feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
edited July 2018
This game hasn't had a well-designed dungeon since they were ruined by mod 6. All the power and HP creep since then has only served to take the challenge out of older dungeons and require dull exploits like the two-DC combo in newer ones, which annoys the great majority who don't like playing support classes. The immunity, insteadeath and stun mechanics in newer boss fights aren't interesting or a challenge so much as a reason to roll one's eyes all the way back in one's head. I'd much rather be playing a version of this in which Mod 6 had just been the addition of new content and not the wholesale FUBARing of the game. Making players keep track of buff stacks from the Sunsword is just tiresome and obnoxious. Imagine if all the effort that went into designing power and HP creep had gone into actually balancing pvp instead. Imagine mods that added content or rewards to side dungeons instead of eliminating them. Imagine obvious game improvement like balancing the character races by replacing campfire bonuses with something useful. Imagine lockboxes without Adventure Packs and similarly worthless garbage. Imagine not being plagued by the RNG in almost every aspect of the game. Imagine if the dev team actually made the improvements players wanted and didn't just go ahead and ignore 50 page or 200 page threads warning them when they were making huge mistakes. Imagine professions being useful and not constantly made obsolete by easily obtained new gear. But most of all, imagine dungeons where the boss fights didn't involve a tedious adaptation to new mechanics that require every player to effectively play the same class rather than the one they chose to play, or don't involve sigh-inducing instadeath and overpowered, boring control and immunity mechanics.
* the mechanics are bugged (added above) * same as Mechanics are problematic with DOT´s at first boss
The moment you wiped once that sunbuff sometimes bugs and does not work properly any more. You get oneshottet by "mechanics" same as you get pretty much eaten when you drop in the cellar (depending on the class), same as that sword buggs - Daily not available - same as you sometimes are stuck in the ceiling and are send out, That´s not ok in my eyes.
It's not the mechanics that are bad, it's their bugs. I would like to see more fights where party gets seperated, rotations are interrupted and having a tank is forced trough mechanics.
I find the boss designs good, but the bugs are making it fustrating.
The first boss can insta kill you with the pillar of power for no reason. Sister of Rage can go on a teleporting fit throughout her whole fight. 2nd boss animations will break so you don't know WTF he is doing. 3rd boss will skip his glitchy room phase sometimes. 3rd boss Nightmare can disappear. Batswarms are buggy as hell, sometimes doing HAMSTER tons of instant damage, none at all, or a steady stream of damage.
Onto the bad designed bits. 1st Boss There needs to be a clearer indicator for the stacks, I can't change my UI to move my Debuff somewhere that is not cluttered full of HAMSTER, and it's not fun starting at a tiny square to the side of your screen.
2nd boss 1. Needs some audio cue so people know that they need to get hit by the "taunt" attack when he drops his sword or he starts spinning to win. No one would have any clue this is a mechanic if they didn't read up on it in the depths of the forums.
Final boss 1. Bat swarm attacks should not occur during the nightmare phase. If your healer goes down below and your party up top gets Batswarmed then you are screwed, forcing you to run with 2 healers to make the run work reliably. Sure you can P2W with scrolls but a dungeon should not be designed like that, nor force groups to take two healing classes when there is already a small pool of these classes compared to everything else 2. Batswarm needs a delay too. For this boss and 1st. Right now it can be dealt with with awareness if people are together, but if moving then voice coms can deal with it, but voice coms shouldn't be mandatory. 3. The red things should deal % of max health as damage. The way it works now discriminates against low HP classes (CW etc) that will get one shotted unless you can group mitigation classes, which further pigeon holes certain classes into the "required" group setup.
Other than these points, I really like the dungeon. It's challenging more on the teamwork side than the gear side similar to Valindra Tower (the original not the remake). Which I still think is the best boss fight the game has done so far. Unfortunately due to influx of scrolls, it seems like people are just bypassing much of the gameplay mechanics though that is not exactly cryptics fault as it is up to the players if they want to spend lots of AD to complete the dungeon, but it makes the quality of Pugging a lot worse.... A shame because I like pugging other content.
1. Bat swarm attacks should not occur during the nightmare phase. If your healer goes down below and your party up top gets Batswarmed then you are screwed, forcing you to run with 2 healers to make the run work reliably.
What is the cue for the bat swarm attack? I cannot figure that part out.
> @chemjeff said: > 1. Bat swarm attacks should not occur during the nightmare phase. If your healer goes down below and your party up top gets Batswarmed then you are screwed, forcing you to run with 2 healers to make the run work reliably. > > > > What is the cue for the bat swarm attack? I cannot figure that part out.
There isn't one. But there doesn't need to be one and the delay is very short. So we usually shout out or huddle up if we see it. I'll add this to my list since you can't make voice coms a requirement.
I finished CR recently and... it was super boring. This dungeon is basically three boss fights with little to nothing in between them. ToNG was proper design and I feel like CR is nothing to enjoy. You get to first boss after 3 minutes where most of the time you wait when Strahd stops his talking. Not so much killing mobs.
Last boss mechanics is soooooo boring. Strahd is talking almost all the time. There is literally more time when I was waiting until he finishes his quotes than boss fight time.
Is this the future of Neverwinter dungeons? Fight with your yawn and survive the cutscenes?
I've been running it a fair amount this weekend and hope to get some runs in later. For the most part, the first 2 bosses are ok (though campfires should be outside the boss room before you enter, PLEASE) There are a some mechanics I'm not entirely sure about and there is too much 'trap AOE' in the Sisters fight. Like Fane of Night Serpent, the game should be forced to have some separation between the trap areas so people can actually get to the boss teleporting around...
Strahd is not a good fight. If you got rid of the cutscenes and taunt phases, it would be a lot better. As it is, there is far too much waiting around. He's talking and can't be attacked, he's taunting and you shouldn't attack... And all the phase changes and we're fighting nightmares or whatever and not being able to do anything. Give him more HP and less phase changes, please.
And for the Gods' sake please let us skip the cutscenes through out the dungeon. Didn't people complain enough about Cradle, or what? Do I really need to see the Sister steal the sword every time?
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
1. fight is hard to enjoy with a Dot class 2. fight, hmm, MSVA in "bad-mode" 3. fight, if you die once and lose that sunbuff, prepare to spam scrolls (squishy classes do like that), 16 scrolls was my worst so far
Got invited in a run at endboss... "top scorerer" > 40x dead, forgot what the timer said, some stay in there up to >six hours ! So avoid to pug, stay with your friends 24/7, buy enough scrolls and try to find a good OP - tact. GF - DC, otherwise stay outside.
They are defiitely laughing all the way to the bank with the number of Life Scrolls that people are buying en masse to run this dungeon. For me, at this point, there is really no point for me to run the dungeon as the new gear is not game changing in the slightest. In terms of the RP, salvage , that drops, it just doesn't come close to justifying the cost of burning through 4-5 scrolls per run. Just not a good return on investment. Im gonna stick to CODG, and TONG, until new content comes.....
- When the whole group gets lifted in the air, the person with the sword MUST press 1 immediately after the Sunsword says his line.
Nop. Wait 2 - 3 Secounds after that line. Even if the sword is full ( it mus tbe full btw, if you wanna make a guide ^^) and you press 1 shortly after the message the protection time is to low. This whole dungeon is based on perfect connection / no deleay whatsoever. Thats just dumb. We all know how "good" the connection is to Cryp. We all have tracert. Lets wait till the "casuals" can join CR today and i think we will see a lot of hate threads about that ^^.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
- When the whole group gets lifted in the air, the person with the sword MUST press 1 immediately after the Sunsword says his line.
Nop. Wait 2 - 3 Secounds after that line. Even if the sword is full ( it mus tbe full btw, if you wanna make a guide ^^) and you press 1 shortly after the message the protection time is to low. This whole dungeon is based on perfect connection / no deleay whatsoever. Thats just dumb. We all know how "good" the connection is to Cryp. We all have tracert. Lets wait till the "casuals" can join CR today and i think we will see a lot of hate threads about that ^^.
We don't need the casuals from today. I have it unlocked for 2 weeks, and I can say, this is the most annoying tihng in the dungeon. Press Immediately and you are dead, wait, and dead, lag a bit and dead. There is no proper hint, the sentence one is mistimed, it should be right after the sentence, but it's not.
Overall, IMO, the sisters reflect while sucks for SoD it adds a bit more than just "Hold your mouse and mindlessly bash". The cut scenes are annoying after a while (Though the dead sister one is funny), but at least they are not Baby length.
IMO the dungeon lacks a real dungeon tempo, it feels more like a rescue mission, a hurdles run, and not a dungeon crawl (Somewhat same issue with Tomb). You fly through corridors, whack some easy mobs, then DPS check on the boss. I'm not sure why the discrepancy on the mobs and the boss. There are good opportunities to make it more streamlined, like the room with the altar, when you kill everything or sanctify, the werewolves come, in 5s, then you wait, then another 5... Bring them on, bring 15, and a group after another, not half day wait. Trigger the next one when 10 out of 15 dead... Similar the knights corridor, they come by pairs or so.. Bring them on, a weaker group has enough room to retreat and kite.
It's been said about the "hurry up and wait" mentality of last boss. Not challenging, not interesting, not fun. Again, the whole tempo is lost. I guess it will never get reworked, but those phases transitions are just wait and wait and wait. 80% of the time on the boss, you do nothing. I guess the red flames is the thing there, but people do not understand the timing of those, that the red will appear about 5 seconds after the flare, so it's like repeat lights/sound children games. But in practice no one needs to understand those, because everyone just tank it. So it's just stand there and wait.
and I can say, this is the most annoying tihng in the dungeon. Press Immediately and you are dead, wait, and dead, lag a bit and dead. There is no proper hint, the sentence one is mistimed, it should be right after the sentence, but it's not.
Thats the reason why some players exploit this. We all know the one "fancy" potion that helps here a lot and we all know how you can avoid it even if you dont have theese potions. TBH i dont think that should be the way to play an event. I still think no dev ever played this dungeon with the minimum gear and with all the events. I think they start the event at bosses with an devmode char and just check if the event starts. Job done. We players have to test it, die a lot, use scrolls and make feedback. Atm i cant see any feedback from a dev about all the issues posted here. Atm i cant see any dev who is asking "can i join a run with you and you show me where you think you got an issue?". Its just as allways. They are just waiting...and if enough players making claims about this dungeon they will "have a look on it".
Whats the problem to make this dungeon fun? I hate theese bats when they come outta nowhere. I ahte the raging sister when she thinks she has to jump around the whole place. I hate it when you cant see any red circle at arkolich and the red stripe ist just a visual bug. There are so many more fails in this dungeon why i cant make any run with fun. I just go in this dungeon to help my guildmates. But this dungeon is just dumb and no fun at all. Why cant someone from the devs/mods run with an regular grp this dungeon? Check for yourself how stupid some events are. Can you listen at least once to the community?
Comments
But most of all, imagine dungeons where the boss fights didn't involve a tedious adaptation to new mechanics that require every player to effectively play the same class rather than the one they chose to play, or don't involve sigh-inducing instadeath and overpowered, boring control and immunity mechanics.
* same as Mechanics are problematic with DOT´s at first boss
The moment you wiped once that sunbuff sometimes bugs and does not work properly any more. You get oneshottet by "mechanics" same as you get pretty much eaten when you drop in the cellar (depending on the class), same as that sword buggs - Daily not available - same as you sometimes are stuck in the ceiling and are send out, That´s not ok in my eyes.
The first boss can insta kill you with the pillar of power for no reason.
Sister of Rage can go on a teleporting fit throughout her whole fight.
2nd boss animations will break so you don't know WTF he is doing.
3rd boss will skip his glitchy room phase sometimes.
3rd boss Nightmare can disappear.
Batswarms are buggy as hell, sometimes doing HAMSTER tons of instant damage, none at all, or a steady stream of damage.
Onto the bad designed bits.
1st Boss
There needs to be a clearer indicator for the stacks, I can't change my UI to move my Debuff somewhere that is not cluttered full of HAMSTER, and it's not fun starting at a tiny square to the side of your screen.
2nd boss
1. Needs some audio cue so people know that they need to get hit by the "taunt" attack when he drops his sword or he starts spinning to win. No one would have any clue this is a mechanic if they didn't read up on it in the depths of the forums.
Final boss
1. Bat swarm attacks should not occur during the nightmare phase. If your healer goes down below and your party up top gets Batswarmed then you are screwed, forcing you to run with 2 healers to make the run work reliably. Sure you can P2W with scrolls but a dungeon should not be designed like that, nor force groups to take two healing classes when there is already a small pool of these classes compared to everything else
2. Batswarm needs a delay too. For this boss and 1st. Right now it can be dealt with with awareness if people are together, but if moving then voice coms can deal with it, but voice coms shouldn't be mandatory.
3. The red things should deal % of max health as damage. The way it works now discriminates against low HP classes (CW etc) that will get one shotted unless you can group mitigation classes, which further pigeon holes certain classes into the "required" group setup.
Other than these points, I really like the dungeon. It's challenging more on the teamwork side than the gear side similar to Valindra Tower (the original not the remake). Which I still think is the best boss fight the game has done so far. Unfortunately due to influx of scrolls, it seems like people are just bypassing much of the gameplay mechanics though that is not exactly cryptics fault as it is up to the players if they want to spend lots of AD to complete the dungeon, but it makes the quality of Pugging a lot worse.... A shame because I like pugging other content.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
What is the cue for the bat swarm attack? I cannot figure that part out.
> 1. Bat swarm attacks should not occur during the nightmare phase. If your healer goes down below and your party up top gets Batswarmed then you are screwed, forcing you to run with 2 healers to make the run work reliably.
>
>
>
> What is the cue for the bat swarm attack? I cannot figure that part out.
There isn't one. But there doesn't need to be one and the delay is very short. So we usually shout out or huddle up if we see it. I'll add this to my list since you can't make voice coms a requirement.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
"Leave no bone unpicked!"
I finished CR recently and... it was super boring. This dungeon is basically three boss fights with little to nothing in between them. ToNG was proper design and I feel like CR is nothing to enjoy. You get to first boss after 3 minutes where most of the time you wait when Strahd stops his talking. Not so much killing mobs.
Last boss mechanics is soooooo boring. Strahd is talking almost all the time. There is literally more time when I was waiting until he finishes his quotes than boss fight time.
Is this the future of Neverwinter dungeons? Fight with your yawn and survive the cutscenes?
On the sidenote - it looks amazing. Great job.
Strahd is not a good fight. If you got rid of the cutscenes and taunt phases, it would be a lot better. As it is, there is far too much waiting around. He's talking and can't be attacked, he's taunting and you shouldn't attack... And all the phase changes and we're fighting nightmares or whatever and not being able to do anything. Give him more HP and less phase changes, please.
And for the Gods' sake please let us skip the cutscenes through out the dungeon. Didn't people complain enough about Cradle, or what? Do I really need to see the Sister steal the sword every time?
2. fight, hmm, MSVA in "bad-mode"
3. fight, if you die once and lose that sunbuff, prepare to spam scrolls (squishy classes do like that), 16 scrolls was my worst so far
Got invited in a run at endboss... "top scorerer" > 40x dead, forgot what the timer said, some stay in there up to >six hours !
So avoid to pug, stay with your friends 24/7, buy enough scrolls and try to find a good OP - tact. GF - DC, otherwise stay outside.
This whole dungeon is based on perfect connection / no deleay whatsoever. Thats just dumb. We all know how "good" the connection is to Cryp. We all have tracert.
Lets wait till the "casuals" can join CR today and i think we will see a lot of hate threads about that ^^.
Overall, IMO, the sisters reflect while sucks for SoD it adds a bit more than just "Hold your mouse and mindlessly bash".
The cut scenes are annoying after a while (Though the dead sister one is funny), but at least they are not Baby length.
IMO the dungeon lacks a real dungeon tempo, it feels more like a rescue mission, a hurdles run, and not a dungeon crawl (Somewhat same issue with Tomb). You fly through corridors, whack some easy mobs, then DPS check on the boss.
I'm not sure why the discrepancy on the mobs and the boss.
There are good opportunities to make it more streamlined, like the room with the altar, when you kill everything or sanctify, the werewolves come, in 5s, then you wait, then another 5...
Bring them on, bring 15, and a group after another, not half day wait. Trigger the next one when 10 out of 15 dead...
Similar the knights corridor, they come by pairs or so.. Bring them on, a weaker group has enough room to retreat and kite.
It's been said about the "hurry up and wait" mentality of last boss. Not challenging, not interesting, not fun. Again, the whole tempo is lost. I guess it will never get reworked, but those phases transitions are just wait and wait and wait. 80% of the time on the boss, you do nothing.
I guess the red flames is the thing there, but people do not understand the timing of those, that the red will appear about 5 seconds after the flare, so it's like repeat lights/sound children games. But in practice no one needs to understand those, because everyone just tank it.
So it's just stand there and wait.
I still think no dev ever played this dungeon with the minimum gear and with all the events. I think they start the event at bosses with an devmode char and just check if the event starts. Job done. We players have to test it, die a lot, use scrolls and make feedback.
Atm i cant see any feedback from a dev about all the issues posted here. Atm i cant see any dev who is asking "can i join a run with you and you show me where you think you got an issue?". Its just as allways. They are just waiting...and if enough players making claims about this dungeon they will "have a look on it".
Why cant someone from the devs/mods run with an regular grp this dungeon? Check for yourself how stupid some events are.
Can you listen at least once to the community?