Biggest negative seems to be "We've paid our dues to get our one key that we keep using over and over until we get something we want. We shouldn't have to run content or *gasp* BUY keys."
Nop. Biggest issue is we got key changes without any anoncement to prepare and test this change. Getting legendary marks in sva is now much harder than before. Do you really think this is a good idea to run all campaigns again to gain keys if you maybe need only one speciel item? Relic weapons are the actual weapons. Why must it be so hard/expansive to get them? Why didnt the increase the droprate from legendary marks? Ppl with VIP and a lot keys may be happy about this change. But for a new player its unneccasery hard to get gear. To run the content you need gear. Just for your info.
Biggest negative seems to be "We've paid our dues to get our one key that we keep using over and over until we get something we want. We shouldn't have to run content or *gasp* BUY keys."
Nop. Biggest issue is we got key changes without any anoncement to prepare and test this change. Getting legendary marks in sva is now much harder than before. Do you really think this is a good idea to run all campaigns again to gain keys if you maybe need only one speciel item? Relic weapons are the actual weapons. Why must it be so hard/expansive to get them? Why didnt the increase the droprate from legendary marks? Ppl with VIP and a lot keys may be happy about this change. But for a new player its unneccasery hard to get gear. To run the content you need gear. Just for your info.
There was an announcement and it was in the preview around beginning of December. That was why there was a outcry and that was why there was a 'delay'. People predicted/described how bad this change would be at that time. I don't know any real player likes the key change. They may like the drop change. They may not hate the key change but nobody 'likes' the key change.
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
As I remember patch with key changes came to preview server first. Also there was x2 campaign resources event. So, I think developers did a lot to help us to prepare to these changes.
Key change on preview was january 5th. Live patch was january 12th. No information in one!!!! week ( i dont know if this period is long enough to get all the feedback you need as a dev). There was no information at october 2016 when they told us they wanna start with this keychange. So where excactly did the devs help us to prepare? Im just curious. For sva you cant "farm" keys, cuzz its limited ( for example).
1
greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,153Arc User
The key change was initially just the bug fix so that you couldn't see what was in the chest before deciding whether or not to expend the key.
They delayed that until they had a chance to rework the loot tables. The loot tables have been reworked and the key change went live.
Simple as that.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
0
lantern22Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,111Arc User
I still haven't seen any arguments from most of players who disagree. So, some players (not all) prefer to press disagree and troll the author instead sending useful feedback which helps to the game. Regrettably..
In this thread I described my opinion. You have your opinion. If you have some ideas about aspects of game that in your opinion should be improved you should write detailed feedback about it. Flaming isn't decision.
I don't really need to say anything other than I disagree, and you know what I'm not alone there.
You think the change is great, awesome for you. Personally I haven't had any better drops in almost a week (or maybe more, not sure) from any of the chests since the change. All of my greater demonic keys are gone and for nothing but garbage. I don't even bother checking the chests in Demo / eDEMO anymore cause it going to be a waste of time. If you can't understand why that makes me disagree with your thread here, think harder.
You know what, saying the state of the rewards is awesome, cause you got one good drop first time around, that's not helping the game either. First time I opened a lock box I got a 500K drop, but virtually nothing since then, that first drop doesn't make lockboxes rewards great or worth the keys (other than VIP) - in fact I am so unexcited about lock boxes, I have around 50 keys sitting there with no motivation to use them.
The key change was initially just the bug fix so that you couldn't see what was in the chest before deciding whether or not to expend the key.
Ofc. It was such a "well known" bug that mods give players the hint to look in chests and decline if they dont like the reward to keep the keys... ( you can search this very easy). So...we dont got other bugs or maybe this key "bug" is so important cuzz they can generate money with this change? The community told thousand times that droprates are horrable. NOW they finally realized that and give us better droprates. But....0,01% increasing to 0,05% is still worse. They just forgot SVA and the marks. Try to make relict weapons after this key change. Its a pain in the HAMSTER and absolutely no fun at all.
BTW: Does anyone remember this anouncement?
"As part of this change we are also lowering the cost of the Zen store item “Legendary Dragon Key 5-Pack” from 300 Zen to 250 Zen."
Whats the actual price for this Dragon Key 5 Pack?
The key change was initially just the bug fix so that you couldn't see what was in the chest before deciding whether or not to expend the key.
Ofc. It was such a "well known" bug that mods give players the hint to look in chests and decline if they dont like the reward to keep the keys... ( you can search this very easy). So...we dont got other bugs or maybe this key "bug" is so important cuzz they can generate money with this change? The community told thousand times that droprates are horrable. NOW they finally realized that and give us better droprates. But....0,01% increasing to 0,05% is still worse. They just forgot SVA and the marks. Try to make relict weapons after this key change. Its a pain in the HAMSTER and absolutely no fun at all.
BTW: Does anyone remember this anouncement?
"As part of this change we are also lowering the cost of the Zen store item “Legendary Dragon Key 5-Pack” from 300 Zen to 250 Zen."
Whats the actual price for this Dragon Key 5 Pack?
Are you really still trying for the relics? Mod 11 will make them obsolete, same with your time and effort.
There was some bait announcement by someone (a dev or sth) that the Relic Weaps would be your best choice for some time...
Good thing I stopped believing ANYTHING they say post Tarm bar store COAL WARD REMOVAL, or do we all have such short memory ?
So there are ppl like the OP or myself with hundreds of VIP keys, good for us, and the rest who hurt due to this changes.
Just bc I have hundreds of keys and 6 viable chars, this is not a good change for the general population. Even now I saw a significant drop in lfg due to the fact, that most ppl dont have the (free) keys anymore.
And for everyone the SVA changes are simply stupid.
You're basically implying that people were taking their daily dungeon key and running through dungeons 17+ times until they got a +4 and a transmute from CN or some nonsense.
The people this actually hurts are the people that have a pile of dragon keys they were expecting to get 60k+ out of. Everyone else is basically in the same spot with a chance at better drops.
The only outlier is SVA but mod 11 is killing that anyways.
Thats what I have seen. A friend plays a SW, period. He gets one free key and 3 VIP a day. One one busy weekend we did 30-40 runs with him, until he burned his keys. He just took valuable loot and still he was done after some time. Now he is done after a few runs.
Another friend returned after an hiatus of a few month. He did not bother, to log in, to claim his VIP keys. When he played, he was very active and never had an surplus of keys. Now he has to change character after a few runs, to open a chest.
With a good group most farm runs (except FBI) take 5-10 minutes. In ca. 3 hours thats 15-20 keys. I dont have the time to play 3h a day and I get 3 keys on each char, so I wont run out of keys in some time. An active player with one or two chars and VIP will run out of keys in no time.
Furthermore, there are still some players without VIP.
Totally agree with the new changes. I haven't gotten that much from the chests but other players have. For the first time after years i want to open a chest and check what is in. I have a 4k TR and couldnt even get an orcus' shard cause of the price (imagine newer players). Now i can finally give a big, but fair amount of AD and get it. Other than that you get many other various loots from their chests and not the old same boring stuff. Only thing i disagree is the MSVA. You will never get all the legendary marks, even if you die grinding keys and runs.
Totally agree with the new changes. I haven't gotten that much from the chests but other players have. For the first time after years i want to open a chest and check what is in. I have a 4k TR and couldnt even get an orcus' shard cause of the price (imagine newer players). Now i can finally give a big, but fair amount of AD and get it. Other than that you get many other various loots from their chests and not the old same boring stuff. Only thing i disagree is the MSVA. You will never get all the legendary marks, even if you die grinding keys and runs.
Yeah its cool for awhile until you complete your colection and AH prices go down for those unbound stuff. Transmutes in other hand are very pretty, I was hype for like 5 sec then I realize everyone dropping thousand of them.
Totally agree with the new changes. I haven't gotten that much from the chests but other players have. For the first time after years i want to open a chest and check what is in. I have a 4k TR and couldnt even get an orcus' shard cause of the price (imagine newer players). Now i can finally give a big, but fair amount of AD and get it. Other than that you get many other various loots from their chests and not the old same boring stuff. Only thing i disagree is the MSVA. You will never get all the legendary marks, even if you die grinding keys and runs.
There's no need for Legendary marks for the Relics...look ahead into the future....
Check out the preview forum...there's a new weapon set coming on mod 11....bye bye relics, sad for people who grinded their minds out to get them.
Ha ha. That was a good one. Thx for that. I can see from module to module how devs listened to feedback from players and the community.
1) I am absolutely sure that players can draw attention of developers to their feedback. I know this because I have experience in this. Developers really reading our feedback (not all of course because number of players is much more than developers). And I think it is really unique and amazing our ability to have dialog with game developer because I had never seen something like this in other projects. I think we should be really grateful to them for this ability.
2) Game development is really very very hard process. Usual user of PC just can't understand how hard it is. It takes much time and it requires a lot of effort to create content that players were asking for and to introduce it into the game. It takes not few days. I mean if something hadn't happened during even one-two weeks or months after writing your thread it doesn't mean that developers ignored you.
3) Developers have much much more experience in game development than most of us (this is evident i think). And we as usual players just can't have a look at all situation while developers can. That is why sometimes we call strange some decisions of developers. It happens because they see much more than usual players I think. And if they done something or not done I'm sure there were reasons for that.
... Question: how in the heck can you be so delusional? Seriously, HOW? Did you practice? Or did your parents throw you down a few flights of stairs for kicks? I think I'm going to throw up...
Erm pretty much everything he said is spot on. Game developers actually communicating with users is a relatively new concept. Most of them hide so they don't violate NDAs or make promises they can't keep.
Erm pretty much everything he said is spot on. Game developers actually communicating with users is a relatively new concept. Most of them hide so they don't violate NDAs or make promises they can't keep.
Pretty sure most of our wishes are diametrically opposed to what the management (good profit) will be ready to give us. Most players ask for warm ice cream. I don't consider that "feedback". They want it all, for free, and mostly only for themselves and not for other players ("yes, drops are way better, but if everyone gets a Shard of Orcus Wand I cannot sell mine for 5 million AD"). It won't be as easy as it was before to maintain a 20 dungeon run weekend without spending $$$.
Imaginary Friends are the best friends you can have!
Totally agree with the new changes. I haven't gotten that much from the chests but other players have. For the first time after years i want to open a chest and check what is in. I have a 4k TR and couldnt even get an orcus' shard cause of the price (imagine newer players). Now i can finally give a big, but fair amount of AD and get it. Other than that you get many other various loots from their chests and not the old same boring stuff. Only thing i disagree is the MSVA. You will never get all the legendary marks, even if you die grinding keys and runs.
There's no need for Legendary marks for the Relics...look ahead into the future....
Check out the preview forum...there's a new weapon set coming on mod 11....bye bye relics, sad for people who grinded their minds out to get them.
lol) 1. just discarded those relic weapon after i seen how much time need for grind 2. there is no place where you realy need it(only if you want do all stuff solo)
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bluebubbl3sMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 121Arc User
So i am wondering if i am reading too much into this whole key change thing.... yes, we can all see its a money grab for people to buy legendary dragon keys... but i am wondering if there is a bigger picture here.
Putting all of the other stuff like grinding to make the keys and how many keys you need aside, i thought about these increased loot drops. ok its not significant, but its happening, random stuff is dropping for all sorts of chests and people are starting to pick up some useful things. useful to the end game players who run dungeons for fun and to sell the loot... so more often than not an item drops that is sellable and we all start getting them and then the AH is saturated with all this decent stuff for people to buy.
so simple economics. supply is greater than demand, prices drop. great for new players who need to buy the gear, everyone is happy. but are they??
the prices of items drop on the ah, including the random rare items (which arent as rare, example the orcus wand which is about a quarter of what it used to be worth a few weeks ago), and then all of a sudden a player who picks up something that was previously worth a HAMSTER ton, is sitting on something half or less of its value. what happens when a player has a lot less ad? they have less ad to convert to Zen.... see where i am going here?
if you take away the access to free zen, then the only way to get zen is to purchase it.
am i underestimating a players ability to earn ad? or am i onto something here? i wonder if we will start to see newer items start to go on the zen market that are worth buying...
Blue, I think you're giving the devs too much credit for ingenious evilness.
Two points on that; firstly a lot of the drops are bound. Secondly, only a small number of players actually got an Orcus Shard to drop so whilst they made millions, the economic impact wouldn't be high. Increasing the amount available by x10 and thus dropping the AH price to ~400-500k would actually spread earnings across a greater number of players.
To be clear, I am against locking chest keys behind the zen market paywall and believe the keys should be available from the Dungeon Chest Keymaster for a fixed reasonable price and that all items should be BoE unless a specific item has a good reason not to be. This is how the game started out and I firmly believe this is how it should continue.
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
So i am wondering if i am reading too much into this whole key change thing.... yes, we can all see its a money grab for people to buy legendary dragon keys... but i am wondering if there is a bigger picture here.
Putting all of the other stuff like grinding to make the keys and how many keys you need aside, i thought about these increased loot drops. ok its not significant, but its happening, random stuff is dropping for all sorts of chests and people are starting to pick up some useful things. useful to the end game players who run dungeons for fun and to sell the loot... so more often than not an item drops that is sellable and we all start getting them and then the AH is saturated with all this decent stuff for people to buy.
so simple economics. supply is greater than demand, prices drop. great for new players who need to buy the gear, everyone is happy. but are they??
the prices of items drop on the ah, including the random rare items (which arent as rare, example the orcus wand which is about a quarter of what it used to be worth a few weeks ago), and then all of a sudden a player who picks up something that was previously worth a HAMSTER ton, is sitting on something half or less of its value. what happens when a player has a lot less ad? they have less ad to convert to Zen.... see where i am going here?
if you take away the access to free zen, then the only way to get zen is to purchase it.
am i underestimating a players ability to earn ad? or am i onto something here? i wonder if we will start to see newer items start to go on the zen market that are worth buying...
oh, am i am not sure i like the changes at all.
432 zen per day, if you play couple of hours and have atleast 6 toons. No need to purchase anything.There is literally nothing else to buy beside VIP anyway.. All packs are overpriced and outdated.
Totally agree with the new changes. I haven't gotten that much from the chests but other players have. For the first time after years i want to open a chest and check what is in. I have a 4k TR and couldnt even get an orcus' shard cause of the price (imagine newer players). Now i can finally give a big, but fair amount of AD and get it. Other than that you get many other various loots from their chests and not the old same boring stuff. Only thing i disagree is the MSVA. You will never get all the legendary marks, even if you die grinding keys and runs.
There's no need for Legendary marks for the Relics...look ahead into the future....
Check out the preview forum...there's a new weapon set coming on mod 11....bye bye relics, sad for people who grinded their minds out to get them.
lol) 1. just discarded those relic weapon after i seen how much time need for grind 2. there is no place where you realy need it(only if you want do all stuff solo)
Underdark set works just fine for me doing solo stuff... Did the same thing as you, ditched any idea of farming for relics and boy was I happy. Mod 11 will bring in a new set.
Just wanted to share my experience a week after release. Keep in mind, that I had to work late most days, so it might be better at other times.
Most of my friends were offline. I tried to build a group with one of the online players. After writing in lfg and various channels a random que, VT, popped up and we entered. He did 20 times the dmg of the other 3 combined, my char tanked most of the time and did 10 times their dmg combined, I was online with my DC running a buff/debuff build and powers.
We had similar results in some other runs. No result in lfg (tbh I could have found a group for my DC or my GF anytime, but I would not leave him behind). If you did get grouped, most of the chars were badly geared alts.
We ended up building a group with 3 offline chars of mine, running VT and SOT duo. These runs were as fast as the qued runs minus the waiting for the que to pop. While this is somehow fun and possible, if your chars are 3k+, I still dont see the good for the 'normal' player.
BTW I dont want to imply, that I am an exceptional player, but most players dont have various +3k chars with R12 bondings and all the other goodies, they can run a dungeon with.
Just wanted to share my experience a week after release. Keep in mind, that I had to work late most days, so it might be better at other times.
Most of my friends were offline. I tried to build a group with one of the online players. After writing in lfg and various channels a random que, VT, popped up and we entered. He did 20 times the dmg of the other 3 combined, my char tanked most of the time and did 10 times their dmg combined, I was online with my DC running a buff/debuff build and powers.
We had similar results in some other runs. No result in lfg (tbh I could have found a group for my DC or my GF anytime, but I would not leave him behind). If you did get grouped, most of the chars were badly geared alts.
We ended up building a group with 3 offline chars of mine, running VT and SOT duo. These runs were as fast as the qued runs minus the waiting for the que to pop. While this is somehow fun and possible, if your chars are 3k+, I still dont see the good for the 'normal' player.
BTW I dont want to imply, that I am an exceptional player, but most players dont have various +3k chars with R12 bondings and all the other goodies, they can run a dungeon with.
Join a guild (or a more active one)? There are plenty of guilds with low ilvl requirements that are willing to help members with dungeons as long as you're active.
Just wanted to share my experience a week after release. Keep in mind, that I had to work late most days, so it might be better at other times.
Most of my friends were offline. I tried to build a group with one of the online players. After writing in lfg and various channels a random que, VT, popped up and we entered. He did 20 times the dmg of the other 3 combined, my char tanked most of the time and did 10 times their dmg combined, I was online with my DC running a buff/debuff build and powers.
We had similar results in some other runs. No result in lfg (tbh I could have found a group for my DC or my GF anytime, but I would not leave him behind). If you did get grouped, most of the chars were badly geared alts.
We ended up building a group with 3 offline chars of mine, running VT and SOT duo. These runs were as fast as the qued runs minus the waiting for the que to pop. While this is somehow fun and possible, if your chars are 3k+, I still dont see the good for the 'normal' player.
BTW I dont want to imply, that I am an exceptional player, but most players dont have various +3k chars with R12 bondings and all the other goodies, they can run a dungeon with.
Join a guild (or a more active one)? There are plenty of guilds with low ilvl requirements that are willing to help members with dungeons as long as you're active.
I am in a big international guild/ alliance. Thing is, that at the time I stop working weekdays European players are already offline and Americans did not start playing.
The people this actually hurts are the people that have a pile of dragon keys they were expecting to get 60k+ out of. Everyone else is basically in the same spot with a chance at better drops.
The only outlier is SVA but mod 11 is killing that anyways.
Why would dragon key sales be hurt now that there is more need for them?? And yes, it hurts those of us in the middle of SVA runs for Legendary--if we bother to continue.
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santralafaxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,896Arc User
Biggest negative seems to be "We've paid our dues to get our one key that we keep using over and over until we get something we want. We shouldn't have to run content or *gasp* BUY keys."
Have YOU been running Svardborg? I can't use any of my PAID VIP keys there. I have been BUYING legendary dragon keys for some runs, but at 3 chests (not classed EPIC, apparently) per run for an infinite number of runs? I'll tell ya about "buggy".
Ppl with VIP and a lot keys may be happy about this change. But for a new player its unneccasery hard to get gear. To run the content you need gear. Just for your info.
Comments
Do you really think this is a good idea to run all campaigns again to gain keys if you maybe need only one speciel item? Relic weapons are the actual weapons. Why must it be so hard/expansive to get them? Why didnt the increase the droprate from legendary marks?
Ppl with VIP and a lot keys may be happy about this change. But for a new player its unneccasery hard to get gear. To run the content you need gear. Just for your info.
They delayed that until they had a chance to rework the loot tables. The loot tables have been reworked and the key change went live.
Simple as that.
You think the change is great, awesome for you. Personally I haven't had any better drops in almost a week (or maybe more, not sure) from any of the chests since the change. All of my greater demonic keys are gone and for nothing but garbage. I don't even bother checking the chests in Demo / eDEMO anymore cause it going to be a waste of time. If you can't understand why that makes me disagree with your thread here, think harder.
You know what, saying the state of the rewards is awesome, cause you got one good drop first time around, that's not helping the game either. First time I opened a lock box I got a 500K drop, but virtually nothing since then, that first drop doesn't make lockboxes rewards great or worth the keys (other than VIP) - in fact I am so unexcited about lock boxes, I have around 50 keys sitting there with no motivation to use them.
One swallow does not make a summer.
The community told thousand times that droprates are horrable. NOW they finally realized that and give us better droprates. But....0,01% increasing to 0,05% is still worse. They just forgot SVA and the marks. Try to make relict weapons after this key change. Its a pain in the HAMSTER and absolutely no fun at all.
BTW: Does anyone remember this anouncement?
"As part of this change we are also lowering the cost of the Zen store item “Legendary Dragon Key 5-Pack” from 300 Zen to 250 Zen."
Whats the actual price for this Dragon Key 5 Pack?
Mod 11 will make them obsolete, same with your time and effort.
There was some bait announcement by someone (a dev or sth) that the Relic Weaps would be your best choice for some time...
Good thing I stopped believing ANYTHING they say post Tarm bar store COAL WARD REMOVAL, or do we all have such short memory ?
Another friend returned after an hiatus of a few month. He did not bother, to log in, to claim his VIP keys. When he played, he was very active and never had an surplus of keys. Now he has to change character after a few runs, to open a chest.
With a good group most farm runs (except FBI) take 5-10 minutes. In ca. 3 hours thats 15-20 keys. I dont have the time to play 3h a day and I get 3 keys on each char, so I wont run out of keys in some time. An active player with one or two chars and VIP will run out of keys in no time.
Furthermore, there are still some players without VIP.
Check out the preview forum...there's a new weapon set coming on mod 11....bye bye relics, sad for people who grinded their minds out to get them.
Most players ask for warm ice cream. I don't consider that "feedback". They want it all, for free, and mostly only for themselves and not for other players ("yes, drops are way better, but if everyone gets a Shard of Orcus Wand I cannot sell mine for 5 million AD"). It won't be as easy as it was before to maintain a 20 dungeon run weekend without spending $$$.
lol)
1. just discarded those relic weapon after i seen how much time need for grind
2. there is no place where you realy need it(only if you want do all stuff solo)
Putting all of the other stuff like grinding to make the keys and how many keys you need aside, i thought about these increased loot drops. ok its not significant, but its happening, random stuff is dropping for all sorts of chests and people are starting to pick up some useful things. useful to the end game players who run dungeons for fun and to sell the loot... so more often than not an item drops that is sellable and we all start getting them and then the AH is saturated with all this decent stuff for people to buy.
so simple economics. supply is greater than demand, prices drop. great for new players who need to buy the gear, everyone is happy. but are they??
the prices of items drop on the ah, including the random rare items (which arent as rare, example the orcus wand which is about a quarter of what it used to be worth a few weeks ago), and then all of a sudden a player who picks up something that was previously worth a HAMSTER ton, is sitting on something half or less of its value. what happens when a player has a lot less ad? they have less ad to convert to Zen.... see where i am going here?
if you take away the access to free zen, then the only way to get zen is to purchase it.
am i underestimating a players ability to earn ad? or am i onto something here? i wonder if we will start to see newer items start to go on the zen market that are worth buying...
oh, am i am not sure i like the changes at all.
Guild Leader - Valaurakari Ascension
VA is the creator and proud member of The Round Table Alliance
Two points on that; firstly a lot of the drops are bound. Secondly, only a small number of players actually got an Orcus Shard to drop so whilst they made millions, the economic impact wouldn't be high. Increasing the amount available by x10 and thus dropping the AH price to ~400-500k would actually spread earnings across a greater number of players.
To be clear, I am against locking chest keys behind the zen market paywall and believe the keys should be available from the Dungeon Chest Keymaster for a fixed reasonable price and that all items should be BoE unless a specific item has a good reason not to be. This is how the game started out and I firmly believe this is how it should continue.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
Did the same thing as you, ditched any idea of farming for relics and boy was I happy.
Mod 11 will bring in a new set.
Most of my friends were offline. I tried to build a group with one of the online players. After writing in lfg and various channels a random que, VT, popped up and we entered. He did 20 times the dmg of the other 3 combined, my char tanked most of the time and did 10 times their dmg combined, I was online with my DC running a buff/debuff build and powers.
We had similar results in some other runs. No result in lfg (tbh I could have found a group for my DC or my GF anytime, but I would not leave him behind). If you did get grouped, most of the chars were badly geared alts.
We ended up building a group with 3 offline chars of mine, running VT and SOT duo. These runs were as fast as the qued runs minus the waiting for the que to pop. While this is somehow fun and possible, if your chars are 3k+, I still dont see the good for the 'normal' player.
BTW I dont want to imply, that I am an exceptional player, but most players dont have various +3k chars with R12 bondings and all the other goodies, they can run a dungeon with.