Mobhunter on LDoN: The Week and a half after. (ish)

[Akaran_D]

http://www.mobhunter.com/article.jsp?ar ... 1947276995

Where to begin..
Prior to the Lost dungeons going live, I detailed some of my issues in my preview of the expansion. In a nutshell, I pretty much felt it was bland and boring. Now, after the expansion has been live for a week, I decided to write up my thoughts.

Before I begin let me say that, a lot of the people I've talked to in game, from the hardcore people in my guild, to random people I've done pickup groups, they all have very different opinions of the expansion, and most of what I'm going to talk about is simply my viewpoint and opinion, and you can disagree with it, it doesn't necessarily mean one of us is right, and one is wrong.

Some things have changed since I played in beta, but a lot of things did not and couldn't really. First off one of the most advertised aspects of the expansion is that it contains 48 zones, 19 more than any other expansion.

The reason for that is quite simple, the zones are obviously created from pre-made pieces into different patterns. There are maybe 6 or 7 sets of pieces and they are simply arranged like legos to form different, albeit quite similar zones. Despite what some people want to claim or believe, the layouts from adventure to adventure do not change and if you download the maps, you will clearly see how the zones are made from a few different pieces.

Then, the mobs found in each theme, are exactly the same as any other theme, only the models are different. This is actually a consistant theme in the expansion. In every aspect you see judicious use of cut and paste, far more than any other expansion, this is pure assembly line content.

But let's dig into specifics shall we? One of the more notable changes is difficulty at high levels. Normal risk at level 65 was increased up to about where high risk was early in beta, and high risk was jacked up considerably, where mobs hit for close to three times as hard. Probably my biggest concern purely on this topic is that it's hard to say how well balanced high risk adventures are time wise. All adventures vary but the increased hitpoints of the npcs can make it difficult for even extremely well equipped players to win. And in addition to all that, there is no reason to even bother since they are only worth 25 more points and are easily three times the risk of normal adventures.

On the risk and reward topic, is a different issue and that is that each zone and sometimes theme, varies considerably in risk. To illustrate this let me use actual numbers. I have 13 wins in the Guk theme, which puts me at 5 on that leaderboard. My 17 Mistmoore catacomb wins however, only put me at 48 on that themes leaderboard.

Quite frankly, there is a huge difference between the Mistmoore maps and the Guk maps, in difficulty and time required to complete them. The reason is, guk consists of more multiple mob pulls and bigger zones. Of course even though Guk generally takes twice as long per adventure, they give the same point total. This variation of course is expected but you would think it wouldn't be as big as it is given the nature of how the zones were made.

Augmentations

Next up, the augmentation system. For some time this was touted as "Customize your equipment with new Augmentations.". Of course, they didn't actually mean your equipment as in the equipment you already have, they meant the equipment you'll spend hours and hours of grinding time to obtain. Yes, everyone was saddened to see that all of the old equipment is restricted to a few, relatively minor slot types which pretty much negates anyone from really upgrading their existing equipment.

Generally speaking the only augments that work with existing equipment are the mundane stat ones, and weapon proc ones, and I guess if I had thought about it, it isn't exactly a surprise, although it is somewhat dissappointing that I could grind out points, buy and upgrade items superior to ones I have, all of which were obtained on large scale raids, simply because I'm unable to augment them. Once again I seem to recall Sony people talking about how a person was going through and dealing with what items could use what augments. What they really meant was, a guy pressed a button on a script that gave any time item type 8, any weapon type 4, and anything else type 1. Oh, and then he went in by hand and removed the slot on the Talisman of Vah Kerrath.

What's worse probably is not that things are limited really to the slots in question, but mostly, the absolutely sparse itemization of all augmentations. While random statistical augmentations are relatively common (except the hp/mana ones, which are about 10x more rare than any other..), there are maybe 75 others that you can buy, total and about 5% (mostly weapon procs) work on existing gear. Generally speaking, you can't really customize anything to be that much different than it was. This is all better than things were a week ago, but still less than just about everyone expected. Of course, I did sort of expect this, relating it to charms and how big of a failure that feature was from what it could have been.

A much fun as a barrrel full of monkeys

Next on the list of failed features, we have chests and interactive containers, or for anyone with a clue, NPCs that just don't move, like crippled versions of the boxes from hate, only those didn't have ridiculous traps, and actually had a snowballs chance in hell of dropping something you might care about. Yes, much like charms and augmentations and everything else that sounds cool when you first read about it, Sony has managed to make these objects completely pointless.

The problems are numerous but let's start with the hoops required to open them. Instead of making things simple, there are three different lock types, and numerous spells related to disarming and opening these. All of this requires you stand around, wasting time, inspecting and trying to disarm the traps, which tend to still go off. Then of course you come to the biggest issue given the wasted time and effort and risk involved in even bothering, and that is the fact you are likely to get absolutely nothing. The ONLY item I have ever seen come out of a chest, and keep in mind I have close to 50 adventures done, was an augmentation that was actually WORSE than ones that drop normally, being +5 dex, instead of the usual +6. What is the generally accepted rule in groups I've been in? Without question we've just skipped chests/containers, or at most, I have everyone leave the area and I bash the chest and collect my 5 platinum.

Adventure points and Itemization

Next on the list of things to examine is the Adventure Point system. I expressed my disliking for it previously and I think I've identified exactly what bugs me about it. It isn't so much the idea of buying good items, it is the name. I'm unsure why they couldn't have just come up with a new wayfarers currency to atleast give some immersive value to it, but it sounds just weak to say you're getting adventure points.

Overall though, I do think it works out ok, with one other exception, and that is the seperation of camps such that you have to unlock items. Even if you generate two thousand points in Guk, those points are all but useless in the MMC camp until you unlock the items there. Further, the itemization is specifically designed to virtually cause conflicts since certain classes want to do certain themes because of the effort required to unlock a lot of the items (upwards of 30 dungeon runs, simply to unlock the highest known items). This isn't an entirely new concept for Sony as they've done this repeatedly in the past, and it's a tool they use to keep people playing, effectively I might add.

The item quality is tough for me to say on the lower level stuff, but generally it seems good, better than I thought I suppose although there is a lot of work involved to make a truly good item, so much work that I find it unlikely any casual player is going to see anything that much better than what they could get elsewhere for a long time. For example you can get a plate breastplate virtually equivilent to ornate for 1492 points, which is around 30 dungeon runs on normal. Any augmentations of that level are going to be 10-20 dungeon runs each and it takes three. You're likely looking at upwards of 90+ hours of playing time for an item better than what you could just buy in bazaar, and that is just one item. Atleast though there is that faint glimmer of hope, months down the line of getting something for their time.

Another flavor thing lacking in this area is camp specific things, for example, augmentations that add +bane damage to vampires at the Mistmoore camp, or +bane undead at Guk (or MMC). There are just a lot of things that could be there to make things more unique and actually be useful. A bane augmentation would make adventures go faster once obtained and help people progress faster in a theme, similar to the idea behind the bane weapons in vex thal where the original thought was, that over time you would get bane weapons that made clearing go faster.

On a side note, I made repeated notes of how I never once saw a named in beta despite assurances to the otherwise. Well I can say now that they do exist, although they aren't exactly very interesting given that they are entirely random, meaning they don't necessarily have a place in the zone, although as I've stated the zones are pointless room after pointless room so it would only fit that you'd have a pointless named there. The drops aren't that bad although they seem to be lacking in augmentation slots, pretty much only having the same type one slots as everything else. Further, the pool from which named get items (the items are in no way related to the named, its random), is shallow at best with you getting the same items repeatedly. One plus atleast in this area is that high risk adventures feature better drops, although generally I believe that the drops are still not that useful for those who can actually do high risk adventures, and are also no drop and feature the same lack of augmentation slots.

The solution to all that is to add on atleast one augmentation slot to all of the random drops (type 2 or 3), to atleast allow customization of items obtained in the lost dungeons.

Raids

Finally, we have raids. Just about everyone knew these were a major afterthought in the expansion and I suppose I expected them to be multiple group versions of the same adventures single groups can get but they aren't, which is neither good nor bad except in the ways I will detail.

First off, from the start, a major concern of players has been the 36 person limit. Given the nature of the planes of power which at it's highest point all but requires you to have 60 72 people, to suddenly cut that in half, had a lot of players concerned. Absor stated repeatedly that if you could get a 72 person raid, you could just chop the raid in half, which as anyone who actually plays the game at that level knows, is a ridiculous concept, and shows a significant amount of ignorance.

As the raid leader of a guild that fields around 60 people at most, with almost all classes balanced out (meaning we don't have 15 clerics), I was concerned although I felt a bit better when I heard the minimum number of people required to do LDoN raids was 18. That gave me some glimmer of hope that we could split into two raids with 24-30 people, and do ok.

The reality of the situation of course is not anything like that. The first issue I have is that, Sony still manages to design the raids around numbers that just are not realistic class wise. Clerics are probably the best example and this has been an ongoing theme for literally years now where they seem to think 25% of raids are or should be clerics. Furthermore, to address the 18 person minimum, all I have to say is good luck accomplishing anything with 18 people, because it isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

And I'm not done there.. As I mentioned at the start of this part, the raids are not like the random missions, because atleast on the random missions you are told what you have to do and what is expected, while on the raids, generally speaking you have no damn idea what to expect. We did a raid with 32 people, and although we ended up failing around halfway in (90 minutes), and we were as far as we could tell 2/3rds through, we had NO CLUE what was going on. We just made these little guys move to these big open rooms and then nothing happened and we moved somewhere else to do it again. Of course, we failed because too many people died, which is a lovely addition, which of course makes no real sense at all since at the same time it says first that your deaths have strengthed your opponents, but oh, if you win now, you'll get a lesser reward.

It is a bit early to tell what the full deal is with raids, as I still have to figure out what the hell is going on with the ones we've tried, I imagine like most things, after doing it and learning the details they will not be such a hassle. Unfortunately of course, you have to wait 5 days even if you get demolished 30 seconds into one.

Conclusion

To conclude my series of rants, I once again want to say that I've read a lot of things on different boards and talked to a lot of people in game about the expansion and it actually surprised me how varied the opinions were. The expansion is different things to different people, and despite all the issues I pointed out with it, I've obviously still played it a lot having racked up 50 adventures already, but that doesn't mean I'm happy. I'd probably say that it's dissappointment of what the expansion could have been without much work, that there is basically no reason why it had to suck in the ways it sucks.

[Tenuvil]

Mobhunter lost its appeal to me after Moorgard left. It's kinda like player2player.net after Lum abandoned LtM.

[Xatrei]

Pretty accurate assessment, imo. I can't say much about the raids, since I haven't been exposed to an LDON raid yet (thankfully), but his description of the issues with the 1-group adventures is dead on. This expansion, once the shiny newness of it wears off, pretty much sucks ass. Hopefully they'll tune it a bit to make it a little more tolerable, but this whole thing just fails to "fit" into the existing game world at all, and that hurts it a lot in my book.

One week in and i'm already growing bored with it

[Tegellan]

Seems like a good list of concerns to me, fairly well written too. I haven't played since before LDoN but i am debating whether i should right now so it's good to see different people's views.

[Pahreyia]

Personally, I like LDoN for a few reasons....

1. BoT no longer hosts 110+ people on an average night.
2. Most adventures take anywhere from 25-45 minutes to complete on normal difficulty with a decent group.
3. I average about 50% AA exp a run. I've cranked out a good 10 AAs since the expansion opened, and spent very little of that time in PoP exp groups.
4. Small groups accomplishing semi=difficult feats. My last group went on a collection adventure and ended up looting the last piece we needed with 1 minute remaining. Granted, a couple of the members _really_ sucked and looked af if they were PC/OT/DL/PoJ/PoD/PoV power-leveled, but as the adventure closed, I could see some improvement in their playing abilities.
5. Augmentations. I like the idea, and I've benefitted from them. Albeit a couple procs on non-proccing weapons for a rogue are more amusement than usefulness, I'm enjoying the 3% average DPS increase since augmenting my pokers.
6. Buyable upgrades. I've been sweating some upgrades lately, as tradeable gear for certain slots of my armor are no longer providing worthwhile investment and raid level upgrades are a little out of my reach for the time being. However, for a few hundred points, I can upgrade the slot with something relatively equivalent to what I have, and then I have the ability to augment the item with Aura of Battle, Vengeance, Regeneration or stat augmentations, making upgrading those pesky last couple slots of armor that you've been wearing since level 35 much easier.
7. Cash farming. Compared to PoP zones, I'm making 6x the cash in 1/2 the time off of gems and tradeskill drops. Finally, no more soloing in Sebilis to make money to buy stat food or replace reagents.

Coray failed to mention most of these features, and while he may not be more attuned to the benefits that I percieve, I thought his article was well written, but not fair to all aspects of the expansion.

[Pilsburry]

Moorgard is the EQ2 public relations guy now.

When I quit I was wearing kael quest BP, legs, arms, gloves...cultural bracers and a couple other bad items.

Just look at templar's gauntlets VS the royal sand gloves....there is no comparison. Some items might not give much of an upgrade on the base item but with augs in it seems like they would for sure.

I mean it might get boring, but so was sitting in PoV or hoho...but I did it just for the AA's. I think my only PoP loot from exp was my razorfind talon ring thing. And I didn't get any PoP raid loot....I made 5 levels and 70 or more AA's in PoP zones before I quit (not to mention the raids) and honestly that was all I had to show for it...a little ring worth maybe 10k.

In LDoN my rewards for all that exping would have been much larger.

[Skogen]

I've got Skogen in full Wolfcallers....is this considered "crap" now? I havent really serously played in a year.

[XunilTlatoani]

I agree with Pah. How is LDoN worse than normal exp'ing? The exp/cash rate per person is great, and you don't have to worry about your favorite camp spot being camped by someone else. Augments, adventure points, etc. are just icing on the cake, and I could really care less about them compared to the other obvious benefits.

[Zaelath]

From a druid's perspective the LDoN dungeons are kind of cool, as long as you don't mind never seeing a hard dungeon.

A good druid can replace both enchanter and cleric in a group (providing there's someone to slow) without any great drama in most of the dungeons.. I say most because regular pulls of 3-6 mobs get old really fast when you're relying on snare and root as CC.

The raids are okay, excepting that people have been made complacent by Planes of Single Pulls, and don't take into account that the raid mobs have resists out the ass compared to anything regularly killed in PoP. Our first raid got probably well over half way through the event in 1/3 the time, but like most took too many deaths and failed.

I tend to agree with some other people who have said there needs to be more "levels", normal is boringly easy for elemental+ guild groups, and hard is an assrape unless you have a perfect balanced group; and there's no muppets allowed...

[Jaxomer]

I have had a lot of fun playing my Necro in LDoN. It's much more of a challenge to be DPS, ghetto mez, spot heal and mana pump all at once. At least the utility of a Necro can fill a couple different roles, allowing groups to break out of the "holy trinity" way of thinking.

It's funny to see how many people are stuck on the "must have warrior, cleric and chanter" thought process. One of the best groups I had was a rogue, warrior, 2 shammys and 2 necros. People need to be flexible with the different roles any character can fill in LDoN, it kinda takes the staleness out of the usual grind.

[Seebs]

But Clerics are okay ... right? I mean, you would take one if they were available right?

Please like me.