New dungeon rocks!

[Chaman-bourru]

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?

There's a DPS race with Yun Rau ?
Anyway i guess to go through you'ld still need a few epics from khitai at least for the tanks. The tactics aren't all that simple so figuring them out in a few hours on all 6 boss and then managing to get them right might take a lot more time than a few hours.

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.

The Disco boss takes massive damage, if everyone pays attention and doesn't heal him he goes down very fast (roughly three aura shifts per 25%). It's fine in my opinion. Yeah eventually pets could take the buff but still doesn't take much for necros or demos to just play on boss without them. The dps needed to get him down is low.

But i agree on the Unknow completely. The bats teleport all other the place seems they have location issues and they reset a lot too. If that's fixed, especially the first issue, it would be perfect.

[Kurt2013]

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.

Oh, i am not taking it as an insult. But stating a subjective view as fact is not making it so (that's why i mentioned certain gear dependant design factors as dps races and mob damage. also there are certain coded thresholds in the combat calculations). You can not overcome every challenge in the game by learning how to play better. THIS is a fact. But maybe we disagree about what we consider "decent" gear.

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?

Yes, you are right there and i agree for part of pve. Still for me, the fun of the game is far more diverse (in the right company grinding and wiping can be fun even and i don't consider lab rat puzzles much fun (i once made a point and click adventure analogy: puzlles can make sense and be funny (maniac mansion style) or they can be just mindless click and try to combine all (several new adventures or "find the spot" games) types). But this makes it all the more annoying to me, seeing things go in a direction, where the difficulty is replaced by technical approach, exploiting or simply luck. For example there is NO problem, if you die or wipe and CAN do better next time. But if you are following the right tactics and you loose because of the design and external factors it has NOTHING to do with skill and therefore can never be overcome by learning to play better. At a minimum i would expect after spending hours in an instance to get a clue on the tactics and where to adjust and upgrade builds and gear to overcome it. I meant those situations and it is a question the devs should test for and ask themselves for every new instance. If players wipe and keep failing, of course it COULD be their fault (clueless, no patience, no communication, bad gear, bad build, bad group composition), but it also could be the design (which might just need a few clues, tweaks and optimization). That's why i asked the question in the last post...if such a group has fun in finding out clues or can learn how to overcome the odds, it would be good. But if they need a certain threshold to even get clues, it sours the whole thing.

...
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.

Here we could derail into a fun and grind discussion. I do even agree in some degree for those people who play and specialize in one char and class.
But the "full khitai epic in a month" is a myth bound to a lot of "IF"s (i do NOT doubt, there are people who did it, but i think they tend to overlook and forget the conditions that enabled them to do it). Sure, it might be doable in theory, but it is far from the average gamer (not even mentioning casual) approach. I think on the old forums there was a thread on how many rares you could get in theory per day...if you are not convinced, we can do the maths again. And that would be pure theory, not even counting in the mentality needed to do what is required.

And Thank you for answering my question partly.

@RingofSet: That's why i asked about a friendly atmosphere, willing to learn, decent geared group and their chances in progressing with the instance.

@Vehl: Yes, the part where you need a certain amount of dps to overcome the heals. I have not a complete memory of it, but you can find other examples in cins thread about the khitai fights as well.

[Invino]

Erm ... there is no reason for new blue geared players to visit this dungeon, they have a 100 other things to do.

If they do visit, surely one would think "hmm, these hit hard, I'll come back when I'm all grown up" ..

[Bibik]

The Disco boss takes massive damage, if everyone pays attention and doesn't heal him he goes down very fast (roughly three aura shifts per 25%). It's fine in my opinion. Yeah eventually pets could take the buff but still doesn't take much for necros or demos to just play on boss without them. The dps needed to get him down is low.

Fight is still tedious and tend to be boring after 2 phases. I slack really hard on this one

[Chaman-bourru]

Fight is still tedious and tend to be boring after 2 phases. I slack really hard on this one

Haha yeah well the fight in itself is alright, the tedious part, i find, is that you wipe 10 times before killing it. Because a guy does a fatality on a mob at 10% while others aren't ready. Or a POM one shots himself with HC. Or just players with ruin dpsing the boss only paying attention to the ruin removal but not to the buff they still need to get.

[Kurt2013]

@Invino: That is true...but there is also the alternative, depending on how you "grow up". They could also say "ah, scrap this. i will never see it in my lifetime". That is the risk.
This simply comes with too much progression orientation. And it brings me back to resource use.
Again, don't get me wrong: new content and challenging content is not bad. But wouldn't it be better to use the resources more effectively and offer players a few more choices in how steep they want their progression curve to be and allow for more players see the new stuff?
(and by following my advice, these new players would not be as clueless as in comparison to those, who got powerlevelled and boosted to their purple khitai gear by guildies or exploits, because they could practice on site)

For example the vet version could be purely endgame oriented and require that certain progression chillee mentioned (t2/3 gear and purple khitai). But why not offer a "preview" version or "normal" mode to make both new content more lively and not so dependant on hype and allow for weaker geared people to see and practice, so they can "grow" up in areas they like?

Trying to illustrate the problem (and reason i was commenting here in the first place) one more time:
For making a new pve instance you need complete new artwork, mob design and boss designs, fight testers and balancing and testing. To add different difficulties (call them normal/hard modes, godslayer trials or "unchained") you later only need to tweak database numbers and maybe some balancing. Do this regularly and you will have a way to counter the "thin air at the top" problem and the risk i mentioned above, because as with normal modes and hard modes, you will have per default a lot more people available for the hard mode (or intended challenge) pool.

Another positive effect of these different modes of same instances is, that storywise or questwise you can add the illusion of time and progression. E.g. the more challenging rewards and quests could be based upon or follow ups of those in the easier mode.

[Rathothis]

That's why i asked the question in the last post...if such a group has fun in finding out clues or can learn how to overcome the odds, it would be good. But if they need a certain threshold to even get clues, it sours the whole thing.

Tactics in Coils are not entirely straightforward and take a couple of hours to figure out - but there's not many of those "wth" moments where the encounter mechanics don't make any sense and you need to resort to a workaround.

Overall, the mechanics are quite fun, even though they fall slightly short of what I consider the best encounters in the game - namely those which involve tactics that are easy to find out, but not all that easy to implement (Martyr of Votantha and Tia Shar in Xibaluku, and Osseous Abomination in Sepulcher).

Here we could derail into a fun and grind discussion.

But there's no need to As Invino pointed out, there's a lot of content you can do in T1/T2 and Khitai blues. By contrast, once your gear is full T3 or Khitai epic (or better), many dungeons in the game become rather trivial. So it does make sense for Funcom to make new content a bit harder than, say, the dungeons in NG or Kara Korum.

Edit: I see your point re "easy mode" versions - like in GW2 or SWTOR. This is pretty much the same issue which Funcom are addressing by introducing "Unchained" versions of deserted old-world dungeons. Sure it would be nice to have two versions of each and every dungeon in the game, but if that ever happens, it's likely to be in the very distant future.

[Kurt2013]

Thanks, and i am not disagreeing here. I would just like to see a more diverse approach when it comes to new content (and i mentioned dead mans hand for exactly that reason). Especially when i consider funcoms resources...
In real life with a piece of paper i think i could illustrate my point even better (and without so many text walls)...but this medium is rather limited

And i would not use the same approach for every dungeon. There are those who are more environmental (like the ravine, oasis, isles) and are ideal for scaling content with added "unchained" mode or random elements.
Others are good for the "revisited" approach, like sanctum and amphi, where you could add "hard modes" to each versions, but not scaling. Or limit scaling to the intervall between the two versions and make it rather generic with random elements.
Then you could have really special and individual instances, that should keep a set difficulty, maybe only adjustable through normal and hard mode triggers.

[Bibik]

Haha yeah well the fight in itself is alright, the tedious part, i find, is that you wipe 10 times before killing it. Because a guy does a fatality on a mob at 10% while others aren't ready. Or a POM one shots himself with HC. Or just players with ruin dpsing the boss only paying attention to the ruin removal but not to the buff they still need to get.

Not exactly that, i can't dps on that boss (and windows of dpsing are very short so i can just send some instants with long cd), and healing is not very required so i slack.

It's like Yah-Cheng on golems duty : best tactics for tos is slacking hard :d

[Naerri]

Haha yeah well the fight in itself is alright, the tedious part, i find, is that you wipe 10 times before killing it. Because a guy does a fatality on a mob at 10% while others aren't ready. Or a POM one shots himself with HC. Or just players with ruin dpsing the boss only paying attention to the ruin removal but not to the buff they still need to get.

Its not that I dont like complex fights, the mechanics of this one may sound perfect on paper, but again...few more seconds between aura shifts + DOTs reseting could make it worth while. But now - tedious is the right word.