recoup after a battle no getting tossed back into one 4 minutes later.
- Increase the drop rates so you get some loot at least once in awhile, credits gets boring.
TO end it, this dungeon is next to impossible to anything but a 20+ person group, well thats ok i can group but when 10 of hte members goes LD due to lag, people ninja loot like theres no tomorrow, and the system is set up that way, there is no point in rezzing inside since you cant re-buff and on top of all you have to bring craters down to the bottom, through NPC's withok ham and resists and SBD's who are so powerfull tehy could whipe out the empire in one run, **edit** a krayt wouldnt stand a chance,even vader would be toast, make it hard but also make it so that "normal" players have a shot, make it a little higher difficulty than the geno cave, add SBD's when you get near to where you can craft the jetpack and mando armor, that way : the mando armor would be rare, so would hte jetpack,casual players can have fun, moderate players can have fun and Hardcore powergamers could have fun. I play this game to have fun, not to be pissed off because the devs decide we need it to be harder, ok triple the ham and the resists and make them spawn every 4 minutes that should keep em occupied ,so they dont discover how little content there really is in htis game.
Il tell you what,push patch 9 back, 1 week and play this game, actually go to theDW bunker and try it out, no tricks play it the way we do andlets see how much fun you have, testcenter is a great way to check new content, but try it yourselves to.
So what if some people solo it, let them its better to let 5% of theplayerbase solo something than piss of the other 95%, and to keep the mando armor rare, simply take your SBD's and put them in the last 4 rooms before you get into the forge put like3 in each room that way it wont be inpossible butstill very hard.
Rhoubhe wrote:
A small group of dedicated Test Center players crafted the very first Mandalorian Armor Helmet late last night:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=TestCenter&message.id=73424
This place definately isn't 'impossible'... some of our team was comprised of unarmoured wookiees. Pony up, Live-ers, after all, we're just carebear TC players with low-quality equipment, remember?
If that's what every piece looks like then everyone might as well just give up now, because that is CRAP. IT IS GARBAGE. No one is going to go through all those goddamn droids just to get a chance of getting one piece of worthless armor. No stun resist = useless in PVP, crap everything else resist = useless in PVE, and it sure as hell isn't worth all the time, decay, and money you spend trying to get it.