Splitpaw Saga Feedback June 16

[Saavedra]

<DIV>Please post your feedback on the Splitpaw Saga here</DIV>

[Purr]

<P>I really don't know where to start...</P> <P>First : Wonderful design graphic wise. Gnolls look really mean, their furniture is something I would like to make... <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. The quests sound interesting and I loved to sneak around to blast supplies up or pull a shroom king without any off his followers. It was FUN.</P> <P>On the oposite end: All mobs in the 2 solo instances I tried where in the range of two levels down to 4 levels up for me. Being a Troubado(u)r of only 20 seasons I can take blue mobs as long as I have maximal 2 on me (that's already a thin stretch). Even an uber-buff did not make me strong enough to take down Rosch - for me he was 24 ^ - let alone his two followers. I got him down to half his health, that's all. But I had no big problem with the Shroom King - level 23 ^ - and two level 20 spiders who decided I might make a good catch. So 4 levels above the player might work for some classes and for higher levels, it did not for me. Same for the rest of the instances. I can take one white mob down, but no group of 3 white 1 arrow down. So most of the content in solo instances is not soloable for a Trouby. <BR>I might come back to see how a Paladina is doing ... <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P>Sure a ton of good looking stuff you came up with, tune it down a bit and it will be a blast.  .-)  Go Dev's, Go !</P> <P>Purr~<BR>Test : Troubado(u)r 20, Carpenter 49<BR>           + a ton of others.</P> <P> </P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

[Ceruline]

Spent most of my time in the zone with the ark and the torches whose name I can't quite remember I liked the idea of it a lot.  I was short circuited by zone crashes a few times, though. When I had finally fought my way to the ark, and activated it, I got positively destroyed though - I think that the buff didn't activate until after the mob of ambushers had spawned and had time to wail on me - even down-arrowed, there were five or six of em that were four levels above me, and by the time the buff activated, they didn't have too much trouble with the remaining 15% of my health.  Not sure how I would have fared if the buff had hit me early enough - think I may have still had trouble there, though. The torch count needs to reset when you are dumped from the zone - If you get four torches, drop, then get back in and get four more, the quest will report you as having finished the torch part.  However, you still need to activate all of the torches in the zone for the ark to activate, so this is misleading. <div></div>

[Evadne]

I love the Splitpaw Saga.  The lore is fabulous.  There could definately be more. Dropped quests and so on...  The box moving is challenging. I find that different size characters get stuck easier etc.  Moving boxes is relatively easy for me.  Climbing a stack of them is not. I get stuck on them. So stuck once I had to move the boxes from beneath me to get unstuck.  That is a problem since the boxes can only be moved three times.  There are lips on the the ledges that add yet another degree of box placement complexity. All in all, too hard? No.  I was frustrated as heck, but--who cares, it was great to finally make it. Upper Caverns.  Mob difficulty is great.  They are a good fight for a shaman.  The numbers of creatures, particularily the ghost gnolls that pop our of nowhere is excessive--in a good way.. They just keep coming, even in a duo with a paladin, we had a hard time a couple of times.  In a duo it was a perfect challenge.  Solo the mobs were just too many. I always try everything I can to get stuck.  The only places I was stuck was on the boxes I moved myself. How that happens I do not know. The only thing I felt really needed changing, Noxious Emissions and fear spells.  Just outside of the Den, the emissions feared me repeatedly, once right off the edge to the Tremblers who killed me promptly.  Silence is bad enough, Fear is just downright impossible to deal with on a ledge.  There is no counter to it. If you are solo coming out of the den, you are forced to revive at the very top of the caverns and fight your way down to the bottem where there are group mobs, a very tough road, just to retrieve your shard.   Two options: eliminate fear from the emission aresenal or allow shard recovery at the instance entrance. I tried getting my shard at the instance zone in, even camping a long while didn't present it. Great fun!  ~Eva <div></div>

[Kaereni]

<div></div><div></div>I went in last night to test the solo quest "hargraves shrine" I think it was called. Aisleaid at 37th troub soloing was a stretch.  The first gnoll was 2 levels down and was able to win  with about 25% health. After jumping and missing (got to love safe fall and invis) I got to ride on the gears back up to the top.  I love the gears that you ride back up <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><p>The 2nd fight was a 36th level gnoll that if you did not place yourself right you would argo 2 29th level adds. Dropping the 36th was a 50/50 chance but once the adds showed I was toast.Using invis I was able to work through lighting the different bowls and get the arc activitated. It was not till I placed the 2nd board that I had to be seen to be able to make the jump. Once I did that I quickly found that all the mobs I had bypassed decided to play dog pile on the bard. If it were not for the uber buff and my own regen health buff there would have been no way to live through it. As it was it was, the last one died when I was at no health showing. (Ok so a pixel showing)Fighting the mushrooms and killing the king went well as long as I thought about what I was doing. One problem was a group of 4 undead casters (2 healers and 2 tanks) who kept popping through a wall attacking me and running away.Using invis I made it to the final mob that was 30th with 2 29th friends. I was able to kill him and his friends with about 25% health at end.On the up side.>I love the layout and design. >Even after dieing 4 times I kept coming back for more.  I make a normal rule that <span> </span>after 3 deaths I walk away from the computer because I become too frustrated to play.>Experence at end was nice but with exp debt I am unsure how much I really got.On the down side:>The story was a bit confusing before the lead in.>Placing heroic level mobs on floor after you fall is a bit much.  there is next to no way to live if you get attacked after taking the fall damage.>Pathing and argo radius needs to be looked at.>It would be nice to make jump distance such that you can make it while in combat or invis.>Prehaps scaleing down the mobs before the arc one or 2 levels would help.>Reward is pitiful and a let down.  Reason, I can go to EL and do a harvest quest and make 96 sp. then do a kill task and make another 17sp. This total for 10-20 mins work is more then the reward for the quest.>The boxes need to be the non falling apart type for this instance.Over all:I loved the zone but do not understand a 4 hr lockout for the reward given.Soloing for scout without invis is death.I would like to go back and try with my warden sometime and see if it is any better with heals. </p>Edit: I want the throne <span>:smileyhappy:</span><div></div><p>Message Edited by Kaereni on <span class=date_text>06-17-2005</span> <span class=time_text>08:02 AM</span>

[Edowen]

Last night I (29 warden) tested a number of areas in the new AP. - Crawlers Nest, as part of a group whose highest members were 30 and others in the upper 20s (monk scout-class mage-class fury warden) - Upper Tunnels (as part of the same group) - Harclade's Trial (not sure if this is the exact name) - solo - the arena - solo It was a blast.  <b>Crawler's Nest.</b>  The action was non-stop, intense, but always winnable if you played well.  Noticed that evac sent you back to the gnoll den, not the beginning of the zone, and that reentering the zone gave you a fresh instance.  The devs said that was by design, and thinking back on it, it all makes perfect sense if there is a nice reward at the end.  Unfortunately we did not discover if that is the case.  We did not beat the final area, where you are trapped in.  (Being trapped in is very neat.  Another innovative touch for this AP!)  The mobs kept spawning, and eventually we ran out of power to deal with them.  My theory is there is some way to stop the spawns, but walking in to that area and starting fighting before doing any exploring, none was evident.  I don't even know if it is possible to explore that final area before the spiders start coming... and coming.  Well, either someone will figure it out, or maybe that was a bug (doubt it).  In any case, I can't remember ever playing with a tank who was so excited about the action that he kept exclaiming his joy.  <span>:smileyhappy:</span>  I don't remember anything strange in this area regarding pathing or mobs standing or fighting in rocks. <b>Upper tunnels.</b> Here, if memory serves, is where we had a very few examples of mobs standing and fighting inside of walls.  Sorry I did not get /locs.  The ghostly gnolls were lovely, visually.  The fights were well-scaled to the group.  I completed a quest for killing undead gnolls and got a moderate reward - 32 sp or so, i think.  For some reason it did not feel as exciting as the crawler's nest, but it was okay.  We were a bit pressed for time, as some group members had to leave, so we did not try to explore thoroughly. <b>Harclade's trial.</b>  I love the concept of the story telling gnoll.  It was very immersive to have to wait until it began.  Unfortunately, the poor gnoll must have been tired from talking to so many adventurers.  He kept interspersing two tales with each other.  (Saavedra was there to see this happen.)  However I did get the quest and set off to do the torches.  Unfortunately I did not get very far.  I ran into some PC problems (mouse wheel not working in game, so could not rotate the first plank) and had to reboot.  Then when I tried to move from the first ledge to the second ledge, I fell and went splat.  This was probably due to my being in wolf form.  I urge the devs to please look at the issue that being in an alternate form (or stealth mode, I hear) reduces one's ability to jump.  A wolf should be at least as able to jump a gap as a half-elf (my character's race).  Having to change form before jumping damages immersiveness and is easy to forget.  Plus, if you do remember to do it, and jump to the next area, and there are mobs waiting for you (often the case), you are handicapped by the lack of the benefits from the alternate form that you usually have in a battle.  When I went back the third time, the server crashed me to character select.  It had been doing that to me and others from time to time during the play test.  Glendral thought that maybe a character was corrupted and causing a zone to hiccup.  So, I decided to try something else. <b>Arena.</b>  Fun, especially at first.  Fip's dialog was perfect - a bit over the top, delivered very well.  I don't know what the rewards might be, and did not play enough to decide whether this was an area that would be fun to do for a prolonged period or over and over.  However there are four things that may be of interest to the devs.  - First, targetting Fip, who is so high above where you are standing, can be pretty picky.  Sometimes I had to try and try.  - Second, i found these solo matches were in some ways a bit too easy.  They are certainly easier for me than soloing in Delving.  All of my matches that I engaged were one-opponent matches, and the mobs did not do the one thing that is my Achilles heal - stifle me.  I understand that some other classes have a lot more difficulty in the Arena than wardens do.  So, maybe tuning for soloists needs to take class into account?  - Third, I really got into this, and played cat and mouse with the opponents, moving around the arena area while they were still non-aggro.  My thought was to maintain some distance so I could get off a spell or so before getting attacked myself.  This worked fine (and was fun) until the last opponent I faced.  It was supposed to be a pair of mobs, but only one showed up.  (I don't remember the name of the one that did, but this was the encounter after the one with Phosm.)  I am wondering if my moving around screwed up the second mob popping.  Among other things that I did, I went into the tunnel that leads into the fighting area.  However, after several minutes, the one mob that I did see did not aggro me.  Since the devs were calling it a night at that point, and I was getting tired, I decided to CoQ out and try this again another time.  - Fourth, my group originally went into the arena but we were not coordinating well.  So everyone went in except me.  I had been in another area and did not know they were doing that.  When someone came out (then everyone) so I could get a wisp to lead me to them, we found that all that had gone in would be locked out for more than an hour.  I don't think they engaged anything.  People were disappointed until we found the Crawlers' Nest, tee hee.  However I would like to suggest that either the entire group get zoned in, like what happens with some other instances, or the lock out timer depend on what you actually do in that zone.  If you have not engaged an opponent, you should not be locked out.  If you have engaged one opponent and gotten a small reward, the lock out timer should be small.  Spend a bunch of time, engage a lot of opponents, and win a big prize, of course the lock out timer should be commensurate.  Just my two cp. Some additional thoughts about this test.  Once again, I am very impressed by AP2.  It is creative, innovative, and shows a lot of hard work and attention to detail.  Also, it can be challenging.  Hooray!  However, I can't help but wonder how the overall player community will react to this.  It is a matter of expectation.  Especially after the past several months, when SoE has gone to great pains to make the game accessible to soloists and casual players, there may be a fair amount of expectation in the user community that you can just go somewhere and beat the game.  (From what I hear, WoW is like that.)  People who are expecting action on par with the instanced zones in, say, TS or EL will be surprised and may be unhappy to find such challenge.  On the other hand, there are players, many who come from EQ1, who want play to be challenging.  Those players will like AP2 if they try it.  If SoE has set out on a strategy to have areas that cater to one group or the other, that may be a good idea - but it should be made clear in advance what areas will be of most interest to which people.  As it stand now, I think the positioning of the product is that it is for everyone, when in fact it seems a great match for us old school hard core EQ1 players, and likely to be disappointing to people who want a less demanding play experience.  Edowen P.S.  I looked in my quest journal after the test last night, and see that my Darkened Shard quest still has not advanced past the step in which I am told to seek out answers past the door near the Skindancer gnolls.  If all the new content is in the game on Test now, I am wondering what needs to be done to get the update.  I have now been through the upper tunnels twice, I think. <div></div>

[Evadne]

A pierced gnoll tail triggers the vampire fang collection rather than the gnoll tail collection.  But it wont add to either. ~Eva <div></div>

[EtoilePirate]

<DIV>Splitpaw coin collection is bugged.  Not only does it go into the regular journal, instead of the collections journal, but the glimmering (or is it glittering?) coin doesn't update on examine.  Maybe because the item is capitalized and the quest isn't?  Dunno.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The more I play, the more I worry about the scout arthetype.  Most of the complaints I have heard have come from other scouts trying to solo things.  I know that for my part, I'm a 39 Assassin with very nice gear but all of my non-stealth combat arts are blue or green (or grey), and there aren't that many of them to start with.  The parts of zones that I can stealth are good but for something like the solo arena, I think there are some classes that just may not be able to finish it.  (I intend to give it another go around 45, when I'm not trying to hit yellow-con mobs with green skills.)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Most of my comments so far were about Harclave, and were addressed while playing.  If those adds are ever fixed, it should be fun to finish the zone.  As it is, once you have the uberness buff, it's like being an ^^Epic x2 mob... you still go down hard and fast when being hit on by three groups.  ESPECIALLY the place where you put the plank to go across to the mushrooms -- I always have a vicious problem there, and I've died on or evacced form that ledge three times, and fallen off it only to die from heroic mobs at the bottom once.  The rest of the stuff in there is fantastic, though.  And the Ark and Spirit buff are great ideas.  It's FUN to plow through a room like that.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Suggestion would be for a way to get back to the Den when you've been there once WITHOUT going through the upper tunnels all over again.  It gets really tedious the third or fourth time.  Of course with that inactive porter in Delving maybe there's already a plan in action, eh?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Also suggestion would be a way to get mending, food, and drink in the Den, like in Kugup.  By the time you've popped into the arena, the grotto, Harclave's, and been through the tunnels, chances are your armor could REALLY use a helping hand, and it's a huge haul to get back to a city from there.  Maybe it could cost twice as much and be half as efficient as a laziness penalty, but it's been trying running back and forth.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Anyway, so far so good.</DIV>