T11 Feedback Thread

Sarthin

Administrator
Legend

Posts: 1018

Common sense is not so common

T11 Feedback Thread

« on: March 20, 2024, 01:18:26 pm »

T11 Feedback Thread

A month has gone by since we released Kael Drakkel, our latest progression zone, and it's been a month filled with some adjustments and enhancements based on your initial reactions. Yet, we realize we haven't formally opened the floor to gather your comprehensive feedback.

Before we dive into the details, it's important to address a topic that not only pertains to T11 but also holds significance on a broader scale.

We're all different and while some players choose to just play quietly on the server, we all got our thoughts on the experience. Not everyone may choose to voice their thoughts through OOC discussions or Discord banter—and that’s perfectly okay—we hope that many of you will share your thoughts here on the forums when you find time for it.

Our forums offer a dedicated space for meaningful conversations about your experiences, suggestions, and insights. While OOC chatter and Discord are fantastic for spontaneous interaction, they don't always provide the conducive environment needed for in-depth discussions with us, the developers. Draca and I find it challenging to engage fully in those platforms due to their ephemeral and mixed-content nature. Hence, we want you to bring your constructive feedback into this forum, where it can be thoroughly reviewed and considered. This not only ensures your voice is heard but also helps us compile and understand the community's feedback comprehensively.

I often find myself in tells or DMs with many of you and while I enjoy the interaction, I've sometimes thought that much of what we're talking about is probably topics that would benefit all our players to read about and respond to with their own thoughts and ideas. I've personally read bits and pieces here and there, both on Discord and in-game. I still have no idea what's representative, if anything, related to our content.

So with this thread we're inviting you to bring forth your feedback on T11, so we get a clearer picture of what goes and what doesn't, so we can make the most informed decisions for future updates.While we're particularly interested in the points listed below, feel free to share any additional feedback:

Characters: The number of characters you're managing and their classes.
Equipment: Details about your characters' gear level, for example, if you're outfitting 18 characters with top-tier items such as EoBAs, UC4s, UW12s, etc.
Combat Efficiency: The time it takes for you to defeat a standard NPC in Kael.
Time Investment: The total hours you've dedicated to exploring Kael.
Quest Progression: Your progress through quests within Kael.
Loot Accumulation: The quantity of armor and item pieces you've collected.
Favorite Features: The aspects of Kael you find most enjoyable.
Areas for Improvement: Suggestions for changes or enhancements to T11.

Just remember it's not limited to these point suggestions. We're interested in anything you may find relevant to T11.

Thanks in advance!

Draca/Sarthin


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Raygan

Legend

Posts: 1149

Re: T11 Feedback Thread

« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2024, 02:13:42 pm »

I want this tier to take time…but it is hard and slogging away for hours and hours over days (in my experience) getting 2-3 named (mobs after enraged) with no armor molds….killing the possible names that spawns after Rune or Voltanis (Ragnar,Velk,etc) and not getting a shard or armor or anything….looking at 30 toons to push through that is just like majorly overwhelming. I like the story I like the zone….i love everything about it…except for feeling like I am stuck like Chuck with the crappiest RNG…I am all up for things taking time…but at this rate (not the quest lines just armors) feels WAY off. I hope you don’t take that as me crapping on your work because you did a beautiful job….just after hours of work with no reward it leaves you tired and not excited and kinda like why did I just spend all that time for nothing for. I believe the quest lines should take time but gearing toons out (so that content becomes more managable)....I have all heads but am waiting to spawn AoW until both of my tanks are full geared. Spawning him and wiping and loosing AoW would suck more than I could possibly imagine. When you are killing for hours and hours a day and you just feel stuck, it takes a great tier, full of nastalgia, and just makes you go meh....and the content is far to good for that!


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Hate's Most Hateful Hater

gnonim

Jr. Member

Posts: 72

Re: T11 Feedback Thread

« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2024, 08:45:41 am »

Raid: 24: 2 Warriors, 3 Clerics, 4 Pallys, 9 rogues (all 12.5), 2 mages, 1 monk, 1 ranger, 1 changer, 1 shaman All but two of the clerics have UW12 or higher. All have earring except 2 clerics, all have Veeshan shield and min rank 5 ring, pretty maxed out.

Went through the 400 quest in 5-6 days. Killed before that for several days. Went another week or so after that before getting my first plate armor and that was three days ago I think. The next day I got two more plate pieces. Previous to that, I had a total of 3 silk and 1 chain drop.

I've killed the four bosses before and after adjustments. Have not tried AOW yet even though I have all the heads.

I think all of the boss encounters are fun except for the "Increases Attack" instances which "seem" to insta-kill my warrior 30-50% of the time. No time to even hit a key. Now, I suppose I could see that if it happens at the exact same percent and take action when I'm a percent or two before that hits. If that's the way it's supposed to be, fine. However, would be nice to have at least one round's worth of time to react. Yes, I know to keep my mitigation buffs up...

EDIT TO THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH: Just really need to pay attention to what's happening when, with the debuffs after the adds and such. Got a few tips today with regard to that especially and obviously I was missing those. Wouldn't change a thing even with this. Takes me so more time than others to work things out, even with getting tips..

I'd like to see Furious reuse brought down to 10-15 minutes. As it stands at 30 minutes, on these more challenging bosses, I've managed to get Fjord without using it, but it's nice to have in reserve and entering into your hardest mobs without everything available then getting smoked again, then you just end up waiting to try again for 30 minutes for it all to reset. Then again, I could be way off base and missing some major mechanism that would help here. No idea. And yes, I use the BP clicky to try to weather some of those "Increases Attack".

I don't think any changes really need to be made. Like it the way it is. There is a feeling of making very very little progress. But I've lowered my expectations there. Some days I may kill 150 giants, other days more like 30.

At this point I may not even bother with Fjord till I've got full plate on my tank. Time would be better spent on the other bosses and mini's that have a chance to drop armor. And that's fine. As stated above, I'll probably have a pretty big stockpile of heads before even attempting AOW.

Like the zone a lot. Like the encounters, even Fjord who kicks my butt most of the time. Very nice design job overall.


« Last Edit: March 21, 2024, 08:04:20 pm by gnonim »	Logged

clbreastmilk

Full Member

Posts: 236

Re: T11 Feedback Thread

« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2024, 07:50:36 pm »

Characters: I have 24, but due to the scaling and my current gear, I'm using 18 that have the highest DPS. War, 4 Pal, 3 Mnk, 2 Rog, Sk, Wiz, Mage, Rng, 2 Brd, Cleric and Zerk. Benched chanter/war/druid/bst/necro and one other i forgot.
Equipment: Tank is VP geared fully, halloween augs, but no War token items. Healers have Ucv4 on 2 pallies and a cleric, 1 Ucv3 pally and 1 Uc pally. DPS is a mix of maybe 6 or so UW and 6 or so rank 50 earrings
Combat Efficiency: Several minutes per mob.
Time Investment: 30ish hours
Quest Progression: Just starting
Loot Accumulation: 0 (but for the time investment and mob kill speed, this is expected)
Favorite Features: It's fantastic. The quests, the gambling, the boss spawn chances, it's all fantastic.
Areas for Improvement: I'd like to solely comment on the DPS aspect of this zone and to at least some extent, Tunare/VP. The tank/healing for these zones progression wise feels fine. The DPS seems to have taken a massive requirement spike after T10. This likely feels very natural for the old guard players who have already finished putting rank 50 earrings on every toon, gathered a UW for each toon and other items. Though I can see at least some of them are still struggling with the time investment in the zone. I wanted to suggest perhaps following the previous formula of adding "budget items" at certain points in the game. Sleepers/Halloween weapons are a good example. They aren't meant to be replacements for the UW, and those items should be top tier, but could we do the same thing with DPS oriented items. Take the earring for example. Rank 50 is 200%. What if you added a mod to existing jewerly that drops in tier zones that adds 10% per tier and having it end up at something around 100% in T10 and not have it stack with the existing earring. Such and item would be worthless to well geared old guard players, but would give new players a progression path into these well made new zones, without having spent the 8+ years grinding GSOA. It could be any number of solutions, or none at all, but just my feedback. Lastly, loving the new content and seeing Sarthin/Draca talk about already working on multiple new zones is absolutely spectacular so please don't take this as a negative thing. All this new stuff is an absolute positive.


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Adidis

Newbie

Posts: 30

Re: T11 Feedback Thread

« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2024, 10:21:00 pm »

Characters: 2 Warriors, 4 Paladins, 1 Cleric, 1 Druid, 1 Shaman, 1 Ranger, 3 Rogues, 1 Monk, 1 Beastlord, 1 Mage, 1 Enchanter, 1 Wizard, 2 Bards, 1 SK, 1 Berserker, 2 Necros,

Gear: Main Warrior is fairly closed to as max as you can get pre-T11, Rogues+2nd War all have UW12+EBoA, Monk+Pal1 have UW12 have a few scattered UCv4 with most the crew being fairly close to having all their Sleeper gear and most have scattered Veeshan gear + 3-4UA pieces with UC/v2 or Brawler 50s.

I poked around entrance trash with each mob taking a few minutes to kill. Incoming damage felt manageable for what I toyed with.

Posting my thoughts cause this was being discussed in Discord a bit today

My opinion is I don't want to see anything get weaker cause that would feel bad to those who really are capped out on Pre-T11 gear. Like the post above we might need something that helps bridge the gap a little between a 100% maxed out character and one that is 95%. I didn't think about earring originally, but that is one of the dps increase spots. The other spot of note is Necklace since the only ones that give a damage buff are the Halloween and GoW neck. I originally thought weapons felt weird, but after scoping them out there isn't much room for improvement on sleeper weapons without them encroaching too closely on UWs in my opinion. This may just be the spot where people have to really spend some time filling out UCs which is what I'm working toward right now so I'll slowly be seeing how the power changes in my raid with those changes. There might not be a big need for change here for newer players, but I'm just one guy testing with what's available to me.


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Pubis

Full Member

Posts: 119

Re: T11 Feedback Thread

« Reply #5 on: April 03, 2024, 12:54:53 pm »

Characters - 30

gear - pretty complete up to this tier

efficiency - 30s is pretty typical but it does vary.

Time played - I don't know, it's variable but I've been playing a lot I probably get about 5 hours a night. Sometimes I can hop in or an additional 30 minutes or hour just to get a few things done. The first week I played substantially more on some weekend days.

Progression quest: Just finished enraged.
Shield: first shield took 16 AoWs. I have the ability to spawn ~5 AoW and just missing velk heads for 7 more after that so it's probably fair to say ~2 shields in the course of doing enraged could be expected.
UCV5: I finished 75/80 before the shard changes and just finished my first one right after finishing enraged. Now they are quite fast and I'm already pretty deep into my second ucv5. Based on my kill numbers I would have completed roughly 3.5 UCv5 in the process of doing enraged had this drop rate been around the whole time.
Mantles: Finished roughly 2 mantles to rank 5. The only significant piece in this is Relics of Norrath. The essence combine item is very similar to flawless GSOA from VP where it requires a much more valuable component (essence of kael) to make something that drops relatively often from Rot. Perhaps there is a relic combine I don't know about but they come rather slowly.
Armor: I counted armor pieces as a function of enraged kills along the way. At last check I had 650 enraged total had 82 pieces of armor. So a drop every ~8 enraged implying a player should expect 125 armor pieces over the course of doing enraged (an 18 man group needs 126 pieces total). Of course, 1/4 of this will be leather and in general you will get duplicates and rots. When I finished enraged my warrior had ~30/60 armor rot hand-ins. I should say, at some point I stopped killing DR so I hadn't used Ymir to supplement armor drops. Ymirs mechanism is huge for progression in that it lets you direct what pieces you get. He is also extremely common from my experience so that helps a lot avoiding situations where you get very unlucky with one piece. I've still never seen a chain breastplate drop from Voltanis, for instance, yet I have 3 full sets of chain thanks to Ymir. This is a good mechanism.
UW13: I finished 2 UW13s which means I had roughly 240 essences drop in the span of doing enraged (36 for NS augs). I also have been saving AoWs which seems to be good for like 2-3 per clear so I probably farmed the equivalent of 250-260 essences if you count those unredeemed heads.
Roxy Aug: My MT is on sparkling which I guess is the 4th rank. I'm probably slightly unlucky here because I spent almost 90k coins total on this last upgrade. Although RNG will be high here, I suspect most will be at sparkling after enraged are done.
Cold delivery: I skipped as many wolves, bears and sirens as possible while grinding enraged so I'm nowhere on this quest (3 of 30). I'll probably put some effort into this now. Right now this quest is tangential to most of the rest of the zone, not sure if that's good or bad.

Favorite features - I have a lot of positive things to say about the zone in general. I like that you have to keep your brain engaged and think things through. You need to pay attention to what you are killing (for instance, to shape the drops you need), you need to pay attention to kill order (for instance if you have a boss and a named up to not waste a possible boss pop or if you have too many in camp to kill animals first to avoid possible chains). I like that using your brain is beneficial to your productivity and as a result I've very rarely, if ever, felt bored in Kael. I like that the bosses have mechanics that are well-telegraphed and clear (compare to like zeixshi for instance). I like that there is a real sense of progression as you move through the zone, you will get more capable you will get stronger. I like that the content presents a real challenge that pushes players to hone their play. I like that there are tons of small things to work on (AoW spawn, armor, spells, UV5, UW, mantle, coins/augs etc) while you are progressing through the overarching "Long grind" of enraged.

Areas for improvement - I don't have much here. I think this is a good step but I'd love to see this approach to boss design continued as we move forward. I'd like more mechanisms more often so you don't just zone out while a blob of HP drains away; Ragnar is a decent example of this, without his second enrage the fight is basically done at 80%.

I guess one thing is that Kael is homogenous, the entrance is basically identical to the deepest parts in terms of difficulty. I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to have difficulty gradients or particularly difficult parts, VP had this a little bit, but it was bypassed by binding in the zone beyond the challenges. I think that aspect was a good feature of the zone.


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