Official Feedback Thread: The Rise of Tiamat Encounter

klyzar · October 2014

Hello Adventurers!
Are you ready to confront the Dragon Queen?

Overview
We are opening the gates on the Rise of Tiamat encounter! This is an Epic Encounter like you've never seen in Neverwinter. Tiamat is being brought into the world and only you and 24 other adventurers can stop her. Since part of this experience is learning how to prevent the Rise of Tiamat I will not spoil anything other than tell you how you can experience this fight on our Preview shard.

Every half hour, the Cult of the Dragon and the Red Wizards will try to Summon Tiamat. To participate, go to the door to the Temple of Tiamat in the north of the Well of Dragons. The door is only open for a limited amount of time per run so don't dawdle. Once you are in the templ... well... you'll figure it out. We are looking for feedback on readability, balance and flow. This is still a work in progress so any feedback you have is important and can go to making this a better experience.

Feedback
We need to collect as much feedback as possible on this so we can deliver the most engaging and fun Tiamat Encounter ever. Given that, we would like you to categorize and color code your feedback so we can sort it and act on it most effectively! Please use the below format to submit bugs/feedback.

Subject: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
Please use “Bold” face text for the Subject 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.
(Concise Feedback & Screen Shots are much appreciated)

Examples:
Bug: Tiamat
During the fight Tiamat took my lunch money but I didn't actually lose any money.

Feedback: Linu
I don't understand how Linu gets to keep her lunch money when I lost mine.

Thank you again for all your help Adventurers! We look forward to hearing back from you!

Klyzar

iambecks1 · October 2014

The third phase ( I think it was the third phase ) where I think you have to keep the three clerics alive could have better instructions as to what your goal is and what needs to be done .

We killed the first five mages then we killed the one the guy ( sorry 2 am here so I didn't catch his name , he was on the edge of the cliff summoning Tiamat I think ) but then three clerics spawned and it wasn't clear what we were supposed to do so we killed wave after wave of demons until the timer ran out and we got kicked lol.

Maybe add a NPC to the starting area where the campfire is and he can explain the fight and explain what the consumable items you get from killing the first five mages are for etc

ironzerg79 · October 2014

We got as far as Defend The Clerics. They're all lit up with no adds coming, but nothing is advancing.

EDIT: It looks like after the encounter fails, it isn't resetting.

slintash · October 2014

Nothing happens after "Defend The Clerics"

valwryn · October 2014

The Damage from her many breathe attacks is much wider than the red auras. :eek:

eldarth · October 2014

Feedback:
...and what's the story with the permanent-red circle around her that does massive damage from no apparent source?

Does she have an invisible magic aura?
Did she turn the ground beneath her into near-lava?
Is it her deodorant?

dreamhuntressx · October 2014

valwryn wrote: »

The Damage from her many breathe attacks is much wider than the red auras. :eek:

Which is a good thing, so due to unpredictability ppl wont complain that "its too easy". :P

loboguild · October 2014

We got the encounter to Tiamat's heads with three chars (2CW/GWF) but then we got kicked. I guess time ran out, but it would be nice to have a timer of sorts.

kolatmaster · October 2014

Question...

Is this Encounter the 'First' 25 people who sign up? Can a Guild gather 25 People to Que it all together?

inthefade462 · October 2014

cryptic handling error, game crashed as soon as severin spawned. sent ticket in.

edit: back in and was able to get the blue tiamat head down a decent bit but then she drops down and it went back to defending the clerics. not sure if this is intended, only able to scrounge up 5 players on mimic.

unless something crazy happens after killing heads and she gets much harder, i imagine this is 10mannable.

frishter · October 2014

kolatmaster wrote: »

Question...

Is this Encounter the 'First' 25 people who sign up? Can a Guild gather 25 People to Que it all together?

There's no queue, you just enter the door manually and I assume the instance will be limited to 25 max.

rashylewizz · October 2014

frishter wrote: »

There's no queue, you just enter the door manually and I assume the instance will be limited to 25 max.

How hard does it seem to get 15-25 people on the same instance for a full guild run?

Can you transfer instances?

hadukhan · October 2014

rashylewizz wrote: »

How hard does it seem to get 15-25 people on the same instance for a full guild run?

Can you transfer instances?

if its anything like the dragons, there shouldnt be an issue getting into an instance of ToT

frishter · October 2014

rashylewizz wrote: »

How hard does it seem to get 15-25 people on the same instance for a full guild run?

Can you transfer instances?

Not sure if it depends on the well of the dragons instance or not and I can't really say. Only managed to try it with 2 others so far. We managed the first 3 stages until tie out. It's probably something you have to wait to go live to find out.

rashylewizz · October 2014

hadukhan wrote: »

if its anything like the dragons, there shouldnt be an issue getting into an instance of ToT

My point is, is this so called "raid" going to be a good enough excuse to get a big guild involved in. If its just a heroic encounter, then it'll probably be dead like other heroic encounters within a month. Most guilds will stop wasting their time trying to organize multiple groups.

frishter wrote: »

Not sure if it depends on the well of the dragons instance or not and I can't really say. Only managed to try it with 2 others so far. We managed the first 3 stages until tie out. It's probably something you have to wait to go live to find out.

So is it like a heroic encounter or an actual vanilla-WOW raid?

zippich · October 2014

It is like HE.

inthefade462 · October 2014

you enter it is a zone, not a dungeon instance. That zone only contains 1 thing, the Tiamat HE.

Not sure if the zone is tied to Well of Dragons, ie if 25 ppl in Well of Dragons instance #1 all zoned into Temple of Tiamat, would they all go to Temple #1, or is it the first 25 ppl who zone into Temple from any Well of Dragons instance all go into Temple #1. It's hard to test this because there are so few ppl on mimic at once.

iambecks1 · October 2014

Is there a system being put in place to prevent people just entering then going afk in the campfire area while everybody else does all the work?

rashylewizz wrote: »

So is it like a heroic encounter or an actual vanilla-WOW raid?

From what I saw last night is basically a huge gigantic HE that takes place over a fairly large instanced map instead of a small area ,it is definitely not a WoW style raid .

magiquepurse · October 2014

Is there some type of Raid UI?

Mechanics that need to be avoided split second or raid wipes?

Is voice communication necessary?

Are there mechanics that players need to discover through repeated wipes?

If any of the above aren't true, this is NOT a raid at all. The fact that it could be farmed every 30 mins is already amazingly bad.

Zerging huge HP pool mobs with interesting skins =/= RAID

mehguy138 · October 2014

We managed to proceed to the "defend clerics" stage and after a few minutes after that we all got kicked out of the area back to the entrance of WoD. It would be good to have a timer on that.

loboguild · October 2014

I've not experienced the full HE, but I doubt it'll be anything like a Raid we know from other games. Might be that a true 25-char setup isn't in the cards with the current game mechanic (the UI alone seems to be unable to manage more than a group of 10 currently), but unless there is a system to reliably get 25 guildies/friends into the same instance, I would go as far as saying that the HE has to be fairly easy, because it must be able to beat it with a 10k PUG.

This is not a final statement and I sure hope I'm wrong, but the stuff I've seen so far from the "Raid" is very disappointing. You guys do realize that toons are more and more frequently surpassing the 20k GS plateau and the requirement of the new Uber-HE is half as much? I would have preferred a mechanic to fully "premade" the HE, because that would be the requirement to make Tiamat a true endgame challenge. I fear it'll become a zergfest like any other HE every half an hour eventually and that's not enough for a new capstone content.

This is too late for M5, but even with groups of five there gotta be a way to structure a Raid. An option would be that regular five-char teams have to fight through an already very hard dungeon to reach a global lfg/campfire adventure zone (#0), in which you compile your team for the end-boss/second phase of the Raid. To separate teams you could use password-protected (#1-#HAMSTER) instances and unless an instance does not have five groups/25 players, you're unable to start. Wiping means the instance is reset/deleted and you land in #0 again. Winning will port you back to PE and of course you can always travel back voluntarily as well.

Anyway... this game needs challenges in both PVE and PVP so you guys better figure it out...

ironzerg79 · October 2014

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of difficulty, but time. As an 18k CW, I could solo the first two phases against the summoners and the Severn battle.

I could defend a single cleric by myself, too. But as people have seen, it looks like you have 25 minutes to finish the entire encounter or you get kicked out.

I'd like to see how complex the last phases of the fight are before I make more judgments.

However, as the leader of a fairly active guild, I'd love to see an easier way to get a bigger group in the instance together. Even if it isn't a full 25 person team, it'd be nice to go as a group of 10-15 if you have enough people online and ready to rock.

loboguild · October 2014

Well in the end it doesn't really matter whether it's difficulty or time.
As I've said, the so called Raid has to be designed to be beaten by a 10k PUG. Just look at the Dragon HEs from Mod 4. It's a zergfest instead of a true challenge. And that's intentionally. You can't make it too hard and let players go through the frustration of random teammates.

A true challenge would only be possible if you could fully premade the encounter. I haven't checked, but if the Tiamat instance works like the others, it starts by having to wait for two minutes to switch instances. Because the HE starts immediately, you effectively lose two minutes while trying to gather your team(s) in specific instances. I would think it might be possible to get 10-15 players into the same instance though. In Mod 4 areas you are able to switch instances through parties even though the instance is technically 'full' (can't switch manually). Will we see 25+ ?

I would at least restructure the HE so that you can enter at 0 and 30, figure out teams and instances and let the HE start at 5 and 35. This makes much more sense and just adds the "cooldown" and start rather than end.

valencay · October 2014

The instance is bugged out in the way that you already know, but it's now 1 hour and a half that has been like that, when the time resets you get kicked but when you go back in after 5 min it is still bugged

caexar · October 2014

I may have to copy my SW over and try this out...

valencay · October 2014

It is again bugged, and it has been like that for the past 2 and a half hours... well at least akro saw that with his own eyes so we can expect a fix sooner or later

cloud990pl · October 2014

It would be better to introduce real raid system (might be handy in the future) so players could group up and then roll with ToT, right now it's like 5-people party could queue up for any dungeon/skirmish and then be added to 20 other random people.
Entering through WoD should be an option in my opinion.

Also it sometimes doesn't reset properly like PvP in IWD

pointsman · October 2014

I tried the raid last night. Now, I have not done any sort of raid in any other MMO so I don't approach it from any sort of preconceived idea of what a raid "ought" to be. IMO those here who are judging this raid in comparison to other games are doing so unfairly. This game is not WOW or EQ or DOTA or any of the other acronyms thrown out there, and quite honestly, if people want to do WOW-style raiding, they should play WOW and not this game.

I don't think the raid will be possible with a bunch of disorganized 10k players. (Which is the way it ought to be, IMO.) They will either not know what to do, or run out of time trying to complete the tasks. I do think however that the first phase will be farmable for all levels, if there are loot drops associated with each phase. (These don't seem to be implemented yet.) So that part I like.

It seems as if just the first 25 people who enter the Temple within the time frame that it is open, will get to participate in the raid. That part I am not so fond of. It would be nice if teams could be allowed to choose their raid parties' composition. While I would like to hope that everyone in the raid would be pulling their own weight, there are also a lot of griefers and layabouts that I would not want causing the raid to fail because they are simply not willing to help.

I think what would make the raid more challenging without making it unbearably difficult, would be if teams of players would be required to keep the clerics alive while at the same time trying to fight Tiamat's heads. In my attempt, it seemed as though these were separate phases. Now this may already be part of the mechanics, because my "team" was basically just a few random people who happened to be present, maybe only 7 of us, and so we didn't get to see the full raid. But if not, that might be an interesting mechanic to implement and it shouldn't require all that much adjustment I wouldn't think.

I really like the artwork and the visuals within the Temple. Tiamat is definitely a threatening figure, which she should be. The rest of the Well of Dragons, however, is very bleak. Is that intended? I understand the area should be a foreboding region, but I don't know if it ought to be *that* desolate.

Anyway, just a few thoughts.

khimera906 · October 2014

Tiamat's proportions look wrong. How is she functioning with such big heads and such scrawny necks?

iambecks1 · October 2014

Really the encounter could use a way to party up everybody into one group , even if the UI shows it as five parties of five partied up into one group with one chat channel , that way whoever is leading can delegate jobs to specific groups like group A protect Cleric 1 , Group B protect Cleric 2 etc , the mobs may be weak and easy but I am guessing that if groups aren't working together with a simple way to communicate it could be quite easy to fail the encounter due to the time limit , even if everybody has 16k + GS

koalazebra1 · October 2014

khimera906 wrote: »

Tiamat's proportions look wrong. How is she functioning with such big heads and such scrawny necks?

you won't understand cause you don't have 5 heads.

Official Feedback Thread: The Rise of Tiamat Encounter

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