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Baffling dungeon que system- working as intended?
First, this is a very unique game that I'm enjoying quite a bit overall. The dungeon que system has had me a bit baffled though. I've asked around in game and it seems the consensus is that there's nothing abnormal about it, but my experience with MMO's has lead me to a bit of a different conclusion.
I've noticed that all of the dungeons seem to be missing level prerequisites. I enjoy group content quite a bit in MMO's so I was anxious to try it out at a very low level. In every other game I've played, there is a different range of available dungeons per level range, and difficulty is scaled appropriately to the level said content is available at. In this game, it seems all dungeon content is available to all levels.
I'm not sure if there is a bug where low level players are able to enter the wrong range of content, as I have read that this game suffers from a lackluster amount of developer attention. If that's the case, which would make most sense, it doesn't appear to be common knowledge in global chat. The difficulty in this content does not seem surmountable for low level characters.
I've almost reached level 30 on my character- the Rogue "Night Avenger" class from the store- and this is the level I've noticed the dungeons seem to scale to. I've still felt inefficient and outclassed, though for different reasons.
I like to play burst DPS stealth characters in most games, but I've yet to unlock any real mitigating spells or skills. I always make a point of allowing tanks to pick up boss aggro on the alpha strike before I unload, but I routinely pull the aggro off of them as soon as I hit a big burst crit. Even if I block and stop attacking, the boss remains aggroed to me until I'm defeated.
I'm not entirely sure if the aggro calcs are bugged in this game, or just quite strange. Even if I escape from combat, my stealth does not reset as the bosses will chase me all around the instance until I'm defeated, even with melee tank-like characters on top of them. I was told that a lot of players will attempt to roll tank characters and build them for DPS, which I find a little baffling.
I'm a huge fan of grouped content, but this is the first system in a game that I've found next to impossible to enjoy. I have found that occasionally end game builds will still participate in the dungeons- apparently this game doesn't have raiding yet. When that happens, things tend to go smoothly, but I don't enjoy myself for a different reason: I feel worthless.
In case some people here aren't familiar with alternate systems, I did find a great example to bring along and hopefully shed some light on exactly what I'm talking about.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the dungeon que has two things that would completely nullify these issues.
As you can see, you first select your role in combat- DPS, Tank, Heal. The que will match one tank, one healer and two DPS per group. That means, for example, that if you chose to make a DPS oriented tank build, you could que as DPS and not risk your group not having a proper tank.
Additionally, there is approximately one new available dungeon every 5 levels. Since the dungeons are considerably shorter in this game, certainly more per level range could be made available, and the content could be scaled appropriately depending on which level range it is placed in.
Feel free to take this post with a grain of salt, or completely ignore it. This is just an impression I've gotten from my experience with this game so far.
I've noticed that all of the dungeons seem to be missing level prerequisites. I enjoy group content quite a bit in MMO's so I was anxious to try it out at a very low level. In every other game I've played, there is a different range of available dungeons per level range, and difficulty is scaled appropriately to the level said content is available at. In this game, it seems all dungeon content is available to all levels.
I'm not sure if there is a bug where low level players are able to enter the wrong range of content, as I have read that this game suffers from a lackluster amount of developer attention. If that's the case, which would make most sense, it doesn't appear to be common knowledge in global chat. The difficulty in this content does not seem surmountable for low level characters.
I've almost reached level 30 on my character- the Rogue "Night Avenger" class from the store- and this is the level I've noticed the dungeons seem to scale to. I've still felt inefficient and outclassed, though for different reasons.
I like to play burst DPS stealth characters in most games, but I've yet to unlock any real mitigating spells or skills. I always make a point of allowing tanks to pick up boss aggro on the alpha strike before I unload, but I routinely pull the aggro off of them as soon as I hit a big burst crit. Even if I block and stop attacking, the boss remains aggroed to me until I'm defeated.
I'm not entirely sure if the aggro calcs are bugged in this game, or just quite strange. Even if I escape from combat, my stealth does not reset as the bosses will chase me all around the instance until I'm defeated, even with melee tank-like characters on top of them. I was told that a lot of players will attempt to roll tank characters and build them for DPS, which I find a little baffling.
I'm a huge fan of grouped content, but this is the first system in a game that I've found next to impossible to enjoy. I have found that occasionally end game builds will still participate in the dungeons- apparently this game doesn't have raiding yet. When that happens, things tend to go smoothly, but I don't enjoy myself for a different reason: I feel worthless.
In case some people here aren't familiar with alternate systems, I did find a great example to bring along and hopefully shed some light on exactly what I'm talking about.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the dungeon que has two things that would completely nullify these issues.
As you can see, you first select your role in combat- DPS, Tank, Heal. The que will match one tank, one healer and two DPS per group. That means, for example, that if you chose to make a DPS oriented tank build, you could que as DPS and not risk your group not having a proper tank.
Additionally, there is approximately one new available dungeon every 5 levels. Since the dungeons are considerably shorter in this game, certainly more per level range could be made available, and the content could be scaled appropriately depending on which level range it is placed in.
Feel free to take this post with a grain of salt, or completely ignore it. This is just an impression I've gotten from my experience with this game so far.
Post edited by glop#4587 on
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What you call "dungeons" are called Lairs here. Lairs don't scale at all. In fact, the only content that automatically scales are Alerts. I suspect that's what you're talking about.
Alerts aren't really the place to go to look for team play; you're better off finding a team to do missions or Lairs with. Heck, I wouldn't even call Alerts team content, since you're thrown in with a random team and then finished 2-5 minutes later.
Edit: I just noticed this:
Yeah. You're talking about Alerts. Lairs are comparable to dungeons in other games.
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
The dungeons you are referring to are called Alerts.
You can enter from level 6-40, I believe.
Everyone is scaled to level 30.
There is a more challenging "rampage" alert available at lvl 35(?).
There are more challenging and in depth lairs in the game. They do not have queues except for the level 40 ones (nemcon and therekiel's temple), but you will really want a full team before you queue for those anyway.
I don't think they have bothered with the role thing in this game due to free form. Most free forms can heal, dps, or tank on the fly.
Hope that helps.
Therakiel's Temple has a queue? I've only been in there once, but I just walked in the front door. Same with Mandragalore and Andrithal (both level 40 as well). I've only ever queued for Nemesis Confrontation, of those four.
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
I'm probably just thinking of nemcon, been so long. I forgot about those other two as well:redface:
There was talk about adding a queue system for all the lairs. However, like most things. it was never finished, left half done and finally ignored. I believe some lairs have it, most dont.
I look forward to attempting the Lair content, looks interesting. I haven't seen too much recruiting for this content or even heard it mentioned in global chat so I was unaware it existed. I see quite a few of them are outside of Millennium City- is this difficult content to generate interest in running? I wouldn't feel comfortable leading a group or recruiting at this point in the game. That's a huge plus of dungeon cues in my opinion.
I've ventured to Canada, the Desert and Vibora Bay for stretches but the zones outside of Millenium City seem to be almost completely empty. The chat channel is generally dead. I haven't found much reason to group for standard quests as they're all quite easy. I even turned my instances up to hard as I was able to nearly one shot groups of mobs with my Ricochet skill and almost always one shot quest bosses with my stealth attack. The quest content does not seem suitable for groups in my experience.
I look forward to checking out the mentioned end game alerts, that definitely adds some incentive to level up my character. Are group sizes larger for these? All of the alerts I've done so far seem to cap out at five if I remember correctly.
Stronghold Prison - (Operation Stranglehold) - Level 25, Desert (Mission Giver: Warden Wildman). Pretty easy lair, don't need a team.
Dr. Destroyer's Factory - (Search and Destroyer) - Level 28, Millenium City (Mission Giver: Dr. Silverback). Suggested team size 5.
Teleios Tower - (Teleios' Tower) - Level 30, Canada, (Mission Giver: Henry Cronyn). Suggested team size 5.
Burial Caves - (Death's Door) - Level 31, Canada, (Mission Giver: Ravenspeaker). Suggested team size 5.
Dr. Moreau's Lab - (Rhinoplasty) - Level 35, Monster Island, (Mission Giver: M'Ling). Suggested team size 5.
Viper's Nest - (The Viper's Nest) - Level 38, Monster Island, (Mission Giver: Major Rashisa Kwame). Suggested team size 5.
And as mentioned
The Mandragalore
Therakiel's Temple
Andrith Ruins
Nemesis Confrontation (aka Nemcon, Skipping the Rift)
CellarRat33 :: formerly Bsquared
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"The great thing about glory unending is that it's dirt cheap!" - Tateklys
From the Adventures of Thundrax (canadascott)
***
The Gravitar mission doesn't give XP bonus.
She's the "make life hard for me" end game alert with a hot top drop to grab.
The Sky Command mission is ten players, if you can get ten players to que once a week.
Serious design flaw: "Hey the population is bleeding like a gutted pig on a roller coaster, lets make ten man alerts!"
They're not. On the whole they're generally boring. And tedious.
Since I've returned to the game I've only seen people attempt to gather for NemCon in the past two months. None of the others really.
You should check out the powerhouse. The battle simulator. And scale the fight based on team size. That shows you what's supposed to happen when you do missions in larger teams. Granted quite a few free form builds can easily solo that scaled up content.
But your character isn't free form. In fact some of the issues you experience in alerts are because you're playing an archetype. So your choices are extremely limited and you lack some of the basic things free forms choose long before AT's. So there is that.
Oh, well that's sad. You guys are a cynical bunch here, huh? Haha.
I will definitely do that. But how will the content scale in the outside quests? I've noticed that since I became eligible to quest in Canada and the Desert, most quests are outdoor hunt types, with only a select few of the quest instances. Earlier on I remember them coming up quite frequently.
I have done a fair bit of research on the free form system. It seems interesting and I absolutely see its merit. More than anything else, combing through build concepts makes the class skills seem redundant.
I investigated my impending skills as the Night Avenger and it looks like all I have in store is more attacks, which seems a bit redundant as there are limited cooldowns in this game. I do like the grapple pull skill as it serves a purpose aside from damage dealing, but overall I can't say I understand the reasoning behind adding so many damaging spells/skills to the preset class Archetype characters.
I would love to incorporate some of the skills to build a more versatile character- I'm assuming all free form players can make tank-mages. But I'm not really of a mind to invest cash in a game of this caliber right now, aside from buying access to the Rogue, which was a strange thing to gate.
I play quite a few MMO's, some with much more to offer in terms of development resources and versatile content. That's not to take anything away from this game, since I've been enjoying it quite a bit. It's a great novelty experience, and the systems in place are unique. But I don't see myself investing in a subscription or paying a large lump sum to build a tank mage.
I was unaware of how deficient the classes were when I came to play here, as the "pay to tank-mage" system is honestly not something I've encountered before. I can absolutely understand the need to generate revenue for a smaller market game though.