Official Feedback Thread: Illusionist's Gambit

commanderander · January 2017

Hi everyone! Sean “Commander Ander” McCann here, and this is the feedback thread for Illusionist's Gambit and Illusionist's Gambit (Master).

Known Issues
- VO has not been hooked up.'
- There are some issues with the transitions between environments
- The final scoreboard UI has not been hooked up.

Access
Players can access the skirmish at level 10. There are two versions of the skirmish, one that is from 10-69, the other at level 70.

Both skirmishes give out different rewards. The level 10-69 behaves like a CTA; all players are leveled up/down to level 60.

Feature
Press your luck and see how far you can make it in the Illusionist's Gambit! The skirmish has the following features:

- Random encounters! Fight against various compositions of enemies that get progressively harder as you get further in.
- Random hazards! Deal with random hazardous conditions, from slippery floors to spinning flamethrowers.
- Random conditions! Witness yourself turned into a chicken, defy gravity, and more!
- More hazards and conditions will appear in the later phases of the skirmish.
- If all players die, the skirmish is over and players receive compensation rewards. When a player dies, they can get back into the fight by maneuvering through a series of hazardous obstacles.
- Players will have moments where they can vote to leave the skirmish and take whatever rewards they would have earned for their progress. Voting is team-based, so if the majority of the team votes to go, the entire team must press on.
- Players only fight Lukan of the Mystic Veil in the Master version of the skirmish.

Feedback Desired
We’d like you all to focus on playing the two different versions of the skirmish and finding any issues with them. Are some combinations absurdly broken? Are some set ups just not fun? Let us know!
If you find a bug or have feedback, please follow the guidelines below when posting:
• Respond to this forum post.
• Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
• Spec: (Please enter the spec that you are providing feedback for here)
• Format: Please use “Bold” face text for the Type & Spec then type your feedback in the body of your post. If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use BLUE.
• (Bonus: Concise Feedback & Screen Shots are much appreciated)

Examples:
Bug: Turning Into a Chicken
I turned into a chicken, but the debuff says I turned into a pig. Chickens are different from pigs, Commander Ander, we've been over this!

Feedback: Low gravity condition
I loved low gravity, I just wish I could have it everywhere in the game. Make this happen, Commander Ander!

gankdalf · January 2017

I would love like a small PvP arena with low gravity like 5vs5 but only mission is to kill. Like a fun pvp zone. Deathmath of some sort.

ghoulz66 · January 2017

All I can immediately say is how vast of an improvement this is over the underdark skirmishes. Everything so frustrating about those do not exist here. Fight a wave a monster per round, no long wait between waves.

beckylunatic · January 2017

commanderander said:
The level 10-69 behaves like a CTA; all players are leveled up/down to level 60.

This is liable to be punishingly difficult for most players under level 50 or so, maybe a bit less than that.

I've been the only level-capped player in a CTA with a party of adventurers who were literally just able to join the queue (all level 6 or 7). It was Storm Front, which does encourage an inexperienced group to split up. I was playing a TR, so I had no way to protect my party outside of trying to get them to stay close to me so I could spam Smoke Bomb. They got repeatedly slaughtered. Two simply disconnected and two asked me politely how they could leave the instance. It was really obviously not fun for them.

I would worry that having a queue accessible to lowbie characters that isn't mostly populated by high-level characters will be unduly hard, and I think multiple test runs with a full party of level 10s in common gear should be conducted.

midnightflares · January 2017

Everyone in my group enjoyed the master version while we were running it. Much more fun than those UD skirms.

rjc9000 · January 2017

commanderander said:
Hi everyone! Sean “Commander Ander” McCann here, and this is the feedback thread for Illusionist's Gambit and Illusionist's Gambit (Master).

Known Issues
- VO has not been hooked up.'
- There are some issues with the transitions between environments
- The final scoreboard UI has not been hooked up.

Access
Players can access the skirmish at level 10. There are two versions of the skirmish, one that is from 10-69, the other at level 70.

Both skirmishes give out different rewards. The level 10-69 behaves like a CTA; all players are leveled up/down to level 60.

Feature
Press your luck and see how far you can make it in the Illusionist's Gambit! The skirmish has the following features:

- Random encounters! Fight against various compositions of enemies that get progressively harder as you get further in.
- Random hazards! Deal with random hazardous conditions, from slippery floors to spinning flamethrowers.
- Random conditions! Witness yourself turned into a chicken, defy gravity, and more!
- More hazards and conditions will appear in the later phases of the skirmish.
- If all players die, the skirmish is over and players receive compensation rewards. When a player dies, they can get back into the fight by maneuvering through a series of hazardous obstacles.
- Players will have moments where they can vote to leave the skirmish and take whatever rewards they would have earned for their progress. Voting is team-based, so if the majority of the team votes to go, the entire team must press on.
- Players only fight Lukan of the Mystic Veil in the Master version of the skirmish.

Feedback Desired
We’d like you all to focus on playing the two different versions of the skirmish and finding any issues with them. Are some combinations absurdly broken? Are some set ups just not fun? Let us know!
If you find a bug or have feedback, please follow the guidelines below when posting:
• Respond to this forum post.
• Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
• Spec: (Please enter the spec that you are providing feedback for here)
• Format: Please use “Bold” face text for the Type & Spec then type your feedback in the body of your post. If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use BLUE.
• (Bonus: Concise Feedback & Screen Shots are much appreciated)

Examples:
Bug: Turning Into a Chicken
I turned into a chicken, but the debuff says I turned into a pig. Chickens are different from pigs, Commander Ander, we've been over this!

Feedback: Low gravity condition
I loved low gravity, I just wish I could have it everywhere in the game. Make this happen, Commander Ander!

(Potential) Bug?
I am unsure if this is a bug or not, but are the flamethrowers supposed to have a hitbox? When I was trying this skirmish out on my GF, I was scoring Jagged Blade/WMS Crits on the Flamethrowers. I was unsure if we were allowed to kill the flamethrowers or if the flamethrowers randomly have a hitbox.

Feedback

I have to admit, like @midnightflares (whom I ran with), I was actually laughing pretty hard during this skirmish. This skirmish is not particularly hard, but it was amusing and kept me laughing for quite a while.

However, I dislike the Reflect gimmick. I know that it's supposed to be random, but it gets frustrating when we're in the middle of a combo and then we die. The only way to forsee this is if you're looking at your buff/debuff bars 24/7, which turns this skirmish from a fun monster arena to a hesitant "when do I attack" style fight. I think it would be slightly less frustrating if there was a more "visual" or "audiable" cue for when the reflect damage gets turned on, such as a red mist on your character, or an attack deflecting sound.

beckylunatic · January 2017

With current lack of a feedback thread dedicated to rewards, please forward to the team responsible for designing the companion equipment that drops here: Thank you so much for implementing these items. There are players who would like to see items with Recovery. There are players who favour the combination of 1 offense and 1 defense slot from Loyal equipment. So a little more variety would be welcome (though there is already a lot of variety).

adinosii · January 2017

My problem with the skirmishes is the lack of players seemingly interested in testing them. I have queued up (solo) several times, but the queue has never popped for me.

commanderander · January 2017

Hi everyone,

Great feedback so far. We'll look into concerns that a low-level team may get crushed in the skirmish if they're bumped up to 60, and if so, we'll adjust it accordingly.

We'll also look into what we can do to get a critical mass of folks in for some heavy playtesting of the skirmish.

And of course, we'll fix the bugs you've all mentioned, too!

ghoulz66 · January 2017

commanderander said:
Hi everyone,

Great feedback so far. We'll look into concerns that a low-level team may get crushed in the skirmish if they're bumped up to 60, and if so, we'll adjust it accordingly.

We'll also look into what we can do to get a critical mass of folks in for some heavy playtesting of the skirmish.

And of course, we'll fix the bugs you've all mentioned, too!

This isn't just the skirmish. Scaling players has caused huge issues ever since it was implemented for mod 6. Before that enemies scaled to the player and it was more balanced that way. I played the CTAs since mod 2. They are much different now. A low level player back then with the mulhorand weapons could do fairly well keeping up with a level 60. Scaling players has to adjust player stats and weapons, it was more simple scaling the mobs.

beckylunatic · January 2017

ghoulz66 said:

commanderander said:
Hi everyone,

Great feedback so far. We'll look into concerns that a low-level team may get crushed in the skirmish if they're bumped up to 60, and if so, we'll adjust it accordingly.

We'll also look into what we can do to get a critical mass of folks in for some heavy playtesting of the skirmish.

And of course, we'll fix the bugs you've all mentioned, too!
This isn't just the skirmish. Scaling players has caused huge issues ever since it was implemented for mod 6. Before that enemies scaled to the player and it was more balanced that way. I played the CTAs since mod 2. They are much different now. A low level player back then with the mulhorand weapons could do fairly well keeping up with a level 60. Scaling players has to adjust player stats and weapons, it was more simple scaling the mobs.

I agree with this. Every instance that players can access at 60 but that scales them up to 70 is pretty much unwinnable for an inexperienced player because they don't have the health to survive or the damage output to kill things efficiently. Since they can usually find help for these, the grumbling has been easy to sweep under the rug. (Tyranny lairs, Vault of the Nine)

On the other hand, the Blackdagger artifact instance used to be quite hard with the levelless mobs, but now that it scales you down to 20-something, being even a little overlevelled for it makes it a walk in the park.

Tyranny of Dragons dragon HEs can be laughably easy depending on how many 70s are present. Good luck getting there in time in Neverdeath if it's up and melting fast. If you've only got players around who are at-level or at least not capped, they can still be tough. Although Rothe and Whispering Caverns probably still have their massive health buffs from back when they were being farmed into oblivion, so that leads to interesting situations when trying to kill one with very few players present.

Event skirmishes are pretty much a joke with all the 70s scaled down to 60. The one-minute AD runs are undeniably nice, but some CTAs and the Protector's Jubilee had the potential to be quite challenging when the level cap was 60. Now, they're just a roflstomp, other than that if you have any lowbies in your group and they get swarmed, they are toast in seconds.

And now we have all these "levelling dungeons" with exactly the same issues. High-level players faceroll them for daily AD (gotta use up that invoke bonus, dontcha know?). Low-level players either go along for the ride or get left behind, possibly also getting slaughtered depending on how thoroughly their party cleared the way. And new low-level players aren't even allowed to speak to each other to form an at-level dungeon group in order to play Cloak Tower at a normal and challenging pace, or to speak to their rampaging dungeon party to ask them to slow down.

Basically, none of us understand why the "skull" mobs were eliminated when they seemed to work a lot better than what we have now, at least as far as how the gameplay feels.

tripsofthrymr · January 2017

beckylunatic said:

commanderander said:
The level 10-69 behaves like a CTA; all players are leveled up/down to level 60.
This is liable to be punishingly difficult for most players under level 50 or so, maybe a bit less than that.

I would worry that having a queue accessible to lowbie characters that isn't mostly populated by high-level characters will be unduly hard, and I think multiple test runs with a full party of level 10s in common gear should be conducted.

If it works like CTAs, it will also be trivial for geared 70's. The best solution here may be to revisit the level capping mechanic and ensure that it more realistically simulates level 60 for both low-level toons (give them a larger boost) and for high-IL 70's (knock them down significantly).

I enjoyed most CTAs the first year they were introduced. After that, even PUGs were mostly about fast clearing them by use of massively overwhelming force rather than any measure of tactics or team coordination.

beckylunatic · January 2017

tripsofthrymr said:
If it works like CTAs, it will also be trivial for geared 70's.

There is a queue for 1-69 and a queue for 70, so not quite. That's why I gave the level estimates I did. Anyone over 60 will be fine, and probably anyone getting close to 60 as well, but lower than that, I have concerns.

I am also basing this on the probability that characters in the 1-69 queue will skew heavily to new players, as established players more often than not don't do more than power-level if they make a new alt (not always, but often).

rafaelda · January 2017

beckylunatic said:

ghoulz66 said:

commanderander said:
Hi everyone,

Great feedback so far. We'll look into concerns that a low-level team may get crushed in the skirmish if they're bumped up to 60, and if so, we'll adjust it accordingly.

We'll also look into what we can do to get a critical mass of folks in for some heavy playtesting of the skirmish.

And of course, we'll fix the bugs you've all mentioned, too!
This isn't just the skirmish. Scaling players has caused huge issues ever since it was implemented for mod 6. Before that enemies scaled to the player and it was more balanced that way. I played the CTAs since mod 2. They are much different now. A low level player back then with the mulhorand weapons could do fairly well keeping up with a level 60. Scaling players has to adjust player stats and weapons, it was more simple scaling the mobs.
I agree with this. Every instance that players can access at 60 but that scales them up to 70 is pretty much unwinnable for an inexperienced player because they don't have the health to survive or the damage output to kill things efficiently. Since they can usually find help for these, the grumbling has been easy to sweep under the rug. (Tyranny lairs, Vault of the Nine)

On the other hand, the Blackdagger artifact instance used to be quite hard with the levelless mobs, but now that it scales you down to 20-something, being even a little overlevelled for it makes it a walk in the park.

Tyranny of Dragons dragon HEs can be laughably easy depending on how many 70s are present. Good luck getting there in time in Neverdeath if it's up and melting fast. If you've only got players around who are at-level or at least not capped, they can still be tough. Although Rothe and Whispering Caverns probably still have their massive health buffs from back when they were being farmed into oblivion, so that leads to interesting situations when trying to kill one with very few players present.

Event skirmishes are pretty much a joke with all the 70s scaled down to 60. The one-minute AD runs are undeniably nice, but some CTAs and the Protector's Jubilee had the potential to be quite challenging when the level cap was 60. Now, they're just a roflstomp, other than that if you have any lowbies in your group and they get swarmed, they are toast in seconds.

And now we have all these "levelling dungeons" with exactly the same issues. High-level players faceroll them for daily AD (gotta use up that invoke bonus, dontcha know?). Low-level players either go along for the ride or get left behind, possibly also getting slaughtered depending on how thoroughly their party cleared the way. And new low-level players aren't even allowed to speak to each other to form an at-level dungeon group in order to play Cloak Tower at a normal and challenging pace, or to speak to their rampaging dungeon party to ask them to slow down.

Basically, none of us understand why the "skull" mobs were eliminated when they seemed to work a lot better than what we have now, at least as far as how the gameplay feels.

+1 for the Skull level mobs there where faar better than the level sclae system we have now...
(i have to admit that IDK how hard is to use them after the level increased...)

ghoulz66 · January 2017

Please make that spinning fire hazard more dangerous. Kinda pointless to have it when it can't even burn down a squishy cw.

treesclimber · January 2017

ghoulz66 said:
Please make that spinning fire hazard more dangerous. Kinda pointless to have it when it can't even burn down a squishy cw.

I have a very diferernt experience from both master and normal.

I will try to find a group and go with a level 20, the main problem i see is the acess to powers. C.a, ap gain aoe resist comp bonus could all be approximated by exess to low levels but powers and feats....are tricky, what about applying the setup of those standard 70 lvl accounts to everyone but with 1 point in deffect?

treesclimber · January 2017

Finally found people to do it with, didn't have a lvl 20 probably erase but had a lvl 42:

HR archer poorly geared;

Problems found:
Lack of healing, low level players dont have many effective ways of healing, if a 5 lvl 20 party full of dps goes in there will have a hard time since many players dont know/dont care about wich mount gives healing wich insignia/wich companion is good for the class etc and my perception of the dificulty of this squirmish is much diferent from those new players (specially because other players where experient), many of them have trouble in dodge etc so....to avoid longer wait times for the squirmish what about a mistery healing friend that comes to heal the brave adventurers in that mind twisting place?

adinosii · January 2017

ghoulz66 said:
Please make that spinning fire hazard more dangerous. Kinda pointless to have it when it can't even burn down a squishy cw.

I didn't even realize at first that it was supposed to do actual damage, as it was so insignificant. I am not sure that just increasing the damage is the best route. As it is, the whole skirmish is supposed to be fun - a bit wacky (attacked by a group of piñatas - seriously?), but fun.

Increasing the flamethrower damage significantly might turn the skirmish from a "fun" one into a dangerous one, and that would kind-of spoil the the whole theme..

beckylunatic · January 2017

Kali Gold's video of the skirmish indicated that if you inattentively stand in the fire, the damage does add up. It's probably about the level of hazard that it's meant to be.

I agree that this thing is not designed to be hard. It's designed to be different and slightly silly.

I think it is slightly telling though that my request to be mindful of the experience of lowbie players was met with an increase in the minimum level to queue for it.

firdraing · January 2017

I agree that the damage of it in upto lvl 69 shouldn't be high, but maybe for high level 70 players it could be made more punishing? I mean, you encourage us to facetank a fire cannon... thus, I like challenges... Because afterwards people complain about hard mechanics

asterotg · February 2017

It would be nice to know, if the gear rewarded in gold should be better, then in bronze and/or if +4 gear only drops as gold reward.

So far gold just rewarded more currency. The gear was the same/worse, then in bronze runs.

It is somehow frustrating, if you do gold runs and get +1 gear and +3 in a bronze run.

Imo the reward in gold runs should be upgraded. It is more difficult, then bronze, takes at last trice the time for bronze and the difference in rewards is insignificant so far.

silence1x · February 2017

First run last night. Love it! Great skirmish. One note though - what's up with the "wavy waterfall" block in the middle of the screen each time a new part starts? I don't think it should be there but all of us in our party were seeing it.

firdraing · February 2017

At gold you still get green c . . p most of the time. More often than at bronze. Been there 3x times and all I got was two greens and one blue. All gold rewards.

Also an important note: all three runs 3 ppl got green, one blue and one +4. Is this just something random, or was this intentional.
The wavy waterfall I understood as what your character sees when being teleported... your head is a bit spinning iow.

darthtzarr · February 2017

Why is the distortion only in the middle? Shouldn't it be across the whole screen?

gabrieldourden · February 2017

beckylunatic said:
With current lack of a feedback thread dedicated to rewards, please forward to the team responsible for designing the companion equipment that drops here: Thank you so much for implementing these items. There are players who would like to see items with Recovery. There are players who favour the combination of 1 offense and 1 defense slot from Loyal equipment. So a little more variety would be welcome (though there is already a lot of variety).

+1. Temptation SWs would like to see some lifesteal on stuff too.

urabask · February 2017

beckylunatic said:
With current lack of a feedback thread dedicated to rewards, please forward to the team responsible for designing the companion equipment that drops here: Thank you so much for implementing these items. There are players who would like to see items with Recovery. There are players who favour the combination of 1 offense and 1 defense slot from Loyal equipment. So a little more variety would be welcome (though there is already a lot of variety).

The problem with the rewards is that there is too much variety and a lot of it is useless. I understand the need for junk drops but they need to make it so that the loot table is small enough that you can grind out the gear you need. Lets say they add the life steal and recovery pieces to the current mix. There are eight different types of equipment and this would bump it up to 8 different stat distributions. That would make for 320 different items.

They really need to find a way to cut down on the variety of items while increasing the number of stat distributions. I don't really care how they do it but they really need to get it down to around 40 items or less. The current variety just makes it a crapshoot.

I'd cut out the +1 to +3 items (if salvage values are really a problem they can knock +4 down to blue). That would still put you at 192 items though so they could sort them by offense and defense and put them into choice boxes. That would bring it down to 32 different items which is about the same as demogorgon. If they're really concerned about forcing particular junk items they could just more desireabl stat distributions in a rarer box (e.g. fierce +4s).

They also need to redo +5s because they're currently worse than +4s and no one would ever want them. IMO +4s should be offense/defense and +5s should be double off/def.

beckylunatic · February 2017

urabask said:

The problem with the rewards is that there is too much variety and a lot of it is useless.

It was an old post and I fully own that the range of trash had escaped me. I'm not sure anyone had fully realized at that time, tbh.

The gear with hitpoints is pretty useless and I doubt anyone would miss them. The only application I see for those is wanting dual defense slots but not getting a drop with better stats. Which would be mitigated by not having to contend with as many undesirable drops.

+5s are pretty much tat and demonstrate a misunderstanding of what players want from their summoned companions. There are a few who are happy to try to get more damage from their companion, but most won't waste their time on it when they can use the companion to increase personal damage by some greater amount.

The final issue I know of is that they made companion pact blades, but the companions that use warlock gear have grimoire slots. So there's an entire category of items that are useless with their proper items missing, but if implemented correctly can only be used by only 3-4 not-that-good companions (Grazilaxx, Staldorf, Watler, and... for some reason I think there's another). My opinion on this was that it was a poor decision to add a new type of gear slot to any companions in the first place, rather than stick with variations on the existing items. Though that ship has sailed.

urabask · March 2017

beckylunatic said:

urabask said:

The problem with the rewards is that there is too much variety and a lot of it is useless.
It was an old post and I fully own that the range of trash had escaped me. I'm not sure anyone had fully realized at that time, tbh.

The gear with hitpoints is pretty useless and I doubt anyone would miss them. The only application I see for those is wanting dual defense slots but not getting a drop with better stats. Which would be mitigated by not having to contend with as many undesirable drops.

+5s are pretty much tat and demonstrate a misunderstanding of what players want from their summoned companions. There are a few who are happy to try to get more damage from their companion, but most won't waste their time on it when they can use the companion to increase personal damage by some greater amount.

The final issue I know of is that they made companion pact blades, but the companions that use warlock gear have grimoire slots. So there's an entire category of items that are useless with their proper items missing, but if implemented correctly can only be used by only 3-4 not-that-good companions (Grazilaxx, Staldorf, Watler, and... for some reason I think there's another). My opinion on this was that it was a poor decision to add a new type of gear slot to any companions in the first place, rather than stick with variations on the existing items. Though that ship has sailed.

Yeah I figured as much. It just seemed like a good post to quote to make the point in the feedback thread.

While I agree that the hitpoints items are pretty useless I think they can work things such that they can still at least give players that option. Although really I think these items should've been distributed over multiple skirmishes like Underdark rings were.

I'm assuming that they added the pact blades because of the Mage Slayer. It's kind of funny because they had to make all of the other pact blades in the game not work with it because even a level 70 green pact blade gives around 3k power.

beckylunatic · March 2017

Ohhh... the Mage Slayer has a pact blade slot? Gross.

Devs, don't do this. This is what I said about the grimoires but even worse. When the available loot pool is too large and all the decent items are bound, you just end up with a bunch of frustrated players. Adding more types of equipment slots to companions accomplishes nothing to make them more versatile because all the companion gear uses the same templates. There is no justification for that not being a belt or an icon.

asterotg · March 2017

The perfect solution would be, if you could chose what kind of item you get.

You would still have to grind like hell for the wanted +4 power/crit gear, but at last it would be useful.

polaris1986 · March 2017

please make:

10-29 lvl - easy mode
30-59 lvl - normal mode
60-69 lvl - middle mode

because noone want to play this for 30-45 minutes! most of lowlvl players just haven't damage for it.

Official Feedback Thread: Illusionist's Gambit

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