QA Playtest for Sundered Splitpaw zone on the 18th

[Palladius]

<DIV> <DIV> <P><SPAN>Saturday 18th</SPAN></P> <P><SPAN></SPAN><SPAN>Afternoon </SPAN><SPAN>3:00 PM PST to 6:00 PM PST</SPAN><SPAN>:</SPAN></P> <UL> <LI><SPAN>Please meet at the Thundering Steppes dock.<SPAN>  </SPAN>From there we will gather into 2 groups of 6 people each to form a small raid and go to the Sundered Splitpaw zone and check the general content of the area.<SPAN>  </SPAN>Please look for any grammatical errors in the npc dialogue and quest journal, as well as overall zone mechanics, loot and quest rewards.<SPAN>  U</SPAN>se the /bug command in game and please be as detailed as possible.  Any  feedback should be posted here.<SPAN>  </SPAN>Thank you!<SPAN>  </SPAN></SPAN></LI></UL> <P> </P> <P>Requirements:<SPAN>  </SPAN>Lv 20 -50, at least 2 full groups of 6</P><SPAN>Zone:</SPAN><SPAN><SPAN>  </SPAN>Sundered Splitpaw: Anvilpaw's Grotto </SPAN></DIV></DIV><p>Message Edited by Palladius on <span class=date_text>06-17-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:28 PM</span>

[Evadne]

Sounds fun! ~Eva <div></div>

[Edowen]

sign me up!!!!

[Heiro]

<DIV>Met there, grouped up , did the test.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Well suited to 2 balanced groups, the hallways and puzzles that we encountered were fun, required reading and some thought to complete (not just round peg in round hole type).  The encounters leading to the main room were fairly balanced I thought, enough to provide excitement and fun, but spaced well enough that power loss wasnt too great.  The various doors were an issue, some opened wrong direction, and closed too fast. (requiring good teamwork and communication between the two groups.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The final room was a tad over the top, LOTS of mobs, not sure if it was the spawn rate being too fast, the aggro radius being too big, or my spells taking too much power but in the end ... was OOP way too soon.  Mob grouping and difficulty was great, but think too many groups too close together or spawn rate was just a tad too high.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>END BOSS - rockin .. loved it .. dont change it.. Nice lil puzzle part required to defeat him, excellent lvl of difficulty.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Body drops - well spaced, however the 2 groups being split, and combat being what it is, not always able to loot them ( other group engaged in combat causes corpses to be unlootable)   No chest drops in the part i was in (by design I believe ) but Lots of heroic groups so the chests should be ok.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>more later maybe -</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Heiro</DIV>

[Evadne]

First off, I had a blast.  There was a miracle here.  We from test fielded two raid groups. With a tiny population, the ability to do this (albeit not level 50) was amazing. Our group went left both tries.  The second gate you can jump back over after getting past it. No other gate is like that and I think it should be.  I really don't think the gate should close behind.  Create a respawn that is tougher than the first time to encourage the groups to work together.  It is far to easy to split a group up with those gates.  There will be alot of stuck people and failed raids before someone masters this and puts out a spoiler.  I'd like to see a randomization of the puzzle for that reason.  Just a thought. The snakes, oh they are deliciously aweful. The path that ends up in the main chamber coming from the right, we got summoned back a bit on that one, the gate there creates an invisible wall from the hallway,even when it is down. The very last room is perfect.  We lost the first try because we tried to fight out in the middle and weren't cautious.  We finally won the last round even though the tank went ld.  The totems are a challenge that took some thinking to work out, had it taken us any longer we wouldnt have made it.  Great challenge. ~Eva <div></div>

[EtoilePirate]

<DIV>Some more thoughts:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Final room is really, really laggy.  I turned my options to Extreme Performance and it still went to a total slideshow.  My FPS was literally about three; it was horrible and hard to fight.  (And for the record: NVidia 6800 GT, 1.25 gb RAM, P4 2.8, and a nice empty hard drive just for games.)  I didn't even know that the whole raid had wiped out until well after we had.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Hope the mobs get fixed so that they're not no-XP no-reward.  It's not so bad getting no XP from a raid when you're testing it but I'd be pretty disappointed if it were that way in regular playing.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Had a point where a mob aggroed through a wall -- the second puzzle room, where the left tunnel has braziers and the right tunnel has totems.  One of their triggered mobs walked right through the bone wall and aggroed us.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Also, we had a spot where we got stuck the first time, where wave after wave of snakes and undead spawned and then they all spawned again right after we killed them.  Don't know if it was intentional or buggy; hard to tell sometimes.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>On the whole, there are some really nice ideas in there; I think the execution just needs a few tweaks.  Did enjoy the final boss, though.  He was a badass and it took all of us some serious time to bring him down.  (Probably didn't help that the under-level players were all the DPS classes, hehe.  I was 40 assassin and there were also 41 wiz and 42 brigand but it was a level 50 mob.  Also didn't help that one of our tanks went LD as soon as the fight began, and of course couldnt' get invited back in beccause we were in combat.)  Very satisfactory knowing we finally got Anvilpaw down, and I look forward to repeating the raid and finding out what phat lewts he's got when the content's in for real. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV>

[Ce]

<P>Gates that prevent you from going back should be disabled (except in final fight).  Caused our group to get split apart on several occasions as we ran back in forth debugging triggers.</P> <P>Movable platforms need manual triggers once activated.  A certain unnamed paladin in our team got off the gear lift after we were all on, leaving him behind (no pun intended there, Aenal) <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P>The tombstone and torch puzzle.  Again, our brillant paladin took the lead on trying to solve this puzzle.  After about the 7th or 8th time we finally got it, but he and Malaclypse swore is wasnt in date order by birth or death.  I didn't try to figure it out, but there may be something to their complaints.  (Or it could have just been them...)</P> <P>Wall geometry is a bit tricky around the walls and teeth.  We're a few places it seemed as if you could get stuck if you tried.  I'm not sure I'd have all those little cut outs in the walls that allow you to walk up them like a small path.  Is just begging for trouble.</P> <P>Respawn during puzzle solving process seemed pretty quick for static spawns.</P> <P>(somewhat non-related, but relevant)  Linkdead people need to be removed from the gameworld more quickly.  We managed to let die, revive, and die again on member before we realized they were linkdead.</P> <P>Evacing takes you to the Gnoll town (Den or something like that).  Not sure if that's what you intend or not.</P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

[HanktheDwarf]

I think to simplify the whole process, just lock the first gate after the first puzzle is done so they can't back track and switch groups.  Don't have any other gates on a timer.  Once they are open, they should stay open.  One point, can't remember where, but I think our puzzle opened our own side.  The other group got ahead before we could get through the door, but since we couldn't go back to open the door, we all got stuck inbetween puzzles and had to have our friendly Pocket GM help us out. The final fight.  The first part there are way too many mobs.  Encounters kept breaking and more guys kept coming.  It was a CF to say the least. The totems were nice.  Seemed like clicking them caused the extra groups to respawn for a second. All in all some good stuff. <div></div>

[goboy]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> EtoilePB wrote:<BR> <DIV>Some more thoughts:</DIV> <DIV>...</DIV> <DIV>On the whole, there are some really nice ideas in there; I think the execution just needs a few tweaks.  Did enjoy the final boss, though.  He was a badass and it took all of us some serious time to bring him down.  (Probably didn't help that the under-level players were all the DPS classes, hehe.  I was 40 assassin and there were also 41 wiz and 42 brigand but it was a level 50 mob.  Also didn't help that one of our tanks went LD as soon as the fight began, and of course couldnt' get invited back in beccause we were in combat.)  Very satisfactory knowing we finally got Anvilpaw down, and I look forward to repeating the raid and finding out what phat lewts he's got when the content's in for real. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Yar, I was one of the 41 wizzies.  It took me a while in the mayhem to realize my spells could not hit the main mob.  My guess it was more to do with my level then spell immunity.  Was great fun overall.</P> <P><BR> </P>

[yuio]

The final fight is nice, and I don't have a problem with the number of mobs - we did kill them all eventually, so it is doable. But we wiped that first time, which is reasonable...other groups are gonna wipe there for the same reasons. So I think something about the gates or the evac point should be looked at so that the raid can recover if they wipe so close to the end. Mainly just need the raid to be recoverable. As Kella mentioned, graphics need to be turned down for most people in that final room. But my graphics were turned down the whole time so I couldn't see when the puzzles we completed, and in what order the riddle was solved. There should be text messages saying things like "the first brazier has been set aflame" and maybe a zonewide "the test of the coffins has been completed" when a group solves a puzzle. The text messages would allow more people in the raid to take part in solving the puzzles. Each group only got experience off the mobs killed by the other group. Every mob we fought was worth no exp as though the encounter had been broken with a /yell. Maybe this is by design, but there wasn't a possibility of loot/chests like that. I'm not sure why the mobs gave exp to the group that was farther away, but it may mean the encounter breaking code should be looked at. Running through that event was a blast! -Malaclypse<span>:smileyvery-happy:</span>

[Shantee]

It was enjoyable, only issues, is the same as mentioned above.  Either leave the gates down, since we were getting split up and poor Palladius had to come fix it for us again or maybe just make them go back up after the trigger of the next puzzle is completed.  Some of the puzzles were not easy to understand.  Think it finally got to the point on 1 or 2 of them, to just do a matter of elimanation of orders.  First one to have difficulty with was the first set of torchs.  The descriptions all sounded the same after reading them for the 4th and 5th time.  I had to leave why they worked on the tombstones.  I liked the idea of depending on the other groups even though you weren't with them.  just sucks if they all die =P Kaida <div></div>

[Svartmane]

Thanks for all the feedback folks, I'm glad you enjoyed yourselves.  A few things I wanted to address -     I have a fix on its way to Test now for the issue with the encounters breaking.         If you have already solved a puzzle you can return to the sign for that puzzle and click 'Complete Puzzle' to re-open the door that puzzle is linked to.     Also coming soon to Test, once you have solved the appropriate puzzle the transports will be activatable so you can use them to shuttle people back and forth.     Additionally there will soon be a message displaying who has picked up a totem/torch to everyone in the zone(this should help with tracking the puzzles some). Again, thanks for your help and feedback, keep it coming! <div></div>

[Evadne]

We had one problem with going back to reset the puzzle to let the other group through.  You can get locked between puzzles. They move on, have not opened your path, you can't go back and help them move on--so you are both stuck in between puzzles. ~Eva <div></div>