Should the Dragon Heroic Encounters Be Converted to Skirmishes?

d4rthd00fus · August 2014

It's become obvious that the current structure for the HE zones in Rothe Valley and Whispering Caverns have devolved into an impossible mess where everyone instance hops killing dragon after dragon and nearly always coming away with a few coins and an R3 enchant. It is an exercise in frustration. It's widely known that Cryptic had to rush this Mod to coincide with the WoTC release of Tyranny of Dragons world wide and some things may not have been thought through completely. I want to pose a possible fix for this situation and see what you all think.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

Poll didn't come over, but I think yes. They should have been skirmishes all along. The HE thing is clearly problematic and needs to be done away with.

The idea itself is interesting.. if they introduce random spawn points for special encounters.. just not farmable ones. Eliminate the camping and the instance switching/flooding and it will have some entertainment value. Right now, it is just a drag in so many ways.

zebular · August 2014

I'd like to see them stay as Heroic Encounters but also include a Skirmish for each Dragon HE designed for 5 players. This will allow solo and casual players to play at their own pace while allowing them and other play-styles to experience a richer design of the fight via a specialized Skirmish, as well as allow for more customized rewards or ways to gain existing rewards.

I do like the idea of Random Spawn points for each of the Dragon HE's. I assumed this is how it would be, a mighty Dragon randomly swooping down somewhere in a specific Zone.

Mod Note:
I added an "Other Idea (Post Below)" option and reworded the options to keep the poll unbiased.

cheesegromit · August 2014

Typical internet game poll I see ;P. Edit: looks like the wording on the options has been edited. /edit

HE are preferrable as far as I'm concerned. I'm the solo casual player zebular thought to consider.

Is there evidence to suggest rewards are better with a smaller team?

d4rthd00fus · August 2014

zebular wrote: »

I'd like to see them stay as Heroic Encounters but also include a Skirmish for each Dragon HE designed for 5 players. This will allow solo and casual players to play at their own pace while allowing them and other play-styles to experience a richer design of the fight via a specialized Skirmish, as well as allow for more customized rewards or ways to gain existing rewards.

I do like the idea of Random Spawn points for each of the Dragon HE's. I assumed this is how it would be, a mighty Dragon randomly swooping down somewhere in a specific Zone.

Mod Note:
I added an "Other Idea (Post Below)" option and reworded to keep the poll unbiased.

Yea, as part of the quest line the current version of the HEs is fine and might work well if not so overloaded that game engine slows to a crawl and folks stand such a small chance at a good drop. I think getting the folks who want to run them over and over into a different version might help this.

d4rthd00fus · August 2014

cheesegromit wrote: »

Typical internet game poll I see ;P. Edit: looks like the wording on the options has been edited. /edit

HE are preferrable as far as I'm concerned. I'm the solo casual player zebular thought to consider.

Is there evidence to suggest rewards are better with a smaller team?

The chances of getting boots/artifact/gloves went down considerably when we started seeing 45+ players melting the dragon in under 10 seconds. I really don't think this is how Cryptic envisioned these things working though.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

zebular wrote: »

I'd like to see them stay as Heroic Encounters but also include a Skirmish for each Dragon HE designed for 5 players. This will allow solo and casual players to play at their own pace while allowing them and other play-styles to experience a richer design of the fight via a specialized Skirmish, as well as allow for more customized rewards or ways to gain existing rewards.

I do like the idea of Random Spawn points for each of the Dragon HE's. I assumed this is how it would be, a mighty Dragon randomly swooping down somewhere in a specific Zone.

Mod Note:
I added an "Other Idea (Post Below)" option and reworded the options to keep the poll unbiased.

I like this. More options is a good thing. Both in the poll and in the game.

The idea of something unexpected and powerful swooping down out of nowhere is what this game lacks. Introduce random encounter tables!!! I am willing to use some Injury Kits to support it! XD

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

d4rthd00fus wrote: »

The chances of getting boots/artifact/gloves went down considerably when we started seeing 45+ players melting the dragon in under 10 seconds. I really don't think this is how Cryptic envisioned these things working though.

In IWD, there are plenty of posts suggesting that getting the success level needed was based on how one did compared to others... (DC's and GF's suffered.) I didn't do them, as they are more headache than I need.. but one observes..

(EDIT- If there is to be a comparison, then it needs to be class-based. Pick a minimum set of results for each class, in case of lone class turn-out. And then let DC's compete only with other DC's and GF vs GF)

My SW has gotten 'great success' on every single encounter in mod4, and just gets junk... the same exact junk he got on the one time that he (needfully, and accidentally) afk'd through. That is a little pathetic and counter productive, but..

vinceent1 · August 2014

bad thing cryptic profit from this mess, people just buy more keys to get gear from lockboxes. i am here from december and dont remember devs ever solved this issues. still black ice gloves are very hard to get for many.

hustin1 · August 2014

I don't know that having random spawn points really solves anything. IWD has that for the beholder and you still get massive zerging, though the irregular and less frequent respawn time probably contributes a lot to that phenomenon. If the dragons swooped down in random locations, you'd still have a zergfest within 90 seconds; the dragon is on a known timer and so players would simply have to get to wherever the dragon is. You'd have players congregating in whatever part of the zone minimized the average travel time to the known spawn locations (which would come from a finite set, even if randomly chosen).

I thought about locking out the area once the players reached a threshold but that would just encourage camping and lock out everyone else, so that doesn't work either. Maybe a per-player cooldown timer that limited how often you could benefit from the encounter? For example, if you could only benefit from the one in Whispering Caverns once per hour (or 2 hours, pick a number), it would remove some of the incentive to jump instances.

Whether it's via a skirmish mechanism or a cooldown timer, or something else, ultimately we're talking about some form of throttling mechanism. (points to Cryptic employees) You live in CA, the land of metered on-ramps (we have them here in PA, too, but they're only used once in a while). They seemed to work pretty well the last time I had to fly out there. What's the best way to throttle down a zergfest?

cheesegromit · August 2014

chaoscourtesan wrote: »

In IWD, there are plenty of posts suggesting that getting the success level needed was based on how one did compared to others... (DC's and GF's suffered.) I didn't do them, as they are more headache than I need.. but one observes..

My SW has gotten 'great success' on every single encounter in mod4, and just gets junk... the same exact junk he got on the one time that he (needfully, and accidentally) afk'd through. That is a little pathetic and counter productive, but..

How exactly are people comparing their performance with others? I certainly have no idea. I'm dubious about player observations, some people are extremely astute but others ... not so much. I'm sure I saw a post where are guild was analysing their results but I forget where that was to check if there are updates.

I've been playing primarily with my GF and SW as she levels. All but one of my drops have been coins and a rank 3 or 4 enchant. I did get the Draconic gauntlets as my sole 'success'. I did block at lot more with my GF on that one success but I've tried that on subsequent occasions with no repeat. *shrug* Until someone comes up with some compelling evidence or there's dev confirmation of the underlying mechanics I'm going with 'Neverwinter rng'.

hustin1 wrote: »

You live in CA, the land of metered on-ramps (we have them here in PA, too, but they're only used once in a while). They seemed to work pretty well the last time I had to fly out there.

Slightly off topic but we have those on the Auckland motorway, assuming we're talking about the same thing. Probably a good thing for the flow of motorway traffic but they've clogged up side streets that lead to the on-ramps. In-game that'd be like have a queue to get into the HE/skirmish. Call me strange because I know we have wait times now but the HE dragon wait times are preferable to skirmish type wait times,. I guess it's because they're more transparent.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

cheesegromit wrote: »

How exactly are people comparing their performance with others? I certainly have no idea. I'm dubious about player observations, some people are extremely astute but others ... not so much. I'm sure I saw a post where are guild was analysing their results but I forget where that was to check if there are updates.

I said nothing about players comparing their performance with others. What I said is that I saw posts that indicated to me that the GF's were having a hard time because they didn't do enough damage, and DC's were having a worse time for reasons that I don't know. (There were posts saying to other DC's how to out-heal.. by not buffing others, not standing in anyone else's AS... etc.)

What I meant, was that it (like I said I didn't do IWD, so APPARENTLY) requires a 'great success' to have a chance at a drop. And that has to be based on something. I've got great success on one encounter and did the same exact thing on the next and didn't get it. So I have to assume that I was out performed.

You can call folks astute or non-astute and shrug all you like.

I just took the time to post that I think that if performance is to be a factor, GFs shouldn't be competing against CWs and GWFs for damage and DC's shouldn't be competing against mad lifesteal for healing.. Does that make me a bad man? LOL

cheesegromit · August 2014

chaoscourtesan wrote: »

I said nothing about players comparing their performance with others. What I said is that I saw posts that indicated to me that the GF's were having a hard time because they didn't do enough damage, and DC's were having a worse time for reasons that I don't know. (There were posts saying to other DC's how to out-heal.. by not buffing others, not standing in anyone else's AS... etc.)

What I meant, was that it (like I said I didn't do IWD, so APPARENTLY) requires a 'great success' to have a chance at a drop. And that has to be based on something. I've got great success on one encounter and did the same exact thing on the next and didn't get it. So I have to assume that I was out performed.

You can call folks astute or non-astute and shrug all you like.

I just took the time to post that I think that if performance is to be a factor, GFs shouldn't be competing against CWs and GWFs for damage and DC's shouldn't be competing against mad lifesteal for healing.. Does that make me a bad man? LOL

You misunderstand, my post was perhaps more of a general question based on your comments rather than being directed at you. Perhaps I should have chosen a different method of expressing that rather than directly quoting you. My bad.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

No problem, Mr. Gromit. Re-reading my post, I see that it was more abrasive than I intended. So apologies to you, as well.

laks0n · August 2014

I have been seeing a lot of conflicting info on this, so I'll just ask outright here: Is there a chance, no matter how small, to get mainhand/head from IWD encounters when you dont get great success, same question applies to rewards on ToD encounters?

iambecks1 · August 2014

cheesegromit wrote: »

Until someone comes up with some compelling evidence or there's dev confirmation of the underlying mechanics I'm going with 'Neverwinter rng'.

That is exactly what it comes down to , both regular success and great success have a chance to get good rewards but great success has a slightly better chance at least up to the artifact drop , that has been confirmed by panderus here -

The Rod of Imperial Restraint artifact has a decreased drop rate for participation less than Great Success in the Venfithar (Rothe Valley) and Vilithrax (Whispering Caverns) Heroic Encounters. Great Success in the Heroic Encounters remains the same.

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?736221-Tyranny-of-Dragons-Preview-Patch-Notes-NW-25-2014081a-4&p=8763191&viewfull=1#post8763191

str8slayer · August 2014

I have a better idea, how about a script that can detect how many people are participating in any given HE and scale the difficulty to suit the number of people. I don't care if you quadruple the spawns or make them ten times harder to kill but this seems like a reasonable course of action.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

iambecks1 wrote: »

That is exactly what it comes down to , both regular success and great success have a chance to get good rewards but great success has a slightly better chance at least up to the artifact drop , that has been confirmed by panderus here -

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?736221-Tyranny-of-Dragons-Preview-Patch-Notes-NW-25-2014081a-4&p=8763191&viewfull=1#post8763191

That is huge when you are talking about .HAMSTER chance at best to start with. So it does seem significant, and how 'Great success' is determined needs to be published.

I can say that I have about 40 great successes, which panned out to about 190 dra-coiny things, which I don't care about, maybe 25 r3 enchants that I don't care about and 14 or so r4 enchants that I don't care about.

iambecks1 · August 2014

chaoscourtesan wrote: »

That is huge when you are talking about .HAMSTER chance at best to start with. So it does seem significant, and how 'Great success' is determined needs to be published.

Yeah the drop chance sure is super low but it still is possible for both regular success and great success , I farmed Whispering caverns on and off all day yesterday I did the HE there 42 times altogether ( I know how many times because I made two spaces in my currency bag which were full when I logged off ) and in 42 tries with at least two thirds being great success I got nada , zip , zero except coins and rank four enchantments , at this point I'll be glad when I can get the Skirmish and Dungeon opened and forget about these stupid HE's..

charononus · August 2014

chaoscourtesan wrote: »

That is huge when you are talking about .HAMSTER chance at best to start with. So it does seem significant, and how 'Great success' is determined needs to be published.

I can say that I have about 40 great successes, which panned out to about 190 dra-coiny things, which I don't care about, maybe 25 r3 enchants that I don't care about and 14 or so r4 enchants that I don't care about.

First what I've looted for comparison.
I have about 100 great successes, out of which I've gotten 8 draconic gloves and 1 draconic boots, 2 dragon bones, 3 dragon bone pact blades, 1 dragon bone orb, and 1 dragon bone great axe or whatever the gwf one is called. And tons of enchants and campaign currency.

About the poll though

I like the concept of HE's, though they need a little tweaking. They are the only bosses in the game where you can have more than 5 people (not counting the blasphemer). They push the danger level up on them a bit farther and HE's can turn into open world raiding.

adinosii · August 2014

The easiest workaround to the current problem is:

Lower the player-per-instance limit in Whispering caverns at least to 20 (down from 40), or better yet...down to 15.

In addition (but that's not as critical)

Prevent people from inviting others into instances that are already full, as they can now bypass the limit.

As it is, the Whispering Caverns HE is just an annoying joke, instead of being an enjoyable challenge. Rothé Valley has a limit of 20 and is not as bad ... lowering it to 15 as well would improve it though.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

charononus wrote: »

First what I've looted for comparison.
I have about 100 great successes, out of which I've gotten 8 draconic gloves and 1 draconic boots, 2 dragon bones, 3 dragon bone pact blades, 1 dragon bone orb, and 1 dragon bone great axe or whatever the gwf one is called. And tons of enchants and campaign currency.

Wow. At nearly 50% same success (40) I've seen not one of those things. Except coins and enchants. Enchants is how I know how many..

charononus wrote: »

I like the concept of HE's, though they need a little tweaking. They are the only bosses in the game where you can have more than 5 people (not counting the blasphemer). They push the danger level up on them a bit farther and HE's can turn into open world raiding.

There is a danger level? I can't recall taking any noticeable damage. XD Except the two or three times I got killed from some unknown damage source which took me from full to dead in a blink (I think it was some mob that crept up behind. Not sure the Dragon itself is actually dangerous.. more of a pinata.)

hitmark · August 2014

What is annoying for me is that while we are all standing there idling my framerate etc is just fine. But the moment the dragon lands and everyone starts spamming their stored up dailies and whatsnot it turns into a slideshow. Never mind that since IWD the targeting has become downright HAMSTER. I can have the dragon perfectly in my sight and some bottom of the barrel add runs by and all of a sudden i am aiming off into the distance because apparently that add was a much more important target. Meaning that i don't know if am hitting the dragon, some random add, or some moss on a nearby rock.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

I hear ya. It's just another reason why these should be skirmishes.

ashworthrd99 · August 2014

I agree that there should be a cool down per zone per dragon per player. Kill the dragon in neverdeath and you have to wait 2 hours before you can get any reward from killing the dragon again. And I also agree there should be special skirmish type encounters for each dragon. Harder dragons for higher lvl average.

charononus · August 2014

chaoscourtesan wrote: »

There is a danger level? \

Yeah this is the problem, I've duo'd the Icespire peak and while it took a long time, it still died with no problems. They really need to be more dangerous.

hitmark wrote: »

What is annoying for me is that while we are all standing there idling my framerate etc is just fine. But the moment the dragon lands and everyone starts spamming their stored up dailies and whatsnot it turns into a slideshow. Never mind that since IWD the targeting has become downright HAMSTER. I can have the dragon perfectly in my sight and some bottom of the barrel add runs by and all of a sudden i am aiming off into the distance because apparently that add was a much more important target. Meaning that i don't know if am hitting the dragon, some random add, or some moss on a nearby rock.

Does it go slideshow for you right away or after a few dragons? I've noticed that after about an hour of instance jumping hunting dragons, I get those problems. I reboot the client and everything is fine for another hour, leaving me to suspect a memory leak that gets worse when changing instances.

charononus · August 2014

ashworthrd99 wrote: »

I agree that there should be a cool down per zone per dragon per player. Kill the dragon in neverdeath and you have to wait 2 hours before you can get any reward from killing the dragon again. And I also agree there should be special skirmish type encounters for each dragon. Harder dragons for higher lvl average.

Oh my god no. The drop rate would have to be so much higher than it is now, and there is no way that it would be put that high.

laks0n · August 2014

I agree that there should be both a skirmish and encounters as they are, but people shouldn't be able to invite others into groups and join full instances. Most of ToD encounter areas now have 90% of population in less than half of instances, and they just keep rotating.

Unknown · August 2014

This content has been removed.

chaoscourtesan · August 2014

I'm just doing it for the boons myself. I don't entertain fantasies of ever getting a drop. I admit that I got excited for about .3 seconds the first run when it was a great success... and then I saw the mundane garbage I got for it... way less than I'd get from a standard skill node. Thought then, I'd hate to see what a meh-success looks like.. XD

The thing I hate most about the so called HE.. is I am there to swap the stupid epitaphs, or disrupt the ghost-roast or whatever.. and all these dudes camping out for the dragon and nothing else, defeat the critters out of boredom... the ones that drop documents, or scroll fragments, or daffodil petals or whatever the item of the moment is.. and those of us on mission have to wait...

frishter · August 2014

Or you know. They could just scale it better depending on how many participate...

Should the Dragon Heroic Encounters Be Converted to Skirmishes?

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