Suggestions for DB3-instance and instances

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Actually, it was one of my most tense moments in AO ever. It happened recently.. I was playing with Ctrannik and he died with like 1.5 bars remaining and I finished with doctor alone by the sheer white knuckle, edge of your chair, screaming and sweating from every pore, hair raised, keyboard mashing, bloody stump of finger raging will that I've only experienced.. well, never.

To be honest, I probably almost had a heart attack, and quite frankly, being a "vet" was NOT enough. That I lived through it was maybe like being caught in a sharknado that had just ripped through the gilette factory (i.e. shark-razorblade-nado).

I wouldn't mind the fire floor being slightly more forgiving. The fact that I've tried fire floor probably 40-45 times and beat it once, for me is not a testament to skill, or even patience, it's a testament to insanity. Clearly, I'm insane for trying it so many times and only beating it once.

I'd be more than happy to see something like 1s ticks of 5000 damage which is quite reasonable hit rate, and would severely stress a doctor if you didn't haul ass out of it in a hurry.

[DigitalBath]

what are you talking about. without sync issues that floor is easy. with sync issues its impossible. but lets keep it for you and digital since apparently having others do it ruins the game for you. i don't care, i play lol these days, but the argument you two bring forth is...remarkable.

@" since apparently having others do it ruins the game for you."
I've written several times that solving sync issues or heavily mitigating them would be a better solution than nerfing it and also would improve other encounters. You've ignored it several times for whatever reason and prefer stating that I (and others) would rather have others not do the encounter. It's very clearly not the case, move on out of that one.

[Cyberleet]

Didn't suggest to nerf it

Solving sync issues and rebalancing the encounter would be great.

It would be like Sister Pestilence on stims. I personally have nps with the current version and used to do it a lot on rk2. It looks like instantkill (not the fire-mechanic in itself) kills all the fun of it for a lot of people tho and skip it because of that.

what are you talking about. without sync issues that floor is easy. with sync issues its impossible. but lets keep it for you and digital since apparently having others do it ruins the game for you. i don't care, i play lol these days, but the argument you two bring forth is...remarkable.

If you witnessed Digitals previous 'arguments' you wouldn't be suprised if it's not a gameplay-related motivation behind it.

I've written several times that solving sync issues or heavily mitigating them would be a better solution .

What about two diferent encounters until then (soon tm)? One with the rebalance, another without?

Yes/no? Why?

I'd be more than happy to see something like 1s ticks of 5000 damage which is quite reasonable hit rate, and would severely stress a doctor if you didn't haul ass out of it in a hurry.

this

So if I die or LD that's it for me,

Yes :>

[Cyberleet]

Actually, it was one of my most tense moments in AO ever. It happened recently.. I was playing with Ctrannik and he died with like 1.5 bars remaining and I finished with doctor alone by the sheer white knuckle, edge of your chair, screaming and sweating from every pore, hair raised, keyboard mashing, bloody stump of finger raging will that I've only experienced.. well, never.

To be honest, I probably almost had a heart attack, and quite frankly, being a "vet" was NOT enough. That I lived through it was maybe like being caught in a sharknado that had just ripped through the gilette factory (i.e. shark-razorblade-nado).

First time I did it eventually all died except me and a doc at the end. I felt like a bunny ch-jumping out of those flames.

[edmaster3]

Actually, it was one of my most tense moments in AO ever. It happened recently.. I was playing with Ctrannik and he died with like 1.5 bars remaining and I finished with doctor alone by the sheer white knuckle, edge of your chair, screaming and sweating from every pore, hair raised, keyboard mashing, bloody stump of finger raging will that I've only experienced.. well, never.

To be honest, I probably almost had a heart attack, and quite frankly, being a "vet" was NOT enough. That I lived through it was maybe like being caught in a sharknado that had just ripped through the gilette factory (i.e. shark-razorblade-nado).

I wouldn't mind the fire floor being slightly more forgiving. The fact that I've tried fire floor probably 40-45 times and beat it once, for me is not a testament to skill, or even patience, it's a testament to insanity. Clearly, I'm insane for trying it so many times and only beating it once.

I'd be more than happy to see something like 1s ticks of 5000 damage which is quite reasonable hit rate, and would severely stress a doctor if you didn't haul ass out of it in a hurry.

Xootch this is the stuff I like. He didnt give up just because he die 39 times. DB3 was designed to be the hardest instance in ao, Not a another boring go in kill stuff and get gear and farm for your alt.
You realized this is the already nerfed version right? People die, if it kills vets good. Take up the challenge and try until you pass it. It annoying that all dd have to do is just stand there and shoot while talking to friends.
If you do it enough you will get the skills to pass it. Others can now predict some of the patterns.

[Xootch]

Xootch this is the stuff I like. He didnt give up just because he die 39 times. DB3 was designed to be the hardest instance in ao, Not a another boring go in kill stuff and get gear and farm for your alt.
You realized this is the already nerfed version right? People die, if it kills vets good. Take up the challenge and try until you pass it. It annoying that all dd have to do is just stand there and shoot while talking to friends.
If you do it enough you will get the skills to pass it. Others can now predict some of the patterns.

lol. this is your conclusion of his post? really?

in that case, you must envy mcknuckle to die in the nerfed version, right? i suggest you go forth and play ao through a proxy in uganda or something, so you can get the pleasure of doing the hardest instance in ao with the challenge until you pass it. Not a another boring thing where you can see what happens when it happens! maybe you can ask our new gd to put in an edmaster mode, with sync issues no matter what your connection is like, just so you dont get bored standing there and talking to friends but so you can get the skill to foresee the pattern no matter how bad you are off the server sync. let others call it a bug, you made it a feature! such a pitty you've never actually experienced it yourself.

[Psikie]

If you do it enough you will get the skills to pass it. Others can now predict some of the patterns.

Reminds me of the old Dragon's Lair game - "The game is not unbeatable, but requires the player to learn the timing of the game's enemies and obstacles through repetition."

I guess memorization now is a way to test "skill" and "difficulty" in AO.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

I guess memorization now is a way to test "skill" and "difficulty" in AO.

To be perfectly honest, it sounds better than what I contend with... which is uncontrolled luck on synch.

rote memorization, if it WAS a way to test skill/difficulty is a lot easier than

If(RND(1,1000)>996,True,False)

[Psikie]

Seriously? Memorization? I 'm sorry I prefer a more dynamic pc game. If I wanted a memorization exercise I could play a match card game with my kids where you have to flip over 2 apples or oranges etc to make a match lol.

[Roscoe]

Game should be hard because of the way it was designed.

Are we saying that FC intended for sync issues to make the instance hard? If so then great, would be kinda like Metal Gear and having to plug you're controller into the other socket. Maybe they should design more questing zones to rubber band you? :P

[edmaster3]

lol. this is your conclusion of his post? really?

in that case, you must envy mcknuckle to die in the nerfed version, right? i suggest you go forth and play ao through a proxy in uganda or something, so you can get the pleasure of doing the hardest instance in ao with the challenge until you pass it. Not a another boring thing where you can see what happens when it happens! maybe you can ask our new gd to put in an edmaster mode, with sync issues no matter what your connection is like, just so you dont get bored standing there and talking to friends but so you can get the skill to foresee the pattern no matter how bad you are off the server sync. let others call it a bug, you made it a feature! such a pitty you've never actually experienced it yourself.

Roscoe no they did not design it to have sync issuse.
Psikie no its not memorization, its just knowledge from doing things multiple times. Its like a person new to db1, they fall off a lot and basically do the scared walk everywhere. But after a few or many runs they are speeding all over the pathways, Changing direction in air and back flipping all over the map.

Xootch you sure its really sync issues? This is ao, sometimes bugs happens, well a lot. Even without sync issues its actually still really hard.
If your issues are really as horrible as you say, i guess you can never play a doc or pvp? Or is it just db3?

What is it that you want FC to do about it other than work on the sync issues? The instance has been complete buy a lot of different groups so it is completable.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

hmm ok Ed, I appreciate where you're coming from.

Maybe a question is on order here:

To all those posting in this thread, do you think that the fire room was designed to be as difficult as it currently is, or do you think that synch is making it significantly more difficult than the intended difficulty?

I personally think the latter - but that's only because I live in Australia.

That said, the last few times I've tried DB3, I've not died from big flames... I've only died from damage from bosses where my teammates have perished and I'm alone tanking the boss; and, the only advice I can give on that is to go for all out HP setup (23-26k preferably on doctor) and stay in the air as much as you possibly can.

[Awikun]

I have np with lag and learned how to deal with flames, but I understand ppl that have problem with it.
10k hit every 1 second should solve the problem:
1 hit will not kill any level 220 char, but it will be impossible for doc to outheal it.

What I would change is to add some challanges that while not so hard for every single player will make it impossible for multiboxers.
For example: at every floor when the boss is killed there will be a huge bomb with 5-10 second timer (to be tested)
At the same time there will be a number of doors appearing in walls of that room. each door would have name or sign of every profession and it will be possible to open that door only by the right profession.

If even one member of the team will not manage to enter the right door in time then the whole team dies and instance resets
It should not be hard for 4-6 players to do it, but it will be a impossible task for multiboxer.

[Traderjill]

I'm going to put my neck on the chopping block and say that I don't think the majority of people having issues in DB3 are experiencing synch problems. That's not to devalue the very valid concerns of those that are but the reality is that AO is a game where a good majority of its encounters are tank and spank. Many of the ones that aren't, are somehow turned into tank and spank by careful manipulation of game mechanics. People aren't used to moving they just want to top DD charts and that's not the goal of that floor

I am not a DB3 expert but most of the teams I've been in where people were dieing to the fire were because they were standing in the fire. Now I have personally experienced a synch issue that I believe was related to my internet connection. But the reality is that I was experiencing problems everywhere I went.. not just in DB3 but I was complaining about problems in Pande, APF, etc. Once that was cleared up I was back to normal being able to navigate just fine the overwhelming majority of the time. I hate to call people out but if your connection is just fine and you've done every raid in game and then all of a sudden are experiencing synch issues in DB3 I'm just going to say that the problem is probably between the keyboard and the chair. See the cool thing about AO's historical issues is that whenever something goes wrong in an instance or someone dies in a team/raid people cry 'lag'.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest I think that the big fire could be turned down a bit. I don't think I've played any game where standing in fire killed you as fast as I've seen in DB3. In fact, I'd expect to see something like that in a game like WoW or even SWTOR but even those games are more forgiving. On top of that, in those games when you go into a raid instance you've got 2 tanks, 2 healers and DPS whereas in DB3 you have a 6 man team and some of the encounters (especially the last 2 main bosses) require you to have pretty good DD to get them done properly. So if your healer has 'lag' (lol) and dies you're pretty much screwed and it doesn't matter how good you are, you're likely not to survive if that happens too early on. Some guy got caught in between 2 fires and couldn't get any buff? Now the healer's trying to heal him and any damage from random fires plus that healer has to navigate the same mechanics as everyone else in the team.. that place is a terror to heal and my hat's off to the few doctors I've seen do it well (honorable mention to my buddy Tlaskeh that does a great job there).

I'm all about tough encounters, but DB3 is not tough it is just obnoxious and it is also pretty darned funny that the most 'difficult' floor is the first true boss you encounter and the encounter gets progressively easier as you go along.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

I'm going to put my neck on the chopping block and say that I don't think the majority of people having issues in DB3 are experiencing synch problems.

agree - I think most are not, but just find it difficult for reasons outlined below.

That's not to devalue the very valid concerns of those that are but the reality is that AO is a game where a good majority of its encounters are tank and spank.

Ok, this is what I want to talk about.

Many of the ones that aren't, are somehow turned into tank and spank by careful manipulation of game mechanics.

We need to tread VERY lightly here Jill. Here's why:

AO has complex mechanics, and there is, and has been for a VERY long time - since the beginning, in fact - very good reasons to the way people play, and to some degree -must- play standing still:

1. ranged profs can't charge their attack bar while moving
2. ranged profs CAN charge perks but the indicator bugs and then has to catch up which then creates a visual bug for important perk timing such as DOF/limber.
3. Many many important nanos are not instant cast - and moving while casting results in a fumble/mis-cast etc.
4. In early game, most profs were never, remotely close to 1/1 attack/recharge, and they actually needed to stand there waiting for their attack to launch.

These 4 huge factors slowed the game down to an enormous degree, and I'm sure you will agree that DB 3, and even DB 1/2 to some extent are a sort of brutal push by the devs to force AO into a "new age" of dynamic raiding, even while AO's mechanics are rooted in the past - and thus we have the current mechanical muddle: a new style raid, hampered by ancient mechanics, and old engine, a single server resulting in poor synch for some of the players (while resulting in nearly none for others).

So, my point here is that it's not really a poorly designed raid, it's that AO is an old game, and the Dev's are trying to provide new, tough, dynamic raids on a platform that was never meant to handle that type of dynamic play.

Now, to bring it back to your quote that players try to make stuff tank'n'spank... yes, it's completely true, but we do so because we're acutely aware of the systemic mechanical constraints, for one, and for two, tank'n'spank is the foundation of AO, it's what we were trained and learned on. And finally, regardless of whether we started playing in 2004 or 2010, every player must go through the beginning 150 levels where it's impossible to be at max speed with your weap at full def, oh, and if you rolled ranged good luck EVER arriving at end game thinking you should be moving while fighting!

[Xootch]

Roscoe no they did not design it to have sync issuse.
Psikie no its not memorization, its just knowledge from doing things multiple times. Its like a person new to db1, they fall off a lot and basically do the scared walk everywhere. But after a few or many runs they are speeding all over the pathways, Changing direction in air and back flipping all over the map.

Xootch you sure its really sync issues? This is ao, sometimes bugs happens, well a lot. Even without sync issues its actually still really hard.
If your issues are really as horrible as you say, i guess you can never play a doc or pvp? Or is it just db3?

What is it that you want FC to do about it other than work on the sync issues? The instance has been complete buy a lot of different groups so it is completable.

dude: read. think. write.

1.As i mentioned before, i do not care about this because i am not playing anymore. I merely engaged because what you said was utter nonsense to people who have to deal with issues you have never even seen. And that is the nice way of putting it.
2.Yes. I've been moving a bit during my ao time, and I have completed the instance with orgmates a fair amount of times. These are just my survival rates: Downtown NY: approx. 90%, Boston: 0%, Joburg: 0%, Europe (Germany/UK/Italy): approx. 90%. So either my maaaaaad skills are vibe dependent or there's something else going on.

You can compensate for a sync error in every other scenario, but here one during the whole time you need for that floor is enough to kill you instantly. Is that so hard to understand?

You telling people that don't like to just die out of nowhere that they just need to get some skills is, in plain terms, arrogant mocking out of ignorance (that is the less nice way to describe your behavior). i.e. instead of considering that there may be something going on with different people in this thread posting about sync issues you just assumed they're all just idiots and noobs.

[Traderjill]

1. ranged profs can't charge their attack bar while moving
2. ranged profs CAN charge perks but the indicator bugs and then has to catch up which then creates a visual bug for important perk timing such as DOF/limber.
3. Many many important nanos are not instant cast - and moving while casting results in a fumble/mis-cast etc.
4. In early game, most profs were never, remotely close to 1/1 attack/recharge, and they actually needed to stand there waiting for their attack to launch.

I agree that these are dated mechanics but you never see any complaint threads about them.. I have no idea why. When I was originally going to respond to this thread yesterday I'd typed something about my healing experience.. actually forgot about it until your response. I recall being in a recharge (not sure if it was my team or single target heal) that prevented me from clicking on the buff thing in the corner. Result= me dead because I simply had a 'wth is happening' moment and lost focus on what I was doing. I honestly would rather see the boxes in the corner replaced with pads on the floor that you just run over to get the buff. Having to keep screwing around with your camera angle, having your toon turn on you to face the boss, having to simply stop attacking, etc are just things that make the encounter obnoxious rather than challenging. The room itself is way too small as well which I think also contributes to that encounter being more annoying, less challenging.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Having to keep screwing around with your camera angle, having your toon turn on you to face the boss, having to simply stop attacking, etc are just things that make the encounter obnoxious rather than challenging. The room itself is way too small as well which I think also contributes to that encounter being more annoying, less challenging.

I couldn't agree more.

I primarily play doctor in DB3, because, quite frankly it seems to be the most difficult to play well in there, and is usually 50% the reason why a team succeeds or fails in there, and I hate putting that much investment in someone else (i.e. I feel that if I'm gunna spend the time doing it, I'll play to 100% of my capability which I know to be of high standard, as such if someone is going to be the hinge pin holding it all together, I'd be happy to do it.. as long as I'm feeling up to it).

But I'll take 2 double espressos and a full night of sleep the night before, both kids asleep and the wife parked in front of Homeland before I'll attempt it, in general, because, not pulling any punches, that room is a bitch.

[Xootch]

that's why we usually did it with two docs. btw: without sync issues, you can do it with two people only, but its booooring as it takes forever. and if one dies, so does the other. how does that make you feel ?

[McKnuckleSamwich]

that's why we usually did it with two docs. btw: without sync issues, you can do it with two people only, but its booooring as it takes forever. and if one dies, so does the other. how does that make you feel ?

bahahaha I know

My preference for teaming is anything with:

1-4 solds
0-1 crat
1-2 docs

And any combination seems to work... and I'll just tell you that I did happen to finish it once when only I was alive at the end (on doc)... and I think the only reason I survived it (assumed) is because both procs fired in the final moments which slowed his hit rate enough that I was able to outheal the damage while launching everything I had.

My favourite combo is 1 sold/1 crat/2 docs. That provides a lot of heals, much more room for screw-ups and the aggro is steady on the sold plus debuffs.