New dungeon rocks!

[Chillee]

Are there temporary access passes to the dragonspine instances and dragonspine in the shop for f2p?

If not, why not?

About difficulty:
Principially i find it a bad use of resources, if you offer a good instance with a set difficulty only (be it hard or easy). As a player (and considering the bonus latency especially) i want to be able to kind of choose the difficulty a bit (it is fine that there is a rough trend of instance A being tougher than instance B).
Good examples for use of resources is dead mans hand. It offers value from lvl50 to 80 and can be challenging in unchained mode (especially if you get the wrong boss at the end) for khitai geared chars (depending on class a lot, since it is solo though). Even better would be instance design scaling from an offset level to max (if you want it tougher, you could scale the mobs to lvl+x instead of lvl), an added unchained mode for groups.

Yes, a solo dungeon like dead mans that an average player can do blindfolded is a good use of resources.....

Contrary to what some have said, you don't have to be uber geared to do the new dungeon. You do have to be able to pay attention on many of the encounters.

The new dungeon is fantastic and very little if anything should be changed in it.

[Kurt2013]

First, what you say about dead mans hand is simply not right and plainly insulting to all other players not as lucky and "skillfull" as you. It shows how much of aloof many veterans have grown already...
As example for difficulty choice, let me put it this way: you can learn the mechanics of the fights by levelling up and if you don't manage them at one point, you revisit. If the unchained is too hard, you can choose to do the normal version. If you get an undefeatable boss (due to class inbalances) at the ship, you can decide to come back later for another boss. This "choices" have nothing to do with onearmed monkeys.
The point was also not about solo dungeons but scaling dungeons. If for example Oasis and Ravine had scaling loot like forgotten city and breach have for example, they would fit that description too. Besides i mentioned ideally a group version as alternative. Such a system would work for any "side" content or revisitable areas not linked to specific quest chains (which do not suit revisiting).

Second, i was not mentioning gear as the only factor. With certain engine features it is just the "pay attention" model, that makes it hard for some (just try a fight like the ardashir arena lvl80 dust boss while people are teleporting, lagging and freezing all around you. They might do everything right on "their" client, but you'll wipe anyway). You can make fights challenging and interesting without putting up high demands on network and hardware. Back in 2009 it was for example possible to play the whole game without particles enabled (thus only by "paying attention" on what happened and the important things like grim grey god waves showed up on low settings still.). Try that now.

Third, i stand to the use of resources statement. I found simply, that the games who heeded that rule (giving players a choice in difficulty) were the ones with the most replay and longevity factor. But it might be, that i am a bit disappointed from dragonspine in this regard in total.
It was also not specifically aimed at the new instance, but as i said "fixed difficulty" encounters. Back to dead mans hand: Sure, it is solo now, but they could easily open it up for groups if they wanted. The same does not go the other way around as easily.

As with the new dungeon, i bet there is a huge difference in what you need to "figure" out the encounter and later (with tactics known) to grind it. Weirdly, when it comes to judging the difficulty people tend to mention only the second status and forget what was needed at first hand.

So let me ask you a genuine question: If i had patience and average gear and experience with both old world and khitai fights (t1/2 and faction blues or dungeon drops) and a group of likegeared and likeminded friends willing to spent the evening exploring that instance (no loot farmer mentality). Would you advice us to do it? Would there be a point we could not proceed (like a dps race as with yun rau or a period our tank has to survive a certain amount of blows) or do you think it is figureable and beatable in a few hours work?

No need for much spoilers, just an accessment from your experience should do

[Civilix]

I love Coils dungeon, the best part is that it is all about control.

Perfect instance to play with friends, and as more people gain experience this will be more accessable than SotW.

As far as i could notice critigation is not needed.

[Naerri]

Disco boss is ridiculous imho. At least DPS window needs to be increased for a few seconds and aura shifts should erase the DOTs from players. Also pets necro/demo should get the same buff as player has.
The Unknown is also a little annoying, its mostly based on luck + the bats are acting really weird.

I also have the feeling that Coils miss some graphic finetuning. Not enough gfx effects, no shadows unless you enable experimental one...

[Invino]

Went once on Monday and think it is really good, didn't get past the spider on the web part. Good work FC.
It is just the right level of hard for a new dungeon, don't want everyone clearing it on their 1st try (like Wyrm before the silly upgrade)

Just need the dodge a la TSW since the dungeon is very TSWy.

[Rathothis]

So let me ask you a genuine question: If i had patience and average gear and experience with both old world and khitai fights (t1/2 and faction blues or dungeon drops) and a group of likegeared and likeminded friends willing to spent the evening exploring that instance (no loot farmer mentality). Would you advice us to do it? Would there be a point we could not proceed (like a dps race as with yun rau or a period our tank has to survive a certain amount of blows) or do you think it is figureable and beatable in a few hours work?

From what I can tell, the dungeon is clearly aimed at people with at least Khitai epic / T3 gear. At that level, the fights are well balanced and really become a control issue. T4 gear might help ofc but is not required.

I would think that a group all geared in T1/T2 and faction blues will run into serious trouble in there.

[Civilix]

(...)
The Unknown is also a little annoying, its mostly based on luck + the bats are acting really weird.
(...)

Luck? At least the way we do it, luck does not change anything...

Went once on Monday and think it is really good, didn't get past the spider on the web part. Good work FC.
It is just the right level of hard for a new dungeon, don't want everyone clearing it on their 1st try (like Wyrm before the silly upgrade)

Just need the dodge a la TSW since the dungeon is very TSWy.

For the spider boss you should turn on all particles for the fight to make sense, we wiped for hours because funcom again forgot to make something important world particles.

[Boesch]

There's a few fights where you want a little bit of con but outside of that gear really doesn't feel like a factor at all in the new dungeon, it's all about mechanics. The fights are very very simple to tank, nothing hits a soldier hard at all.

[Chillee]

First, what you say about dead mans hand is simply not right and plainly insulting to all other players not as lucky and "skillfull" as you. It shows how much of aloof many veterans have grown already...
As example for difficulty choice, let me put it this way: you can learn the mechanics of the fights by levelling up and if you don't manage them at one point, you revisit. If the unchained is too hard, you can choose to do the normal version. If you get an undefeatable boss (due to class inbalances) at the ship, you can decide to come back later for another boss. This "choices" have nothing to do with onearmed monkeys.
The point was also not about solo dungeons but scaling dungeons. If for example Oasis and Ravine had scaling loot like forgotten city and breach have for example, they would fit that description too. Besides i mentioned ideally a group version as alternative. Such a system would work for any "side" content or revisitable areas not linked to specific quest chains (which do not suit revisiting).

Second, i was not mentioning gear as the only factor. With certain engine features it is just the "pay attention" model, that makes it hard for some (just try a fight like the ardashir arena lvl80 dust boss while people are teleporting, lagging and freezing all around you. They might do everything right on "their" client, but you'll wipe anyway). You can make fights challenging and interesting without putting up high demands on network and hardware. Back in 2009 it was for example possible to play the whole game without particles enabled (thus only by "paying attention" on what happened and the important things like grim grey god waves showed up on low settings still.). Try that now.

Third, i stand to the use of resources statement. I found simply, that the games who heeded that rule (giving players a choice in difficulty) were the ones with the most replay and longevity factor. But it might be, that i am a bit disappointed from dragonspine in this regard in total.
It was also not specifically aimed at the new instance, but as i said "fixed difficulty" encounters. Back to dead mans hand: Sure, it is solo now, but they could easily open it up for groups if they wanted. The same does not go the other way around as easily.

As with the new dungeon, i bet there is a huge difference in what you need to "figure" out the encounter and later (with tactics known) to grind it. Weirdly, when it comes to judging the difficulty people tend to mention only the second status and forget what was needed at first hand.

So let me ask you a genuine question: If i had patience and average gear and experience with both old world and khitai fights (t1/2 and faction blues or dungeon drops) and a group of likegeared and likeminded friends willing to spent the evening exploring that instance (no loot farmer mentality). Would you advice us to do it? Would there be a point we could not proceed (like a dps race as with yun rau or a period our tank has to survive a certain amount of blows) or do you think it is figureable and beatable in a few hours work?

No need for much spoilers, just an accessment from your experience should do

No what it shows is people aren't willing to invest a little time in toons to learn how to play them and get decent gear. If someone is having trouble with deadmans, then they need to learn how to play better. That's not mean or insulting, it's a fact. Having difficulty with that or any other fight is an opportunity to learn how to play better. Isn't that the fun of the game? I didn't know how to do the raid bosses in T3/3.5/4 when we first went into them either. We spent hours on end figuring out how to do them. No one should expect to immediately be great on a particular class or in a particular encounter. But Dead mans is completely doable in faction blues, for example, if a casual player is willing to pay attention to what their various skills and AAs allow them to do.

A person can do the solo instances every day and a few 6 mans and be full khitai epic in a month. And that is easily enough gear to do the full instance. As someone mentioned, the mobs don't hit as hard as Sepulcher. But I doubt that you can do it in faction blues. A guard in T2 would probably be ok, but most classes will want K6 epics. And it's really easy to be full K6 these days, or at least close to it.

[KullOfValusia]

The counter to all this is that the game is really a bit too hard for the mainstream mmo world. You really have to try the dungeon with some random pug off global to understand how difficult this thing really is. The fact is most new players are PUGers and of course incoming players, doing this dungeon with your t4 main team is not a very good indicator of how difficult it is.

In fact, getting feedback through test live is a very INACCURATE way of determining the difficulty of a dungeon. Most test livers are HARDCORE aocers who knows the game inside and out.