Show up, kill a dragon with 1 HP, get instant boon.
LOL!
I see that you meant 10 min per character per zone - that is reasonable. I only shortened it to 7 minutes to sooth any naysayers ("I can finish each quest in 7 minutes, not 10!").
I don't want it quite as easy as a 1 HP dragon, but more like DR was designed. It simply left more time for other stuff in the game.
It's not easy being a casual player - we tend to get little respect and understanding from those who have a lot more time to play.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!" pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all." looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
The problem is that Dread Ring was too easy. As noted above, characters could make meaningful campaign progress by spending only 10-15 minutes per day. And, you got pretty good rewards from it too (greater marks, decent purple gear, campaign currency, chance at an artifact). That is too little time expended for the quality of rewards delivered. But, now every module is held up to this same standard - if you can't do your dailies in 15 minutes, *just like Dread Ring*, then it's TOO LONG AND GRINDY. So ToD never had a chance of getting a good review here. It could be only one dragon daily per day and people here would still complain because it would nevertheless be longer than Dread Ring.
You gotta be kidding me.
Can you mature out of this daily thing already?
Dailies are there as the simplest content that you should just go through in a jiffy. They are not meant to take hours.
A good model would be dailies for 20 mins or so, and then DUNGEONS, RAIDS and PvP.
It's an MMO. I wanna do HARD MULTIPLAYER stuff grouped with other people.
Dailies are there as the simplest content that you should just go through in a jiffy. They are not meant to take hours.
A good model would be dailies for 20 mins or so, and then DUNGEONS, RAIDS and PvP.
It's an MMO. I wanna do HARD MULTIPLAYER stuff grouped with other people.
I agree with you except dailies, in a good MMO there is 0 dailies, you explore to know areas where you can get nice exp and items, you do dungeons, you have rare raids on the cities, you explore dangerous areas with guildies and friends, you have houses, guildhalls, etc...
I've played just like 2 modern MMOs and I don't regret it, old ones are always better.
ToD would have been much better if the dragon encounters would have been skirmishes with a daily timer. Why the devs didn't do this and instead decided to make us wait doing nothing at all but watching youtube <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> or reading books is beyond my understanding. ToD is long, tedious, boring as it is, and the grind for rewards is silly. Artifact gear should drop from dungeon bosses, just like books, and most of the good stuff.
Oh and the content being locked behind a 30 days grind is very, very irritating.
I agree with you except dailies, in a good MMO there is 0 dailies, you explore to know areas where you can get nice exp and items, you do dungeons, you have rare raids on the cities, you explore dangerous areas with guildies and friends, you have houses, guildhalls, etc...
I've played just like 2 modern MMOs and I don't regret it, old ones are always better.
Don't forget world bosses which aren't a joke like heroic encounters, crafting makes sense since most of the consumables have to be crafted, not all the quests look the same, and even if there are repeatable quests what they give you is some reputation unlocking stores selling the gear you need to start doing dungeons, and dungeons give you the gear you need to start playing raids. There's a real sense of progression, content for everyone, and you're not slapped in the face with a stupid 'must farm that stupid thing taking hours every day for 30 days to do something else'. Oh and boons don't exist in good MMOs.
At least that's what good MMOs do and such games still exist by the way.
ToD would have been much better if the dragon encounters would have been skirmishes with a daily timer. Why the devs didn't do this and instead decided to make us wait doing nothing at all but watching youtube <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> or reading books is beyond my understanding. ToD is long, tedious, boring as it is, and the grind for rewards is silly. Artifact gear should drop from dungeon bosses, just like books, and most of the good stuff.
Oh and the content being locked behind a 30 days grind is very, very irritating.
That's because they wanted us to go to those forgotten maps, but I don't know why they wanted some +15K GS go to a map where enemies hit you by 200 and have like 2000 HP, they wanted to make those maps visited for lvls 60, but they made those maps only meant for lvling for a lvl 30-55 this is in the core a contradiction and poorly planned, they should have done those maps a lot bigger with zones meant for a more diverse range of levels, and the dragons should be like the bosses of the most hard zones of each map (obviously the drops should be improved and designed with more diversity on the mobs, so it could be worthy to wait for the dragons killing stuff on those zones), IMO.
That's because they wanted us to go to those forgotten maps, but I don't know why they wanted some +15K GS go to a map where enemies hit you by 200 and have like 2000 HP, they wanted to make those maps visited for lvls 60, but they made those maps only meant for lvling for a lvl 40-50 this is in the core a contradiction and poorly planned, they should have done those maps a lot bigger with zones meant for lvl 10, 20, 30,..., 60, and the dragons should be like the bosses of these lasts zones of each map.
Well visiting old zones gives the illusion that the game is populated, deserted levelling zone are scary. Maybe that's why ToD is what it is. Timers are a very bad solution though, maybe it's the cheapest one in terms of dev times but it makes people frustrated, trolling on their social channels (no kidding, i have never seen such animosity between players on game channels, and that's since ToD)... That's not good for the game. There are many solutions, they could add an altar, you have to click it to be able to target the dragon and once enough people clicked it the npc spawns, or something along those lines.
Well visiting old zones gives the illusion that the game is populated, deserted levelling zone are scary. Maybe that's why ToD is what it is. Timers are a very bad solution though, maybe it's the cheapest one in terms of dev times but it makes people frustrated, trolling on their social channels (no kidding, i have never seen such animosity between players on game channels, and that's since ToD)... That's not good for the game. There are many solutions, they could add an altar, you have to click it to be able to target the dragon and once enough people clicked it the npc spawns, or something along those lines.
Mmmm, I don't like that solution, it's only meant to do the killing fast and leave to do other fun stuff, but my problem is that they are adding that boring and trivial content to repeat for months in a daily basis in the first place, I wouldn't care if the dragons showed every 15, 30 mins or once an hour, if they put something fun and worthwhile to do while you wait for them and if the dragons were challenging, and quite an experience to defeat them...
If you only spend 10 mins a day in Sharandar, that means you are giving up the mini-lair, which in mod1's terms represents the major solo questing reward for that mod. Plus you will have to do all three zones to get currency to advance for the final 2 boons.
And the daily quests in IWD absolutely take longer than 10 mins a day, even on my CW.
But if you want to compare apples to apples - sure, you could do only the bare minimum in the mod1-mod3 zones (only do the sparks quest in Sharandar, only do the mini-dungeon in Dread Ring, only do the reputation quest in IWD) and be done in 10 mins per character per day. The equivalent in mod4 is only killing 1 dragon per day. Which might be a little more than 10 mins per character per day, if you are unlucky with a dragon timer. So in that sense, the time required for *minimum daily advancement* in each zone are about the same.
Yet people get their panties in a wad over ToD.
That is quite a bit of misinformation.
In Sharandar there is just no reason to do the mini-lairs. Nothing drops in there that you need or would really want for campaign progression. Sharandar would have been a good campaign, except for the ridiculous # of sparks needed to unlock the 3rd gate and for the last 3 boons. Even so, you can knock off the first gate, 2nd gate get your 18 of each currency and then just do arcane reservoir for 7 weeks to finish up the boons.
DR all you need to do is the lair and weekly and you can progress and finish up the boons.
IWD if all you care about is the boons, you just need to do 1 quest daily for 35 days, buy a few cheap fragments and you are done. Lets not talk about the BI gear drops. That is a different issue.
ToD on the other hand, you need 100 sigils and 100 secrets for each book for the last 2 boons. That requires you doing 5 dragons and a lair quest every day. There are no "speedups" like arcane reservoir or red wizards. IF you have an hour or 2 to play per night, you can easily spend 50 minutes of that time sitting around and waiting for a dragon to spawn. Is that really how folks want to play the game? Sitting and waiting?
If you want to compare *minimum daily campaign progression*, then Dread Ring is still fastest, but ToD is not that much longer, since *minimum* progression is to kill only one dragon per day. That is the *minimum*. Just like in IWD, doing the reputation quest alone is the *minimum*. Just like in Sharandar, doing the sparks quest alone is the *minimum*. ALL of those are relatively quick. NONE of those, ToD included, are so amazingly mindboggingly time-consuming as to justify the torrents of complaints that have been leveled against them.
The "speedup" in ToD is to buy the boon books, just like the "speedup" in IWD is to buy the fragments and the "speedup" in Dread Ring is to buy the relics. The only difference is the price of the speedup. Yes the books are spendy. But the books allow you to ignore the last part of the ToD campaign if you wish, and instead do what you normally do to get the AD to buy the books. Plus, I have little doubt - for better or for worse - that the boon books are going to wind up in the Zen store in the near future.
And I understand that there is an agenda by certain posters here to vilify and badmouth the ToD campaign at every turn so as to do their part to dissuade the devs from ever developing a campaign like this again, even if that means constructing misleading arguments that exaggerate the negatives and downplay the positives. And I'm sorry, I'm just not going to participate in that agenda.
If you want to compare *minimum daily campaign progression*, then Dread Ring is still fastest, but ToD is not that much longer, since *minimum* progression is to kill only one dragon per day.
It's not apples to oranges. I'm comparing maximal 1 day BOON progression not minimal. It just so happens that the minimal progression in those zones equals the maximal progression.
Doing 1 dragon a day in ToD will get you nowhere.
But that's not even the most important point. Doing even 1 dragon you will on average spend 10 minutes out of 15 total time waiting. Doing 5 you will spend 50 minutes waiting. That is a waste of a lot of time that could instead be spent playing the game. Lets not forget the travel time, back and forth from zone entrance/campfire to dragon. There is way too much downtime in ToD.
Sorry, one more point. Don't take my post as "I hate ToD". There are a lot of things I do like about it. I'm just calling out the very poor downtime design that is pushing away a lot of players. Call it constructive criticism. People like to actually play a game not sit and wait on timers and travel back and forth back and forth.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
If you want to compare *minimum daily campaign progression*, then Dread Ring is still fastest, but ToD is not that much longer, since *minimum* progression is to kill only one dragon per day. That is the *minimum*. Just like in IWD, doing the reputation quest alone is the *minimum*. Just like in Sharandar, doing the sparks quest alone is the *minimum*. ALL of those are relatively quick. NONE of those, ToD included, are so amazingly mindboggingly time-consuming as to justify the torrents of complaints that have been leveled against them.
The "speedup" in ToD is to buy the boon books, just like the "speedup" in IWD is to buy the fragments and the "speedup" in Dread Ring is to buy the relics. The only difference is the price of the speedup. Yes the books are spendy. But the books allow you to ignore the last part of the ToD campaign if you wish, and instead do what you normally do to get the AD to buy the books. Plus, I have little doubt - for better or for worse - that the boon books are going to wind up in the Zen store in the near future.
And I understand that there is an agenda by certain posters here to vilify and badmouth the ToD campaign at every turn so as to do their part to dissuade the devs from ever developing a campaign like this again, even if that means constructing misleading arguments that exaggerate the negatives and downplay the positives. And I'm sorry, I'm just not going to participate in that agenda.
This has been discussed, its not the LENGTH of time that ToD "could" theoretically last, that is a terrible argument, its the TOTAL length of time it takes you to do them, its at least triple the previous mods, if not more.
EVERY other mod, you could choose the bare minimum (IE run only 3 dailies in sharandar, skip mini lair, Dread ring, just run the mini lair, IWD, get need for mead, take 5 mins to do daily and ALSO ability to accumulate quests and do them later)
Im sorry, but your argument, doesnt hold weight, or water, it leaks. It clearly takes MUCH more time to do TOD then ANY other module. Do you think we would be complaining about them , if it was only 10 mins or so like the rest?
If they had you fight one dragon a day and get the accumlitive reward that 5 take now, Im fine with that, make it happen and Im happy. You can only do one a day and its day 1, day 2, day 3 ect.. then weekend you can choose the dragons you want.
I just solved everyones misery and it took me 20 seconds to think of it. You CAN fight any dragon you want, but it doesnt count against the daily reward.
This allows everyone with multiple Alts to play the game again.
Cryptic can contact me directly for payment on my idea, and probably for saving your game at the same time.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
edited October 2014
Oh.. BTW you dont ever even have to go into sharandar after you get enough dailies, you can spend the next two weeks just turning in 6 day boxes to get it.
Dont even get me started, Sharander isnt comparable to ToD, its one zone, and I CAN run through 3-4 classes easily in a hour, I CANT do that with TOD, not even close.
It's not apples to oranges. I'm comparing maximal 1 day BOON progression not minimal. It just so happens that the minimal progression in those zones equals the maximal progression.
Actually it's not. Maximal progression in the other zones including doing other daily quests to obtain the campaign currency that is also needed to unlock the boons (vanguard scripts, dwarf gold, etc.). And those take much longer than 10 minutes per character per day. IWD alone will probably take 30-45 minutes.
But that's not even the most important point. Doing even 1 dragon you will on average spend 10 minutes out of 15 total time waiting. Doing 5 you will spend 50 minutes waiting. That is a waste of a lot of time that could instead be spent playing the game. Lets not forget the travel time, back and forth from zone entrance/campfire to dragon. There is way too much downtime in ToD.
Speaking only for myself, I very rarely end up waiting a full 10 minutes for a dragon and doing nothing. If I enter an instance where the dragon has a long time until returning, then I either look for other instances that I can switch to and most of the time I'm successful in finding another one with a more favorable dragon timer that I can switch to; or, I will do the mini-lair and the other non-dragon quest and that will consume enough time until the dragon respawns; or, I will loot skill nodes (especially in Rothe Valley where there are 12 skill nodes not that far away from the dragon); or, I will just leave the zone, do something else, and re attempt it at a more favorable time.
IMO if you enter an instance with an unfavorable dragon timer, then it behooves you to make the best use of that time, instead of just standing around.
Sorry, one more point. Don't take my post as "I hate ToD". There are a lot of things I do like about it. I'm just calling out the very poor downtime design that is pushing away a lot of players. Call it constructive criticism. People like to actually play a game not sit and wait on timers and travel back and forth back and forth.
That's fine. I didn't say you specifically. But I think it's pretty undeniable that there's a segment of players who use the forums as a way to manipulate the devs; PVPers do it to get other classes nerfed, and PVEers also do it to get what they want as well.
This has been discussed, its not the LENGTH of time that ToD "could" theoretically last, that is a terrible argument, its the TOTAL length of time it takes you to do them, its at least triple the previous mods, if not more.
EVERY other mod, you could choose the bare minimum (IE run only 3 dailies in sharandar, skip mini lair, Dread ring, just run the mini lair, IWD, get need for mead, take 5 mins to do daily and ALSO ability to accumulate quests and do them later)
Im sorry, but your argument, doesnt hold weight, or water, it leaks. It clearly takes MUCH more time to do TOD then ANY other module. Do you think we would be complaining about them , if it was only 10 mins or so like the rest?
He's really been the only one defending it. But hey, people have different opinions /shrug.
Most of the feedback has already been stated, we'll see in module 6 if the devs listen.
If you really hate the current module, I have good and bad news. The next module is going to be another snorefest by the looks of it in preview. Same dailies, same loot tables, even the 25-man raid is going to be a heroic encounter. Farming PVE will still be useless.
However, you will be able to speed up campaign progression by buying zen and opening the new lockboxes
Im sorry, but your argument, doesnt hold weight, or water, it leaks. It clearly takes MUCH more time to do TOD then ANY other module. Do you think we would be complaining about them , if it was only 10 mins or so like the rest?
But it DOES take "only 10 mins or so like the rest" (actually more like 15 min) in terms of absolute minimum campaign progression. I think people complain because (a) too much of that time is spent just waiting around, and (b) quests can't be stored up and all done at one time, like in the other zones. In terms of the first complaint, sure the devs could adjust the dragon timers to make them shorter, but even still, it also behooves the player to make the best use of scarce playing time. And in terms of the second complaint, well I don't know, I did not store up multiple days' worth of quests in the other zones, I always did them on a daily basis anyway so I am not particularly bothered by this complaint.
And yes, if you only kill 1 dragon per day, and if you are determined to farm the boon books and not buy them from AH, and if they never drop for you in the skirmish/dungeon, then it will take a very very long time to complete the campaign. I never disagreed with that and I am sympathetic to that complaint. I think it would be good to include something like secrets/sigils in another 6-day celestial coin box, or to include secrets/sigils as a loot drop in the skirmish/dungeon, or to have some other way to purchase this currency such as with excess dragon coins. That would be good. On the other hand, I also recognize that I don't really need these last two boons right now anyway for anything that I wish to do so I personally don't mind taking it slow.
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
Actually it's not. Maximal progression in the other zones including doing other daily quests to obtain the campaign currency that is also needed to unlock the boons (vanguard scripts, dwarf gold, etc.). And those take much longer than 10 minutes per character per day. IWD alone will probably take 30-45 minutes.
The thing is, you really don't need to do those things every day to make progress after the first couple of days. Every one of them allows for banking quests so that you can do a bunch at once, which makes the cumulative time allotted to dailies much less. The strongest limiting factor currency is addressed by the weekly quest. You can get all the seedlings, charms, and blades; all the scrips; all the gold and tears needed by collecting quests and doing them all at once instead of 3 per campaign per day. Like I've said, they're very supportive of a weekend warrior approach. You also get to stack objectives, like in the Dread Ring, you can kill undead (1) which are guarding explosives (2), and drop bone fragments (3), and maybe place some orbs (4) while you're up there. You need to save your quests for several days to do that, but it's very much more efficient than fiddling around with them daily, and it barely impedes progress at all, because once you turn in everything, you do your study writings as many times as you can instead of dribbling them out once per day.
You *cannot* take this approach in ToD. The design doesn't support it. Even if the incremental tasks didn't take 20 hours apiece, it takes almost as long to pick up the daily quests as to just do them, maybe longer.
I hear that Mod 5 is reverting to a format that resembles some of the others, where you can save up your dailies and knock them out all at once. Haven't been on to poke at it myself.
He's really been the only one defending it. But hey, people have different opinions /shrug.
I'm not even really "defending" it, I too think that there are issues that could be fixed. I'm only pointing out what I think is a more reasonable view of the campaign, instead of just mindless wailing and complaining on the forums, which is what most of these complaints are about.
People complain about having to stand around waiting on dragons? Well here is an idea - don't wait around. Do something else useful with your time. Players are not helpless victims of a dragon timer. If you enter an instance where the dragon timer is at 19:30, then - leave! Switch instances, do a skirmish, do a short dungeon, do a mini-lair, do IWD Need for Mead or something instead, then come back.
People complain about having to kill 5 dragons every day? I simply point out the FACT that nowhere is it NECESSARY OR REQUIRED to kill 5 dragons a day. And people want to argue with me about that FACT.
People complain that it takes SOOO MUCH campaign currency to get the final 2 boons? I simply point out that there is next to zero content that actually requires those two boons anyway, and if you think you really do need those last two boons right away, that there is an option for you nonetheless - buy the boon books. Nowhere did I say that it OUGHT to take 100 each of the secrets and sigils to buy the boon books. I do think it is excessive. But I also think people are neglecting alternate (and legitimate!) ways of getting the boon books.
And yet somehow some people take that as me kissing Cryptic's ***. It's not true. There are a lot of things Cryptic got wrong with this campaign I think. The stupidly low drop rate on boon books and belts, for starters. The RNG on the artifact weapons was also incredibly stupid, I don't see the point in that at all. But nonetheless I'm simply pointing out that ToD is not nearly as bad as you all are making it out to be. But since I am not on board with the "hate Cryptic" agenda, and I am not on board with the "demonize ToD to the nth degree so that the devs never ever ever again do this sort of thing again" agenda, then I"m some sort of leper. Well, whatever.
(1) People complain about having to stand around waiting on dragons? Well here is an idea - don't wait around. Do something else useful with your time. Players are not helpless victims of a dragon timer. If you enter an instance where the dragon timer is at 19:30, then - leave! Switch instances, do a skirmish, do a short dungeon, do a mini-lair, do IWD Need for Mead or something instead, then come back.
(2) People complain about having to kill 5 dragons every day? I simply point out the FACT that nowhere is it NECESSARY OR REQUIRED to kill 5 dragons a day. And people want to argue with me about that FACT.
(3) People complain that it takes SOOO MUCH campaign currency to get the final 2 boons? I simply point out that there is next to zero content that actually requires those two boons anyway, and if you think you really do need those last two boons right away, that there is an option for you nonetheless - buy the boon books. Nowhere did I say that it OUGHT to take 100 each of the secrets and sigils to buy the boon books. I do think it is excessive. But I also think people are neglecting alternate (and legitimate!) ways of getting the boon books.
(4) But since I am not on board with the "hate Cryptic" agenda, and I am not on board with the "demonize ToD to the nth degree so that the devs never ever ever again do this sort of thing again" agenda, then I"m some sort of leper. Well, whatever.
(1) You are assuming people can leave that instance, do something else for 19 of that 19:30 countdown and magically get right back in to that instance. WRONG. yes we can beg on zone for timers and switch, but do you literally know how much flak people get for that? It's insane.
(2) Should you feel the need to progress, yes you need to kill all the dragons every day and continue this until finished the module, you may not feel the "NEED" to, but many others do and for 2 reasons - Completing a character and getting this module finally off their backs. // grinding for boon book creations included since the drop rate sucks.
(3) A; I don't feel like being forced to AH something is a legitimate means to an end, if it can't be obtained throughout the gameplay then bullcrap game mechanics or dev schemes are at play. B; the drop rate sucks, the game dev's think so too, hence why its being increased in Mod 5. C; We complain when awful mechanics take over a game we love.
Thank you for voicing your opinion even though it will fall on deaf ears here.
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Comments
We are arguing over 7 mins vs. 10 mins now?
Here is an idea for the next mod:
Show up, kill a dragon with 1 HP, get instant boon.
LOL!
I see that you meant 10 min per character per zone - that is reasonable. I only shortened it to 7 minutes to sooth any naysayers ("I can finish each quest in 7 minutes, not 10!").
I don't want it quite as easy as a 1 HP dragon, but more like DR was designed. It simply left more time for other stuff in the game.
It's not easy being a casual player - we tend to get little respect and understanding from those who have a lot more time to play.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
You gotta be kidding me.
Can you mature out of this daily thing already?
Dailies are there as the simplest content that you should just go through in a jiffy. They are not meant to take hours.
A good model would be dailies for 20 mins or so, and then DUNGEONS, RAIDS and PvP.
It's an MMO. I wanna do HARD MULTIPLAYER stuff grouped with other people.
I agree with you except dailies, in a good MMO there is 0 dailies, you explore to know areas where you can get nice exp and items, you do dungeons, you have rare raids on the cities, you explore dangerous areas with guildies and friends, you have houses, guildhalls, etc...
I've played just like 2 modern MMOs and I don't regret it, old ones are always better.
I agree that dailies shouldn't take *hours*. I never claimed that they should.
My issue was that the rewards of Dread Ring were too good for the time required. That is why most everyone likes Dread Ring over the rest of the mods.
If there were no dailies, how would you advance in the campaign?
Oh and the content being locked behind a 30 days grind is very, very irritating.
Don't forget world bosses which aren't a joke like heroic encounters, crafting makes sense since most of the consumables have to be crafted, not all the quests look the same, and even if there are repeatable quests what they give you is some reputation unlocking stores selling the gear you need to start doing dungeons, and dungeons give you the gear you need to start playing raids. There's a real sense of progression, content for everyone, and you're not slapped in the face with a stupid 'must farm that stupid thing taking hours every day for 30 days to do something else'. Oh and boons don't exist in good MMOs.
At least that's what good MMOs do and such games still exist by the way.
That's because they wanted us to go to those forgotten maps, but I don't know why they wanted some +15K GS go to a map where enemies hit you by 200 and have like 2000 HP, they wanted to make those maps visited for lvls 60, but they made those maps only meant for lvling for a lvl 30-55 this is in the core a contradiction and poorly planned, they should have done those maps a lot bigger with zones meant for a more diverse range of levels, and the dragons should be like the bosses of the most hard zones of each map (obviously the drops should be improved and designed with more diversity on the mobs, so it could be worthy to wait for the dragons killing stuff on those zones), IMO.
Or they could made it like a skirmish.
Well visiting old zones gives the illusion that the game is populated, deserted levelling zone are scary. Maybe that's why ToD is what it is. Timers are a very bad solution though, maybe it's the cheapest one in terms of dev times but it makes people frustrated, trolling on their social channels (no kidding, i have never seen such animosity between players on game channels, and that's since ToD)... That's not good for the game. There are many solutions, they could add an altar, you have to click it to be able to target the dragon and once enough people clicked it the npc spawns, or something along those lines.
Mmmm, I don't like that solution, it's only meant to do the killing fast and leave to do other fun stuff, but my problem is that they are adding that boring and trivial content to repeat for months in a daily basis in the first place, I wouldn't care if the dragons showed every 15, 30 mins or once an hour, if they put something fun and worthwhile to do while you wait for them and if the dragons were challenging, and quite an experience to defeat them...
That is quite a bit of misinformation.
In Sharandar there is just no reason to do the mini-lairs. Nothing drops in there that you need or would really want for campaign progression. Sharandar would have been a good campaign, except for the ridiculous # of sparks needed to unlock the 3rd gate and for the last 3 boons. Even so, you can knock off the first gate, 2nd gate get your 18 of each currency and then just do arcane reservoir for 7 weeks to finish up the boons.
DR all you need to do is the lair and weekly and you can progress and finish up the boons.
IWD if all you care about is the boons, you just need to do 1 quest daily for 35 days, buy a few cheap fragments and you are done. Lets not talk about the BI gear drops. That is a different issue.
ToD on the other hand, you need 100 sigils and 100 secrets for each book for the last 2 boons. That requires you doing 5 dragons and a lair quest every day. There are no "speedups" like arcane reservoir or red wizards. IF you have an hour or 2 to play per night, you can easily spend 50 minutes of that time sitting around and waiting for a dragon to spawn. Is that really how folks want to play the game? Sitting and waiting?
If you want to compare *minimum daily campaign progression*, then Dread Ring is still fastest, but ToD is not that much longer, since *minimum* progression is to kill only one dragon per day. That is the *minimum*. Just like in IWD, doing the reputation quest alone is the *minimum*. Just like in Sharandar, doing the sparks quest alone is the *minimum*. ALL of those are relatively quick. NONE of those, ToD included, are so amazingly mindboggingly time-consuming as to justify the torrents of complaints that have been leveled against them.
The "speedup" in ToD is to buy the boon books, just like the "speedup" in IWD is to buy the fragments and the "speedup" in Dread Ring is to buy the relics. The only difference is the price of the speedup. Yes the books are spendy. But the books allow you to ignore the last part of the ToD campaign if you wish, and instead do what you normally do to get the AD to buy the books. Plus, I have little doubt - for better or for worse - that the boon books are going to wind up in the Zen store in the near future.
And I understand that there is an agenda by certain posters here to vilify and badmouth the ToD campaign at every turn so as to do their part to dissuade the devs from ever developing a campaign like this again, even if that means constructing misleading arguments that exaggerate the negatives and downplay the positives. And I'm sorry, I'm just not going to participate in that agenda.
It's not apples to oranges. I'm comparing maximal 1 day BOON progression not minimal. It just so happens that the minimal progression in those zones equals the maximal progression.
Doing 1 dragon a day in ToD will get you nowhere.
But that's not even the most important point. Doing even 1 dragon you will on average spend 10 minutes out of 15 total time waiting. Doing 5 you will spend 50 minutes waiting. That is a waste of a lot of time that could instead be spent playing the game. Lets not forget the travel time, back and forth from zone entrance/campfire to dragon. There is way too much downtime in ToD.
Sorry, one more point. Don't take my post as "I hate ToD". There are a lot of things I do like about it. I'm just calling out the very poor downtime design that is pushing away a lot of players. Call it constructive criticism. People like to actually play a game not sit and wait on timers and travel back and forth back and forth.
This has been discussed, its not the LENGTH of time that ToD "could" theoretically last, that is a terrible argument, its the TOTAL length of time it takes you to do them, its at least triple the previous mods, if not more.
EVERY other mod, you could choose the bare minimum (IE run only 3 dailies in sharandar, skip mini lair, Dread ring, just run the mini lair, IWD, get need for mead, take 5 mins to do daily and ALSO ability to accumulate quests and do them later)
Im sorry, but your argument, doesnt hold weight, or water, it leaks. It clearly takes MUCH more time to do TOD then ANY other module. Do you think we would be complaining about them , if it was only 10 mins or so like the rest?
If they had you fight one dragon a day and get the accumlitive reward that 5 take now, Im fine with that, make it happen and Im happy. You can only do one a day and its day 1, day 2, day 3 ect.. then weekend you can choose the dragons you want.
I just solved everyones misery and it took me 20 seconds to think of it. You CAN fight any dragon you want, but it doesnt count against the daily reward.
This allows everyone with multiple Alts to play the game again.
Cryptic can contact me directly for payment on my idea, and probably for saving your game at the same time.
Dont even get me started, Sharander isnt comparable to ToD, its one zone, and I CAN run through 3-4 classes easily in a hour, I CANT do that with TOD, not even close.
Actually it's not. Maximal progression in the other zones including doing other daily quests to obtain the campaign currency that is also needed to unlock the boons (vanguard scripts, dwarf gold, etc.). And those take much longer than 10 minutes per character per day. IWD alone will probably take 30-45 minutes.
Actually, it will get me generating Dragon Hoard enchants, which I can sell, so that I can earn AD to buy boon books instead of farming them.
Speaking only for myself, I very rarely end up waiting a full 10 minutes for a dragon and doing nothing. If I enter an instance where the dragon has a long time until returning, then I either look for other instances that I can switch to and most of the time I'm successful in finding another one with a more favorable dragon timer that I can switch to; or, I will do the mini-lair and the other non-dragon quest and that will consume enough time until the dragon respawns; or, I will loot skill nodes (especially in Rothe Valley where there are 12 skill nodes not that far away from the dragon); or, I will just leave the zone, do something else, and re attempt it at a more favorable time.
IMO if you enter an instance with an unfavorable dragon timer, then it behooves you to make the best use of that time, instead of just standing around.
That's fine. I didn't say you specifically. But I think it's pretty undeniable that there's a segment of players who use the forums as a way to manipulate the devs; PVPers do it to get other classes nerfed, and PVEers also do it to get what they want as well.
He's really been the only one defending it. But hey, people have different opinions /shrug.
Most of the feedback has already been stated, we'll see in module 6 if the devs listen.
If you really hate the current module, I have good and bad news. The next module is going to be another snorefest by the looks of it in preview. Same dailies, same loot tables, even the 25-man raid is going to be a heroic encounter. Farming PVE will still be useless.
However, you will be able to speed up campaign progression by buying zen and opening the new lockboxes
But it DOES take "only 10 mins or so like the rest" (actually more like 15 min) in terms of absolute minimum campaign progression. I think people complain because (a) too much of that time is spent just waiting around, and (b) quests can't be stored up and all done at one time, like in the other zones. In terms of the first complaint, sure the devs could adjust the dragon timers to make them shorter, but even still, it also behooves the player to make the best use of scarce playing time. And in terms of the second complaint, well I don't know, I did not store up multiple days' worth of quests in the other zones, I always did them on a daily basis anyway so I am not particularly bothered by this complaint.
And yes, if you only kill 1 dragon per day, and if you are determined to farm the boon books and not buy them from AH, and if they never drop for you in the skirmish/dungeon, then it will take a very very long time to complete the campaign. I never disagreed with that and I am sympathetic to that complaint. I think it would be good to include something like secrets/sigils in another 6-day celestial coin box, or to include secrets/sigils as a loot drop in the skirmish/dungeon, or to have some other way to purchase this currency such as with excess dragon coins. That would be good. On the other hand, I also recognize that I don't really need these last two boons right now anyway for anything that I wish to do so I personally don't mind taking it slow.
The thing is, you really don't need to do those things every day to make progress after the first couple of days. Every one of them allows for banking quests so that you can do a bunch at once, which makes the cumulative time allotted to dailies much less. The strongest limiting factor currency is addressed by the weekly quest. You can get all the seedlings, charms, and blades; all the scrips; all the gold and tears needed by collecting quests and doing them all at once instead of 3 per campaign per day. Like I've said, they're very supportive of a weekend warrior approach. You also get to stack objectives, like in the Dread Ring, you can kill undead (1) which are guarding explosives (2), and drop bone fragments (3), and maybe place some orbs (4) while you're up there. You need to save your quests for several days to do that, but it's very much more efficient than fiddling around with them daily, and it barely impedes progress at all, because once you turn in everything, you do your study writings as many times as you can instead of dribbling them out once per day.
You *cannot* take this approach in ToD. The design doesn't support it. Even if the incremental tasks didn't take 20 hours apiece, it takes almost as long to pick up the daily quests as to just do them, maybe longer.
I hear that Mod 5 is reverting to a format that resembles some of the others, where you can save up your dailies and knock them out all at once. Haven't been on to poke at it myself.
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I'm not even really "defending" it, I too think that there are issues that could be fixed. I'm only pointing out what I think is a more reasonable view of the campaign, instead of just mindless wailing and complaining on the forums, which is what most of these complaints are about.
People complain about having to stand around waiting on dragons? Well here is an idea - don't wait around. Do something else useful with your time. Players are not helpless victims of a dragon timer. If you enter an instance where the dragon timer is at 19:30, then - leave! Switch instances, do a skirmish, do a short dungeon, do a mini-lair, do IWD Need for Mead or something instead, then come back.
People complain about having to kill 5 dragons every day? I simply point out the FACT that nowhere is it NECESSARY OR REQUIRED to kill 5 dragons a day. And people want to argue with me about that FACT.
People complain that it takes SOOO MUCH campaign currency to get the final 2 boons? I simply point out that there is next to zero content that actually requires those two boons anyway, and if you think you really do need those last two boons right away, that there is an option for you nonetheless - buy the boon books. Nowhere did I say that it OUGHT to take 100 each of the secrets and sigils to buy the boon books. I do think it is excessive. But I also think people are neglecting alternate (and legitimate!) ways of getting the boon books.
And yet somehow some people take that as me kissing Cryptic's ***. It's not true. There are a lot of things Cryptic got wrong with this campaign I think. The stupidly low drop rate on boon books and belts, for starters. The RNG on the artifact weapons was also incredibly stupid, I don't see the point in that at all. But nonetheless I'm simply pointing out that ToD is not nearly as bad as you all are making it out to be. But since I am not on board with the "hate Cryptic" agenda, and I am not on board with the "demonize ToD to the nth degree so that the devs never ever ever again do this sort of thing again" agenda, then I"m some sort of leper. Well, whatever.
(1) You are assuming people can leave that instance, do something else for 19 of that 19:30 countdown and magically get right back in to that instance. WRONG. yes we can beg on zone for timers and switch, but do you literally know how much flak people get for that? It's insane.
(2) Should you feel the need to progress, yes you need to kill all the dragons every day and continue this until finished the module, you may not feel the "NEED" to, but many others do and for 2 reasons - Completing a character and getting this module finally off their backs. // grinding for boon book creations included since the drop rate sucks.
(3) A; I don't feel like being forced to AH something is a legitimate means to an end, if it can't be obtained throughout the gameplay then bullcrap game mechanics or dev schemes are at play. B; the drop rate sucks, the game dev's think so too, hence why its being increased in Mod 5. C; We complain when awful mechanics take over a game we love.
Thank you for voicing your opinion even though it will fall on deaf ears here.
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