Icy Keep: Loot matches difficulty... Unfortunately. [Archive]

Yimway

05-26-2010, 11:48 AM

Just starting a feedback thread on this new raid zone.We progressed about half the zone last night. All the fights were really, really easy, the only challenge was figuring out the scripts, but the mobs were so weak, you generally could figure out the scripts without even dieing to failures. Once you figured out the basic scripts, everything just falls down and dies. I honestly believe our swash could trivially MT this zone the stuff is so squishy.Keep in mind, I'm not in a hardcore guild, we're not killing any HM encounters atm, and our gear reflects it.The mobs were all way too easy, and the loot reflected it. Server discovery pieces that not even alts of alts needed, just straight to transmute fodder.I know I read the targeted difficulty was easy Tox, but you failed to even reach that difficulty in the first 5 named, and the loot is significantly behind the quality of easy tox. In fact the loot is well behind heroic instances.Now, beyond the easy kills and crappy loot, here is some additional feedback:1) Universally of the 24 people zoned in: Doing quests as a raid sucks, its not fun. WoE was fine as the quest was basically work the zone. Icy Keep had points where 24 people are running around in circles trying to fiqure out how to progress a quest.2) Captain / Lieutenant fight really doesn't have any feedback from the encounter to solve the script. In fact the items in the room only serve to confuse the issue.3) Getting 24 people to zip it for a minute to solve chess solution was, um annoying, but some folks thought it was cool, while others went afk to find something else to do. I'm sure with the solution posted on forums, the annoyance related will drop to nill.4) The Frozen Corrival - There is a client crash bug when he splits. About half the raid goes LD when it happens. His script itself isn't difficult, and we understand exactly how to kill him. What we don't understand is how to keep the eq2 client from crashing to finish the fight. I'm assuming it's a spell effect animation, and we'll experiment with client settings to mitigate the client crash.All in all though, the pattern gear is meh, the loot off the nameds are meh, and 24 people in my opinion are better off running heroic instances for progression than doing this zone.

Jesdyr

05-26-2010, 12:27 PM

Is it me or does it seem like there was a problem populating certain values on this loot? It almost looks like they forgot a 1 infront of the crit bonus on most of the items.. Also our Pally said the crusader gear had WIS as the primary on it !!!I understand this is designed to be an easy zone, but the gear it really bad. From what I have seen, we will run this zone a few times for AA and once all the guild has done the quests we will never hit it as an official guild raid again.I am thinking this is the WoE of SF .. but at least WoE gear was usefull.

Yimway

05-26-2010, 12:43 PM

<cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Is it me or does it seem like there was a problem populating certain values on this loot? It almost looks like they forgot a 1 infront of the crit bonus on most of the items.. Also our Pally said the crusader gear had WIS as the primary on it !!!I understand this is designed to be an easy zone, but the gear it really bad. From what I have seen, we will run this zone a few times for AA and once all the guild has done the quests we will never hit it as an official guild raid again.I am thinking this is the WoE of SF .. but at least WoE gear was usefull.</blockquote>I don't have the link handy, but we had a fabled neck drop with only 6 potency on it...The gear is just... wrong.

Neiloch

05-26-2010, 12:48 PM

6 potency? You got lucky we got a neck with 2.5 potency heh.

EQPrime

05-26-2010, 12:56 PM

<cite>Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>6 potency? You got lucky we got a neck with 2.5 potency heh.</blockquote>We got that neck too. It had 1% mit increase on it to go with the 2.5 potency. The stats are just much too low. I have seen treasured quest rewards from running around Sundered with better stats.There is already a feedback thread for this zone in the Deveopment Roundtable forum (<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=479306">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=479306</a>) and gninja has been quite active in it, so you might want to post feedback there instead.

Yimway

05-26-2010, 01:05 PM

<cite>Uguv@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>There is already a feedback thread for this zone in the Deveopment Roundtable forum (<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=479306">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=479306</a>) and gninja has been quite active in it, so you might want to post feedback there instead.</blockquote>Generally they dont want live feedback in testing forums...

Gninja

05-26-2010, 01:40 PM

I am watching both <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Obadiah

05-26-2010, 01:45 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Uguv@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>There is already a feedback thread for this zone in the Deveopment Roundtable forum (<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=479306">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=479306</a>) and gninja has been quite active in it, so you might want to post feedback there instead.</blockquote>Generally they dont want live feedback in testing forums...</blockquote>That's also not a testing forum.

Draylore

05-26-2010, 02:35 PM

Would have to agree...Icy Keep is too easy....even for the intended audience. The loot was just bad...really bad. I bet that majority of items dropped yesterday in Icy Keep were muted. Thats not a good sign for a zone on its first day live.Smaller, casual raid forces who I think is who this zone was designed for are probably gonna be better served farming the few named in Tox, Labs, Palace they can do. And in some cases better off going back to WoE considering how bad the loot in IK was. =PAnd why pattern loot? I thought SOE wanted to get away from pattern gear?All in all very disappointing. Icy Keep will be a ghost town zone within a week of going live which I doubt is what SOE was shooting for. I know I dont want to go back even to "clear" the zone.I also agree that doing those quests as a x4 raid is not fun.

arksun

05-26-2010, 03:11 PM

If I never do this zone again I will not be upset.... the loot & patterns are horrid and I would imagine even people new to raiding would just kill easy mode X4 zones (pre-halas) for better loot.TBH, take out all the trash and just make it a run around to all the named. At least it would take away some of the /bleh of that zone. Oh and adding more coins to our bags, and quest updates, and items from small chest, etc.... is probably one of the worst ideas I have ever seen.When can we get a "character" bag that holds all update items only and coinage for everything in game now between raid zones, heroic, BG's, ....Doesn't even have to be a bag to hold the stuff, just paste on another tab to the persona window that shows a breakdown in text format, maybe with a symbol before it.I seriously have one bag filled all of this junk....

Gaige

05-26-2010, 03:48 PM

The loot is in-line with the difficulty, oh and I might also add that when I commented on Icy Keep being too easy I was told that there are playstyles other than mine to consider, so Atan maybe this zone isn't for your guild. Maybe its for pick up raids that have never raided before?If they make the loot better they better make every mob in the zone harder. The last thing this game needs is another WoE where people are being rewarded just for breathing.If you guys want easy clear first time in raids this is the loot you're going to get. You ask for this kind of stuff, then complain about it. It blows my mind.

Laenai

05-26-2010, 03:50 PM

We'll be working this zone tomorrow night. Not anywhere near hardcore and probably more geared and appropriate for the zone than many folks who've gone in so far. Interested in seeing what happens <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Yimway

05-26-2010, 03:55 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>If you guys want easy clear first time in raids this is the loot you're going to get. You ask for this kind of stuff, then complain about it. It blows my mind.</blockquote>I hope your not saying I asked for it.My complaints / suggestions about raiding have been centered around class distributions, and sufficient gearing opportunities and progression available. The few times I've suggested toning anything down have been based upon issues following into either of those catagories.Up the loot, give the nameds some aoe's and up their damage 20-30%, and maybe we'd have a t9 raid zone.My expectations for the zone was SoH difficulty (at launch), a bunch of relatively easy encounters with one or two challenge ones in there and loot that would augment what is available from easy mode encounters already released.I have not seen rashes of threads indicating the easy content in this expansion was too hard (with exception of PC). I've not seen demand for a raid progression tier of mobs and gear lower than Tox. I have seen people asking for more content at the current SF easy that level, and perhaps some demand middle content. So yes, I'm surprised to see this underwhelming cake come thru the pipe.

Detor

05-26-2010, 04:00 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>The loot is in-line with the difficulty,</blockquote>I'd disagree somewhat with that, at least for some items. Take 'Neckguard of Ice Drake Bone' for instance. 2.5% Potency, 2.5% crit bonus for a healer. There are literally solo obtained neck items with higher potency than that.

Gaige

05-26-2010, 04:01 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>I hope your not saying I asked for it.</blockquote>Nope. Just that people in general do ask for raids of that difficulty, then come here asking for the loot to be equal to hard mode loot.I guess its also just surreal to have Gninja jump all over me talking about how a zone this easy wouldn't be utilized and then have people come here saying how they'll never do it again because.. its too easy.

EQPrime

05-26-2010, 04:17 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>The loot is in-line with the difficulty, oh and I might also add that when I commented on Icy Keep being too easy I was told that there are playstyles other than mine to consider, so Atan maybe this zone isn't for your guild. Maybe its for pick up raids that have never raided before?If they make the loot better they better make every mob in the zone harder. The last thing this game needs is another WoE where people are being rewarded just for breathing.</blockquote>The difficulty is about on par with the following mobs, and the loot is pretty terrible in comparison:Wyvernlord Tuluun, Wyrmlord Zaos, Vuulan, Lieutenant Buldoral, Ernax Heridion, Vernox the InsatiableEven if you were to take Vuulan out of that list because someone has to run around and kill eggs you still have 5 basic "tank n spank" mobs that drop way better loot than the mobs in Icy Keep do. Most of the scripts in Icy Keep are more complex than any of them have too. I think the Icy Keep stuff probably needs to hit a bit harder and I'd throw in an AoE or two, but I think the way the fights are set up work pretty well for people just starting out raiding.<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>If you guys want easy clear first time in raids this is the loot you're going to get. You ask for this kind of stuff, then complain about it. It blows my mind.</blockquote>We had an easy clear the first time through easy Tox too, and even before they had red slots the gear was way better than what you see in this new zone. Heck trash in labs drops better loot than you find in this new zone. Some of it isn't even as good as WoE gear, or even T1 shard gear from TSO for that matter.

Draylore

05-26-2010, 04:18 PM

SF/T9 Raiding doesnt present anywhere near the level of "roadblocks" that TSO did. Even the most casual and least optimally formed raid forces out there are progressing thru SF raid zones.......sure not at the record pace the raid guilds are but they are getting thru it. So I am not sure what purpose a zone like Icy Keep was suppose to serve. Its clearly not for those that have run out of raid content.IMO what the game needed was a additional raid zone(s) that raid guilds can add to their rotation during the week not a weak entry level raid that is probably approaching trivial for even the small/casual raid forces.I have several in-game friends that are in a alliance of casual raiders that will be going to IK tonight .....will be curious to hear what their thoughts on the zone are. I bet several of them will be disappointed as well.

Banditman

05-26-2010, 04:21 PM

Well, at least some people will be happy, they at last have a raid zone for non-raiders.

Jesdyr

05-26-2010, 04:38 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>Well, at least some people will be happy, they at last have a raid zone for non-raiders.</blockquote>It is a raid zone for non-raiders .. with loot for absolutely no one.

ATTHWSM

05-26-2010, 04:45 PM

Look, this zone , was horrible . We cleared it in 3 hours, with 22 people, 5 healers. ONE item went to a main, and it was a pattern with a decent healer weapon on it, cuz as we know healers have ZILCH to shoot for in terms of weapons. EVERYTHING else was muted, every single thing. Not one fight was hard, at all, and the Maiden was a straight burn, no script following, just burn burn burn more than she heals. And even she dropped garbage. The dragon was slightly tough, but easy after 2-3 pulls. TBH, the only encounter in the entire zone that was remotely challenging was the Brothers, because we refused to wipe after the melee one was burned 10x faster than caster one was. 40 deaths later from 100% mem wiping, we killed it, and it was still easy.Yes, fix the Chess mob, because every split we would lose 3-4 people to LDs, and over 4 splits thats 16 people. Painful.I hope the Hole Raid is better in terms of challenge and gear, cuz Ice Keep horrible and I question if the person doing items was high or doesnt play this game. When you can get legendary mastercrafted thats borderline as good, or better, than x4 raid drops of the same tier, something is wrong. Also, [Removed for Content]? EMOTEING when your going to memwipe? Seriously? Like, in case you havent been playing more than 6 minutes and have never seen a memwipe, NOW YOU CAN PLAN FOR IT MEN! wHOOT

Gaige

05-26-2010, 04:47 PM

<cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>It is a raid zone for non-raiders .. with loot for absolutely no one.</blockquote>In order to have desirable loot it has to be harder. If its harder people will complain.I mean, look at this feedback from the current state of the zone:<div><cite>lollipop wrote:</cite><blockquote>The first drake, the port at 10% is way to much. Please tone it down and make it so does not port as often.Trash has to many ho but I am sure we said that in test hehe. Ill update more as we do more. But yeah Hoarfrost person....please look at that port</blockquote></div>I said from the beginning that designing a raid for non-raiders is foolish.

Jesdyr

05-26-2010, 04:56 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>It is a raid zone for non-raiders .. with loot for absolutely no one.</blockquote>In order to have desirable loot it has to be harder. If its harder people will complain.I mean, look at this feedback from the current state of the zone:</blockquote>It should at least be in line with the easier heroic gear but it isnt even that good.

Gninja

05-26-2010, 05:19 PM

<cite>ATTHWSM wrote:</cite><blockquote>Look, this zone , was horrible . We cleared it in 3 hours, with 22 people, 5 healers. ONE item went to a main, and it was a pattern with a decent healer weapon on it, cuz as we know healers have ZILCH to shoot for in terms of weapons. EVERYTHING else was muted, every single thing. Not one fight was hard, at all, and the Maiden was a straight burn, no script following, just burn burn burn more than she heals. And even she dropped garbage. The dragon was slightly tough, but easy after 2-3 pulls. TBH, the only encounter in the entire zone that was remotely challenging was the Brothers, because we refused to wipe after the melee one was burned 10x faster than caster one was. 40 deaths later from 100% mem wiping, we killed it, and it was still easy.Yes, fix the Chess mob, because every split we would lose 3-4 people to LDs, and over 4 splits thats 16 people. Painful.I hope the Hole Raid is better in terms of challenge and gear, cuz Ice Keep horrible and I question if the person doing items was high or doesnt play this game. When you can get legendary mastercrafted thats borderline as good, or better, than x4 raid drops of the same tier, something is wrong. Also, [Removed for Content]? EMOTEING when your going to memwipe? Seriously? Like, in case you havent been playing more than 6 minutes and have never seen a memwipe, NOW YOU CAN PLAN FOR IT MEN! wHOOT</blockquote>What other raid mobs is that same group taking in terms of SF progression?

Gaige

05-26-2010, 05:20 PM

<cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>It should at least be in line with the easier heroic gear but it isnt even that good.</blockquote>Generally speaking heroic gear usually has rarity in its favor.

Xill

05-26-2010, 05:54 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>The loot is in-line with the difficulty, oh and I might also add that when I commented on Icy Keep being too easy I was told that there are playstyles other than mine to consider, so Atan maybe this zone isn't for your guild. Maybe its for pick up raids that have never raided before?If they make the loot better they better make every mob in the zone harder. The last thing this game needs is another WoE where people are being rewarded just for breathing.If you guys want easy clear first time in raids this is the loot you're going to get. You ask for this kind of stuff, then complain about it. It blows my mind.</blockquote>Blows your mind? It seems like most people complaining about the loot are also complaining about it being too easy. I dont see anyone saying "Oh its too hard but make the loot better!" Mostly its "Too easy and the loot sucks" Which tells me that it was not meant for those people.It just sounds like you are angry they made an easy zone...And really... what did WoE do to you? How did WoE being easy effect you? How did it effect you in ANY way? Other then maybe those same people that enjoyed it asked for another to enjoy in this expansion. Which you can just IGNORE. I mean you act like giving casual raiders something to do thats rewarding is a sin against the EQ2 gods... it just DESTROYS your experience in game...

EasternKing

05-26-2010, 06:05 PM

+1 on the irony of all the QQ threads about no starter raid zones in SF.Gninja spends i dont know how many hours making a starter raid zone, with all the various components you will need to learn as a begginer to raiding, IE : Memwipes, Aoes, Curses, Scripts.And we get a load of raiders complaining the zone is to easy and the loot is to bad, well like Gaige has said already, and so has Gninja, this zone was not designed for you.This zone is fine for its target audience, and i am not sure about the loot complaints, i went in to check the vendor, the Tank defensive BP is marginally better than the T2 Tank Def BP that drops off of R-Theer. rest of the set seems to be well in line with the difficulty.The loot is fine, its designed for people who dont raid, if you want real raid gear, run a real raid zone. yes the Vigilant x2 zone has amazing loot, it is also a challenging raid, there is no where at all in this game that states X4 means auto harder than X2.To Gninja sorry you are getting so much negativity over this zone, one thing is clear, you can never ever please the casuals, i applaud you for even trying to.

Xill

05-26-2010, 06:10 PM

Most of the negativity is from the loot though. And I do hear people enjoying the fights that arent just powering through them with gear far beyond what is expected....

Dasein

05-26-2010, 06:26 PM

I think the biggest problem with the loot is that it was introduced after people had a chance to farm the easier encounters. Lair, Labs and Palace all have encounters your average pick-up raid can handle, especially coming off of TSO, and so those with a desire to raid have a taste of what the loot is like. Thus, introducing an easy zone with inferior loot is effectively a step backwards. Had Icy Keep been in at launch, I doubt you'd see many of these complaints.

Seolta

05-26-2010, 06:55 PM

SF needs a WOE for scrub progression....however SOE got it backwards. Vig x2 should have been the WOE. Instead they wasted an x4 zone on that task apparently.Icy is obviously intended for crappy PURs...will be interesting to see if PUR's actually use it.

Yimway

05-26-2010, 07:01 PM

<cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote>+1 on the irony of all the QQ threads about no starter raid zones in SF.</blockquote>Where are these threads?The only threads I've seen are looking for a x2 starter zone, and the scripts in this zone are not going to be condusive to casuals trying to x2 the x4.I've looked, I can't find any QQ threads about easy mode mobs not being, well easy until you get to atleast harakara.Now if you want to talk about TSO maybe that was the case, not enough entry x4 content.

Fatuus

05-26-2010, 08:38 PM

<cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>ATTHWSM wrote:</cite><blockquote>Look, this zone , was horrible . We cleared it in 3 hours, with 22 people, 5 healers. ONE item went to a main, and it was a pattern with a decent healer weapon on it, cuz as we know healers have ZILCH to shoot for in terms of weapons. EVERYTHING else was muted, every single thing. Not one fight was hard, at all, and the Maiden was a straight burn, no script following, just burn burn burn more than she heals. And even she dropped garbage. The dragon was slightly tough, but easy after 2-3 pulls. TBH, the only encounter in the entire zone that was remotely challenging was the Brothers, because we refused to wipe after the melee one was burned 10x faster than caster one was. 40 deaths later from 100% mem wiping, we killed it, and it was still easy.Yes, fix the Chess mob, because every split we would lose 3-4 people to LDs, and over 4 splits thats 16 people. Painful.I hope the Hole Raid is better in terms of challenge and gear, cuz Ice Keep horrible and I question if the person doing items was high or doesnt play this game. When you can get legendary mastercrafted thats borderline as good, or better, than x4 raid drops of the same tier, something is wrong. Also, [Removed for Content]? EMOTEING when your going to memwipe? Seriously? Like, in case you havent been playing more than 6 minutes and have never seen a memwipe, NOW YOU CAN PLAN FOR IT MEN! wHOOT</blockquote>What other raid mobs is that same group taking in terms of SF progression?</blockquote>Gninja they say a picture is worth a thousand words...let me link you one...<img src="http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/9075/eq2000039.jpg" width="989" height="632" />This is a picture of an item you get from a raid drop in there. Its from a horrible "An Empty Smelly Bag"To get a reward you must kill 20 yeti pelts. We made it in one night all the way up to the Chess board dude before your encounter LD'd us to death. Up to that point I had only gotten 2 Yetti pelts. So...now to get the earring (which I was mildly MILDLY interested in) I would need to do the zone an additional 10 times up to the same point we quit at.The earring is subpar at best. I have 2 earrings that I have pictured, One drops from Vig X2 and the other drops from the Barrier dude in Palace. The only comporable link I could come up with for comparison is the Ring I linked which comes from the X2 zone. The ring has MORE hitpoints, same crit bonus and potency mod, HASTE, MORE AGI, and 3 DA. Now Gninja you have to admit that 3 DA and 40 Haste is far greater then 6% dps mod. If you go with the T1 gloves (which only give 35 haste btw) you still essentially have 5 more haste and 3 DA...which is > 6% dps mod ANY day of the week.For fun I linked a legendary earring which is currently 6 plat on the broker and only slightly worse then this craptastic earring that you need to do a raid zone MULTIPLE times to get.

SageGaspar

05-26-2010, 08:40 PM

I'd say just improve the loot to the current SF easymode standard, there are like five people on this forum who were grievously upset about the loot balance versus difficulty in WoE and the rest of everyone had a fun time with it on off nights once in a while. There were people pugging easymode toxx and there will be people pugging this if the loot is worthwhile to them. These mobs are easy but they're really not that much easier than any other easymodes in SF, we were one or two pulling most of the mobs in SF on our first time in when we had TSO gear.Just make sure the Underfoot Depths zone is challenging and drops much better loot and everyone will be happy. Frankly with the size of Underfoot Depths and four rune Theer still on the table I don't think hardcore raiders really need Icy Keep on the schedule so I don't mind it being targeted at an easier audience.

Gninja

05-26-2010, 08:43 PM

Comparing the Icy Keep loot to stuff that drops from VigX2 and Barrier in Palace isnt really a good comparison. Both of those zones are much higher in progression than Icy Keep is intended to be.

Notsovilepriest

05-26-2010, 08:54 PM

Gninja

05-26-2010, 08:59 PM

VigX2 was not made as being the beginner raid zone in fact it can be labeled as harder then all of Lair of the Dragon Queen. The loot is better in that zone because the difficulty is higher. WoE was made as a 2 group heroic dungeon where as VigX2 was more of a 2 group raid zone. It just wasnt spelled out that way.

Fatuus

05-26-2010, 09:03 PM

<cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>VigX2 was not made as being the beginner raid zone in fact it can be labeled as harder then all of Lair of the Dragon Queen. The loot is better in that zone because the difficulty is higher. WoE was made as a 2 group heroic dungeon where as VigX2 was more of a 2 group raid zone. It just wasnt spelled out that way.</blockquote>Gninja its a great comparison because Vig X2 has pugs doing it all the time...Second that encounter takes 2 groups to complete...are you trying to say that this entire zone was designed so 2 groups could easily clear the whole zone with the same amount of effort and skill that could clear a Vig X2 instance in the same amount of time?

EasternKing

05-26-2010, 09:05 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote>+1 on the irony of all the QQ threads about no starter raid zones in SF.</blockquote>Where are these threads?The only threads I've seen are looking for a x2 starter zone, and the scripts in this zone are not going to be condusive to casuals trying to x2 the x4.I've looked, I can't find any QQ threads about easy mode mobs not being, well easy until you get to atleast harakara.Now if you want to talk about TSO maybe that was the case, not enough entry x4 content.</blockquote>It was all posted in the 50+ page long thread about Vigilantx2.They wanted a Woe raid style zone, they got one.

EasternKing

05-26-2010, 09:07 PM

<cite>Fatuus wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>VigX2 was not made as being the beginner raid zone in fact it can be labeled as harder then all of Lair of the Dragon Queen. The loot is better in that zone because the difficulty is higher. WoE was made as a 2 group heroic dungeon where as VigX2 was more of a 2 group raid zone. It just wasnt spelled out that way.</blockquote>Gninja its a great comparison because Vig X2 has pugs doing it all the time...Second that encounter takes 2 groups to complete...are you trying to say that this entire zone was designed so 2 groups could easily clear the whole zone with the same amount of effort and skill that could clear a Vig X2 instance in the same amount of time?</blockquote>Yes because all of our raid content is x2 right?Oh wait no it is not, maybe just maybe the devs thought, "hmm they had the x2 starter, lets try a X4 starter so they can get used to raiding with four groups over two", amazing concept isn't it?

kiku

05-26-2010, 09:11 PM

They should tone the mobs in this zone down, make it a x2. There then it would be a WoE type zone with rewards conductive to the challenge.x4 easy mode is honestly a bad idea. 12 person pick up raid is much easier to get going and to get the classes ya need that was another reason WoE was so popular.Dont get me started on the viligant x2 that was fail from the start to be honest.Also didnt Kander design the loot in this zone?

Steve11418

05-26-2010, 09:28 PM

I don’t think the difficulty of the zone needs to relate to the weather its x1, x2 or x4.I would like to see a Heroic zone that is insanely tough and presents a challenge to raid geared groups.I am a fan of Vig x2 which provides an awesome challenge for my guild (on second last named).However, making a zone that is aimed at casual guilds that drops gear that is a stepping-stone into lair of the Dragon Queen, it should probably have been a x2.My guild is a casual guild that raids 3 times a week rotating 3 different MT. We are working on the Barrier and Harakaat.We cleared to the chessboard in IK (chess board encounter kept crashing us). 80% of the loot went to alts (I think a weapon went to a main).The encounters were fun but felt it should have been a x2 zone, I think the loot is appropriate for a x2.But good job gninja.

Thundy

05-26-2010, 09:30 PM

<cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>Comparing the Icy Keep loot to stuff that drops from VigX2 and Barrier in Palace isnt really a good comparison. Both of those zones are much higher in progression than Icy Keep is intended to be.</blockquote>The earring is kinda cool but it takes way too many trips to get it. By the time the quest is finished you'll be geared/progressed to LoDQ and beyond.I know you put a lot of work into this zone and I'm down with the whole starter raid thing (I always liked the guild raids back in the day, nice concept) but can we get this adjusted?

Talazar

05-26-2010, 09:49 PM

I'm going to make this easy for the apes.Icy zone good for n00bs. Keep Icy zone. Apes go to hole. Apes like hole. X2 hard, but easier than hole. Icy zone easier than all, and bigger than mound.Gninja, carry on please.

Dollin

05-26-2010, 09:49 PM

<cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Fatuus wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>VigX2 was not made as being the beginner raid zone in fact it can be labeled as harder then all of Lair of the Dragon Queen. The loot is better in that zone because the difficulty is higher. WoE was made as a 2 group heroic dungeon where as VigX2 was more of a 2 group raid zone. It just wasnt spelled out that way.</blockquote>Gninja its a great comparison because Vig X2 has pugs doing it all the time...Second that encounter takes 2 groups to complete...are you trying to say that this entire zone was designed so 2 groups could easily clear the whole zone with the same amount of effort and skill that could clear a Vig X2 instance in the same amount of time?</blockquote>Yes because all of our raid content is x2 right?Oh wait no it is not, maybe just maybe the devs thought, "hmm they had the x2 starter, lets try a X4 starter so they can get used to raiding with four groups over two", amazing concept isn't it?</blockquote>Didn't they try starter raid training outa city zones with easy low end content a few years back? Don't recall that ever really going over all that well...Zone as it currently sits is usefull for getting some AA and thats about it. The quests don't even update property and i'm not sure if thats because the mobs that should be updating them are only classed as x2 or x3 mobs and have no loot when you're in a x4 raid? Not sure if thats broken or working as intended.

TwistedFaith

05-26-2010, 09:55 PM

I can see this zone being used a lot by PUGS and newbie guilds, nothing wrong with that imo. Remember when you could farm Labs in tier 6 and people would form up for just trash runs, those were crazy popular.The gear may not be amazing but for the type of people who this is aimed for, its not bad.

circusgirl

05-26-2010, 10:05 PM

Bear in mind, the loot has red slots, and for a lot of folks this will be their only access to many redslot items.

Periko

05-26-2010, 10:32 PM

I think no one is gona do this zone more than one time.

Jaudark

05-26-2010, 10:40 PM

<cite>TwistedFaith wrote:</cite><blockquote>I can see this zone being used a lot by PUGS and newbie guilds, nothing wrong with that imo. Remember when you could farm Labs in tier 6 and people would form up for just trash runs, those were crazy popular.The gear may not be amazing but for the type of people who this is aimed for, its not bad.</blockquote>yes indeed.tho how much time is a newcommer, not -too much- rushed going to take to get level 90 and get enought gear to go in that zone? maybe 2monthshow much time is a group of 24 friends deciding to join a 6 years old MMO game gonna take to be level 90, get enought gear to go in that zone? maybe a month.now how many time you see a group of 24 friends that decides to join a 6 yrs old MMO, not just EQ2, but in general? I dont know of such an occurance. Fact is, many many new players -the group targeted by IK in your words- that would be interested to play this game will check the age of it and think, it's:a) a really successful game that release good contantb) a really old game that will not have good graphics on my 1500$ computer-of-the-month because it's 6years old, I'd rather try out Star Trek Online or Aion and play there.now i know EQ2 but a graphic update treatment and it looks bada** in shaders 3.0, but will that group of 24 players really gonna pay attention to the fact Shaders 3.0 are great looking if there's no advertisement for it?give me a break.PS: Good scripts in that zone, keep the good work coming, I'm happy with what i saw script-wise. I am disapointed by the loot, tho I knew it wasn't gonna be the uberest when I saw IK was "[...] aimed to give players an easy to moderate challenge [...]".

circusgirl

05-26-2010, 10:56 PM

Or they could just pug it?

Lathain_Sarathai

05-26-2010, 11:02 PM

I disagree, drop are not totally so bad.potenty and most of stats of this items are not so good i agree, but they do very nice backup item, lot of resist on them. almost 1500 resist on each jewelery, cloak...while best you can get from BG most have just nothing, best from heroic zone have like 750 resist, and even the new fabled merchant for 220 token sell jewelery with 850 resist, so... 1500 resist is not so bad. For very situationnal fight if you dont have full T1 gear...And no it's not that easy...for pic up raid ,p but yes for veteran it's cake.even one weapon dropped was better than the best BG wapon...

Malacha

05-26-2010, 11:18 PM

I see this zone being used for people to get seals for their alts, especially alts on other accounts. I would totally run it a couple of times in a PUG just to get seals for my alt on another account for the red adornments loot that I get for her out of the other raid zones.

Yimway

05-27-2010, 12:00 AM

<cite>Malachani wrote:</cite><blockquote>I see this zone being used for people to get seals for their alts, especially alts on other accounts. I would totally run it a couple of times in a PUG just to get seals for my alt on another account for the red adornments loot that I get for her out of the other raid zones.</blockquote>Um, your zone dropped seals?

Jaudark

05-27-2010, 12:32 AM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Malachani wrote:</cite><blockquote>I see this zone being used for people to get seals for their alts, especially alts on other accounts. I would totally run it a couple of times in a PUG just to get seals for my alt on another account for the red adornments loot that I get for her out of the other raid zones.</blockquote>Um, your zone dropped seals?</blockquote>yes:(1274848623)[Wed May 26 2010] You loot aITEM 1312880666 -1287751888:Seal of Arad/a from the Exquisite Chest of Hoarfrost Pyreflyte.(1274848623)[Wed May 26 2010] You loot aITEM -643900859 -339241642:Epic Token of E'ci/a from the Exquisite Chest of Hoarfrost Pyreflyte.(1274851246)[Wed May 26 2010] You loot aITEM -643900859 -339241642:Epic Token of E'ci/a from the Exquisite Chest of Lieutenant Grauf Thundersmash.(1274851246)[Wed May 26 2010] You loot aITEM 1312880666 -1287751888:Seal of Arad/a from the Exquisite Chest of Lieutenant Grauf Thundersmash.

Gormak

05-27-2010, 12:39 AM

<cite>Periko@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think no one is gona do this zone more than one time.</blockquote>i disagree.We did 1/2 the zone last night in about 90 mins. Then it was bedtime.My guild completely outgears and out parses this zone. But that doesnt mean its broken.We were discussing its ease, and while i think it is an easy zone, its extremely usefull in the following senses:<ul><li>It provides a "teething" zone for guilds/"green" collectives to hone their skills.</li><li>It allows players who may not normally be able to experience the more difficult encounters, to spend more than 30 mins (Toxx mound) bashing on a x4 mob.</li><li>Its a training ground. Players have to start somewhere, and new players, while they may be small in number they need a way of being introduced to the raid game. They cant be thrown in at an encounter like 3 mages, Pereah'celsis or Oxidasis and be comfortable.</li><li>Being a training ground it enchorages once again smaller guilds to raid. This is sooooooo critical to top end guilds. Top end guilds (as harsh as it may sound) largely source new players from these smaller guilds. The player concerned "graduates" from a casual/family style guild to somthing harder.... Top end guilds are stifled for new blood without such guilds being available, and healthy.</li></ul>As for the players and guilds "above" the zone. 2 group it. We will be. It'll be thrown onto our "Casual/offnight" rotation along with Vig x2 and TSO before too long.I say good job for the devs for introducing a zone that provides some time consuming sustinance for new players, guilds learning their trade, alt guilds, random pickup raids, or simply experienced raiders looking to do somthing other than 1 group stuff in raid downtime... I like somthing there for the wider more casual population to consume. All that, and to top it off.... Its fun. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Lader

05-27-2010, 12:47 AM

i love spending 45 min of our raid standing around while people flip switches over and over again.

Kunaak

05-27-2010, 01:23 AM

Gninja -just make a hard mode version of this exact same zone. no X2 mobs, no X3 mobs in there, put it on par with labs difficulty or so, give it proper gear, and have it renamed like "Icy Keep: some thing something". click on the crystal to zone in, and you get 2 choices, easy current version, or a harder version for the rest of us.as it is, this zones a massive let down.if this isnt possible, atleast give us a way to bypass all the easy mode stuff, and get to Vrewwx - say, do the zone once or twice, earn your flag, then get a little teleport stone, or something.much like getting trak flagged in VP allowed you to later just zone out to trak.I'd love to see vrewwx added to our raid rotation, it really was a nice kill, and fairly challenging. loots not the best around, but far from the worst. but spending 3 hours kill junk mobs, for 1 worthy mob is a massive let down to the more experienced guilds out there.but personally, I really hope you guys just choose to add a hard mode version of the entire zone, rename it something - make it clickable at the crystal, so you can do either version, as you see fit. cause while I say the zones at absolute waste of time at the moment, theres 1 thing I can say positive.you guys are getting creative with the encounters, and they were rather fun. just the loot being so incredibly bad, and the names being so easy, is what really killed it for us.when I say the loots bad, I am not talking like if you guys go add 2% potency and 100 ability mod to them they are all the sudden gonna be good. this loot is sooooooo bad, it should just be deleted entirely, and scrapped, and redone. theres nothing worth tweaking, this zones loot is completly wrong. this is junk I wouldnt even bother farming for on my weakest alt.

Yimway

05-27-2010, 02:02 AM

<cite>Gormak wrote:</cite><blockquote><ul><li>Being a training ground it enchorages once again smaller guilds to raid. This is sooooooo critical to top end guilds. Top end guilds (as harsh as it may sound) largely source new players from these smaller guilds. The player concerned "graduates" from a casual/family style guild to somthing harder.... Top end guilds are stifled for new blood without such guilds being available, and healthy.</li></ul></blockquote>If the loot is worse than heroic instance groups, it encourages them to do heroic instances instead.

Hecula

05-27-2010, 04:07 AM

Great, now that we have all the easy raid content out of the way for T9, I'm looking forward to more mid- and hard-end difficulty raid zones in the rest of SF and going into the next expansion.That being said, some loot needs tweaking so it's better than treasured drops.

EasternKing

05-27-2010, 04:20 AM

Banditman

05-27-2010, 09:42 AM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gormak wrote:</cite><blockquote><ul><li>Being a training ground it enchorages once again smaller guilds to raid. This is sooooooo critical to top end guilds. Top end guilds (as harsh as it may sound) largely source new players from these smaller guilds. The player concerned "graduates" from a casual/family style guild to somthing harder.... Top end guilds are stifled for new blood without such guilds being available, and healthy.</li></ul></blockquote>If the loot is worse than heroic instance groups, it encourages them to do heroic instances instead.</blockquote>The loot is fine FOR WHAT IT IS.So many people complained that there was no "starter" zone for raiding, well, here it is. We ran it last night. We are completely overgeared for it. It was easy, except for the ridiculous crashes.However!To all the people looking for the "WoE" of this tier, welcome to Icy Keep. Frankly, I think IK fits the tier better than WoE fit last tier. You have to actually form up an x4 to get the gear. The gear dropping here would be a touch strong for an x2 . . . sort of how WoE gear was a touch strong. The gear is quite comparable.I do think that all the trash should be converted to x4. One of the attractions should be the chance for the trash to drop loot.The zone is very "old school" in that way. There is trash, but not a ridiculous lot of it. It isn't that "annoying" kind of trash with stuns, stifles and ridiculous knockbacks. There is a very occasional knockback on some of it, but it's not even a real annoyance.I like the way the zone is populated. I think the challenge level is appropriate for a very casual guild. I think the loot is appropriate to the level of challenge.After running the zone myself, I fail to see any problems aside from the awful crashing.

Dareena

05-27-2010, 10:25 AM

So from what I can see, the new Icy Keep serves a few purposes once the chess solution becomes public knowledge and the crashing problem gets fixed.1) For the true raiders, they can farm this "ez mode" raid zone for Seals on their alts. Considering how raiders have been complaining about the situation, this seems like a workable solution.2) For pure PUG raiders, this zone gives people access to Red adornment slot gear. Even if the pieces are sub-par compared to true raid zones, some of the class specific Red adornments are so strong that people would be willing to use a piece of inferior gear just to get access to the adornment.3) For guilds who are just starting to raid after doing the Heroic content of SF, this zone acts as a stepping zone to teach people about raiding in general and to give them slightly better gear than their Heroic drops. These marginal upgrades are supposed to aid them with moving into real x4 raids.All together, I wouldn't call that a terrible situation. It's obviously not the best in the world, but this isn't a true "raid" zone. Once we all agree on this fact, whether we personally like that kind of design structure or not, then we can move on with things.

Carthr

05-27-2010, 10:38 AM

<cite>Lathain_Sarathai wrote:</cite><blockquote> lot of resist on them. almost 1500 resist on each jewelery, cloak...while best you can get from BG most have just nothing, best from heroic zone have like 750 resist, and even the new fabled merchant for 220 token sell jewelery with 850 resist, so... 1500 resist is not so bad. For very situationnal fight if you dont have full T1 gear...</blockquote>Pst...They nerfed the top end resist...I capped at 13k for every resist, no problem... I'll need to do a bit more testing to see what it's contested cap is

Sedenten

05-27-2010, 11:09 AM

SOME of loot needs to be a touch better, regardless of how easy this zone is. Case in point, most of the necks in there do not hold up to the difficulty level. I can't recall the neck that dropped for us, but one of my alts had a quested neck from a solo Paineel quest that was superior to it. That's mainly due to potency on said neck versus the treasured quested one. Some pieces of loot are fine, but if the zone difficulty is in line with easy Toxx then the rewards should be along the same line. Currently it does not seem as if they are. That isn't to say there aren't decent pieces in there for the difficulty, but there's some that stand out like a sore thumb.I'm all for starter raid zones that aren't going to be challenging to the raid centric guilds, but even the most casual of raiders/alliances are going to be hard pressed finding upgrades in there.

Yimway

05-27-2010, 11:10 AM

<cite>Dareena@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>All together, I wouldn't call that a terrible situation. It's obviously not the best in the world, but this isn't a true "raid" zone. Once we all agree on this fact, whether we personally like that kind of design structure or not, then we can move on with things.</blockquote>The only problem I see with that arguement is there is already a _heap_ of easy t9 content out there with better rewards.As I previously stated, the people looking for something lower to break in on t9 were catagoricaly looking for a x2 zone (dig up the threads and read them, I have). This zone believe it or not does not scale well to two groups of those types of players trying to execute the scripts.

Maamadex

05-27-2010, 11:12 AM

I still don't understand how people are saying hey sure the loot is awful, but its easy its good for casual folks. The raid zones we already had are better for casual folks, if you want something harder thats what hardmode is for. Adding a new raid zone with horrible loot and ridiculously easy mobs is just stupid and doesn't exactly do anything for anybody.

Gninja

05-27-2010, 11:40 AM

There were two neck pieces in particular that were really bad due to an error on our part when making the items. We have adjusted them to be more in line with where they should be. This should make it live with next hotfix. We will continue to keep an eye out for items that should be better than they currently are.

Detor

05-27-2010, 12:46 PM

Draylore

05-27-2010, 01:49 PM

<cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>There were two neck pieces in particular that were really bad due to an error on our part when making the items. We have adjusted them to be more in line with where they should be. This should make it live with next hotfix. We will continue to keep an eye out for items that should be better than they currently are.</blockquote>Good to hear.I really think someone needs to take complete pass over all the loot drops from Icy Keep.If this zone is really intended to be a "beginner/training" raid zone then I think upping the overall DMG output of the mobs 20% or so and throwing in a few AOES that matter on some of the fights would make the zone overall a solid training zone.But the loot needs to be looked at.....it is the reason people raid.....even the most of casuals. At a minimum the gear should be upgrades over heroic. Ideally the gear from IK needs to be on par with Tox and currently most of it is not.Tox easy mobs are far easier and quicker to kill than most of the things in Icy Keep and drop better gear. That doesnt make sense. First 2-3 mobs in Labs are also much easier and drops better gear.Also, make the trash x4s and give them a chance to drop gear.......kinda like SoH.Having to kill trash is annoying enough but killing trash that don't even drop plat is really bad.

Wentil

05-27-2010, 01:56 PM

As a member of a raid force who'd only been able to progress past Wyvernlord in Toxx and Ernax and the Raptor named in Labs, I really enjoyed out first venture into Icy Keep the other night. It took a few pulls before we got Hoarfrost figured, but unfortunately didn't pass the dps test on the statue named. We rather enjoyed that we got her to 20% on the first pull without knowing what we were doing though.The loot off Hoarfrost for us was just fine. There were quite a few bids for both items that dropped from him, especially the mage/priest weapon pattern. The neck that dropped from the random ice drake was pretty awful though, so hopefully thats one of the items getting a boost.

Gninja

05-27-2010, 03:27 PM

Yes, the neck item from the ice drake was one that got a boost. Also shoulder items are being looked at currently but we will continue to keep an eye on all items for things that just look out of whack.

EQPrime

05-27-2010, 03:56 PM

I ran this for a 2nd time last night on my alt dirge with a more casual group of people. The first time I went through there I was expecting basically a large "easy tox" type zone. This time I went through with the mindset that the raid was for guilds just starting out on raiding, teaching some basics.Looking at the loot from a 'beginner' perspective it's not too terrible. Yes, some of the pieces are really bad and should get boosted, but a lot of it seemed decent enough. The necklaces, as Gninja mentioned earlier, are really bad but it sounds like they will be getting bumped up. The shoulder patterns only have 2.5% potency when they should probably have about 10% potency. Even WoE gear had 9% potency I believe? Aside from those items, many of the other drops seemed about right. The rewards from the quest for priest/mage and scout/fighter weapons are pretty nice for a beginner raid zone.I liked most of the fights. I saw a few things I'd change/fix:<ul><li>The x2 mobs that have no loot should probably be changed to either x4's or be able to drop loot as x2's.</li><li>The 2nd named probably ends up spawning too many adds for a beginning raid crew. It reminds me a little of the fire guy in WoE that some more casual guilds used to have trouble with. I'd probably have them do more damage to the named each time one dies, or possibly allow the named to be taken down to 75% or something before you have to start killing them.</li><li>The yeti guy who FDs when he gets to zero still hits whoever he has targeted, and he moves around the room after them on his face. Can you make it so he's stunned or something while he's in that form?</li></ul>I had a suggestion, and I know a lot of people would probably find this to be lame or whatever, but how about adding Brellium ores, Ulteran Diamonds, and Kaborite clusters to some of the chests? Beginning raiders are most likely not going to have good resist gear and Brellium jewelry is a huge help to new raiders. They probably could also use spell/ca rares for adept IIIs (oops experts). I don't see a huge need for rare wood, pelts, or roots for beginner raiders but I think the others might be helpful to someone just starting raiding. Tier1 - Tier6 raid mobs used to drop tradeskill rares so it's not like this is a completely new idea.Some plat in the chests, at least from some of the harder named, wouldn't hurt either, if even to just keep up with the repair bills that a beginning raid force would be sure to rack up.After going through the 2nd time with different expectations I was more able to appreciate the zone for what it is - a very good zone for people who are just starting raiding. I suppose the only question is - are there enough people in the game that fit this category to make the zone worthwhile? It will be interesting to see. The zone seems very good for PuGs except that it's probably too big for most PuGs to finish in 1 shot.In order to have some appeal for a broader audience maybe you could put in a quest that will allow the more hardcore raid forces to skip past some of the mobs to be able to get to the hard mode without clearing the whole zone? (I believe someone may have mentioned this before.) This would be somewhat similar to the change in VP during early TSO that allowed raids to get to Trakanon without having to clear the whole zone.

lazlo1

05-27-2010, 05:28 PM

Removing the vast majority of the trash would help. Its a big zone no need to slug thru that much trash on top of all the names.A way to skip to icy maiden ->-> hard dragon would be nice after doing all the quests. That might keep a few more guilds doing this zone. Currently its not worth doing the whole zone for a couple shots at good gear for medium guilds.

Eritius

05-27-2010, 06:13 PM

If its as easy everyone is claiming, clear it a few times with 1.5 to 2 groups and watch the devs jump on it.That happened to a WoW raid zone about 6 months back. Was able to clear some stuff with just one group, then they hotfixed it. They hotfixed it without telling anyone. We didn't find out until a few months after when we did it for fun (already a tier or 2 ahead) and found out we needed resist gear for the 2 group version.Course we dropped it and went back to doing the higher tiers. Getting resist gear wasn't worth the loot drops.

Gninja

05-27-2010, 06:35 PM

You can actually skip some of the named after you have done them once. Out of the 9 named before the dragon you can completely skip 4 of them once you have progressed through it once.

lazlo1

05-27-2010, 07:41 PM

<cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can actually skip some of the named after you have done them once. Out of the 9 named before the dragon you can completely skip 4 of them once you have progressed through it once.</blockquote>well to be blunt i doubt our guild will ever go back if thats the case. The only mob worth killing is the dragon. Slugging thru trash and 5 names is not even close to worth it. It needs to be like trak, then it will get some interest.I can see alot of work was put into this. It just seems a waste that most guilds will do this once. At least letting the last mob be killable will keep it from becoming a total fail for most raiding guilds.

Draylore

05-27-2010, 09:15 PM

<cite>Uguv@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>I ran this for a 2nd time last night on my alt dirge with a more casual group of people. The first time I went through there I was expecting basically a large "easy tox" type zone. This time I went through with the mindset that the raid was for guilds just starting out on raiding, teaching some basics.Looking at the loot from a 'beginner' perspective it's not too terrible. Yes, some of the pieces are really bad and should get boosted, but a lot of it seemed decent enough. The necklaces, as Gninja mentioned earlier, are really bad but it sounds like they will be getting bumped up. The shoulder patterns only have 2.5% potency when they should probably have about 10% potency. Even WoE gear had 9% potency I believe? Aside from those items, many of the other drops seemed about right. The rewards from the quest for priest/mage and scout/fighter weapons are pretty nice for a beginner raid zone.I liked most of the fights. I saw a few things I'd change/fix:<ul><li>The x2 mobs that have no loot should probably be changed to either x4's or be able to drop loot as x2's.</li><li>The 2nd named probably ends up spawning too many adds for a beginning raid crew. It reminds me a little of the fire guy in WoE that some more casual guilds used to have trouble with. I'd probably have them do more damage to the named each time one dies, or possibly allow the named to be taken down to 75% or something before you have to start killing them.</li><li>The yeti guy who FDs when he gets to zero still hits whoever he has targeted, and he moves around the room after them on his face. Can you make it so he's stunned or something while he's in that form?</li></ul>I had a suggestion, and I know a lot of people would probably find this to be lame or whatever, but how about adding Brellium ores, Ulteran Diamonds, and Kaborite clusters to some of the chests? Beginning raiders are most likely not going to have good resist gear and Brellium jewelry is a huge help to new raiders. They probably could also use spell/ca rares for adept IIIs (oops experts). I don't see a huge need for rare wood, pelts, or roots for beginner raiders but I think the others might be helpful to someone just starting raiding. Tier1 - Tier6 raid mobs used to drop tradeskill rares so it's not like this is a completely new idea.Some plat in the chests, at least from some of the harder named, wouldn't hurt either, if even to just keep up with the repair bills that a beginning raid force would be sure to rack up.After going through the 2nd time with different expectations I was more able to appreciate the zone for what it is - a very good zone for people who are just starting raiding. I suppose the only question is - are there enough people in the game that fit this category to make the zone worthwhile? It will be interesting to see. The zone seems very good for PuGs except that it's probably too big for most PuGs to finish in 1 shot.In order to have some appeal for a broader audience maybe you could put in a quest that will allow the more hardcore raid forces to skip past some of the mobs to be able to get to the hard mode without clearing the whole zone? (I believe someone may have mentioned this before.) This would be somewhat similar to the change in VP during early TSO that allowed raids to get to Trakanon without having to clear the whole zone.</blockquote>Same here. I got to watch someone else playing her alt in that same raid and yeah it seemed about right for the intended playerbase. Fix some of the obvious bad loot....do something about the trash.....and IK will be what I think they wanted it to be. How many actually use it remains to be seen. If IK had launched when SF launched then it would have been really popular......just not sure today with how easy it is for just about anyone to get the better gear.But as a pure intro to raiding, etc IK should fit the bill.For the more serious raid people.......especially those of us with alts on seperate accounts it might serve as a means to get seals.

Gormak

05-27-2010, 09:35 PM

<cite>Taemien@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>If its as easy everyone is claiming, clear it a few times with 1.5 to 2 groups and watch the devs jump on it.That happened to a WoW raid zone about 6 months back. Was able to clear some stuff with just one group, then they hotfixed it. They hotfixed it without telling anyone. We didn't find out until a few months after when we did it for fun (already a tier or 2 ahead) and found out we needed resist gear for the 2 group version.Course we dropped it and went back to doing the higher tiers. Getting resist gear wasn't worth the loot drops.</blockquote>This isnt wow. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I see nothing wrong with people 2 grouping it (it'll probably be done by Tyranny or a similar guild within the week...). Infact the achievement system enchorages it. If your capable of 2 groupping it, chances are your not there for the gear.... i dont see this as a reason for the devs to jump on it. Do devs jump on shard of fear cause it can be soloed? do devs jump on previous teir/expansion content cause it can be 1 or 2 groupped? Hell, Protectors realm could be 1 groupped early/midway through TSO.... nothing changed. The loot quality for the most part is inline with the difficulty. People who dont need the loot are either their for fun, profit, or twinkage. The same reasons why a raider would bother doing 1 group zones.... now this is all sounding like the age old MMO farming to me.... funny that.This zone is a nice fun entry level zone. Sure theres 1 group instances with some nicer loot, but not on such a consistant kill rate basis.While i may not personally see this zone much, i think its a great job on the EQ2 teams part to have put this together. Good job guys <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Crazy_1one1

05-28-2010, 05:13 AM

<cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yes, the neck item from the ice drake was one that got a boost. Also shoulder items are being looked at currently but we will continue to keep an eye on all items for things that just look out of whack.</blockquote>I get the whole this zone is easy so loot is weaksauce...I get it... But what I don't understand is why??? Why design a raid zone, after 2 months into the expac (or however long it has been) would SOE release a full-on noob zone? Why not add something to the like of perah'celsis (yes my guild farms perah-celsis)? My guild has already voted and said we aren't going to touch this zone again. What's the point...clear the zone for 1 mobs loot table. no thanks. I personally feel this was a total waste of dev's time. Great looking zone, great ideas for the mobs...just way too easy with crappy lootz!

Nikadaimon

05-28-2010, 05:53 AM

<cite>Crazy_1one1 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yes, the neck item from the ice drake was one that got a boost. Also shoulder items are being looked at currently but we will continue to keep an eye on all items for things that just look out of whack.</blockquote>I get the whole this zone is easy so loot is weaksauce...I get it... But what I don't understand is why??? Why design a raid zone, after 2 months into the expac (or however long it has been) would SOE release a full-on noob zone? Why not add something to the like of perah'celsis (yes my guild farms perah-celsis)? My guild has already voted and said we aren't going to touch this zone again. What's the point...clear the zone for 1 mobs loot table. no thanks. I personally feel this was a total waste of dev's time. Great looking zone, great ideas for the mobs...just way too easy with crappy lootz!</blockquote>OMG, how many times do people need to say that this zone isnt meant for you before you accept/understand it??Its entry level and the gear is as well. It is already acknowledged that some loot needs tweaking, other than that its a nice way for casual people to get red addornment slots and some nice upgrades. Furthermore its a nice way to get to learn raiding. Of course it would have been better to have this in at the launch of SF, but hey, better late then never.. there will still be people who still need to (really) start with raiding so its good it is here!Will probably get back in here with our guild since its a guarantee for more loot than doing just a few nameds in other instances.

thog_zork

05-28-2010, 10:24 AM

you can already get a full set of tier 1 red gear slot items without much effort from easy mobs

ranga

05-28-2010, 11:00 AM

My guild hasn't tried this zone yet - we probably will this weekend. But from this discussion it appears that 'non-scrubs' will qq about any zone that is released but is not for them either because it's too easy or because the loot isn't 'non-scrub' Get this guys - SoE doesn't make content solely for YOU!WoE wasn't easy by any means if you were a casual guild, some bits still present a good challenge for some of our new members. It sounds to me like if you're beyond these zones in your guild's progression by all means go there for aa or alt loot or mutables but don't go spoiling it for less geared groups/guilds by qq'ing so much - go somewhere 'non-scrub' to get your fun/loot.GNinja, keep up the good work - the game needs situations for all its' types of player not just for the 'ubers' WoE was great for us we still go there from time to time. I am sure this will be another zone for us to enjoy too. And it's good that you're keeping an eye on the loot and tweaking where necessary.BTW what is a scrub? is it someone who is very casual for any number of reasons, is it an undergeared new player? or is it just a schoolyard insult thrown by ppl who should probably know better?

EQPrime

05-28-2010, 11:04 AM

<cite>Gninja wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can actually skip some of the named after you have done them once. Out of the 9 named before the dragon you can completely skip 4 of them once you have progressed through it once.</blockquote>Don't know how much work it would be, but what about instancing the boss in a zone within Icy Keep (like Trakanon is separate from VP)? That way clearing the zone once would allow guilds to kill the boss 3-4 times. It might encourage more guilds to run (and repeat) the zone. With a 9 day lockout on Icy Keep, if the boss had a 2d20h lockout you could run it multiple times with the one cleared zone before having to go back and clear the thing again.

VALKOR

05-28-2010, 02:05 PM

If there was a need for an introductory raid zone, then I could understand including this. However, Lair, much of Labs, and even the first few in Palace are already very easy encounters that serve as introductions. The name/boss encounters announce their AoE to the raid for Marr's sake - it's already serving to teach how to joust (if that's even necessary).It feels to me like the content is either too hard or much too easy - we routinely 3 group all or nearly all of Lair/Labs/Palace as a casual raid guild. I've little doubt that even PURs are handling Lair and Labs, and the loot from those zones is far superior to Icy Keep. There is no point in running Icy Keep for red slot items when you can just run Lair/Labs for the same. Even a guild just starting to raid or a pickup-raid would be better served running Lair/Labs then doing Icy Keep. There should be excitement with a new zone, not a "well, we'll raid it I suppose if locked out of lair/labs/palace."What's missing is middle level content or a well-designed raid zone that has one or two easy mobs at the door, a few harder ones part way in, and a last few that are very difficult (ala Shard of Hate). The progression is already too easy with the existing raid zones; there was just no need to introduce an even easier zone with worse loot. At the very least, there should have been a "hard-mode" that would work out to middling difficulty (with appropriate loot) so that there was a good reason to run it.We were in the same boat as many other posters - the loot was so sub-par that we couldn't even pawn it off to alts. After working partway through the zone and being underwhelmed at drop after drop, we just zoned out and went back to Palace. The dragon might well be worth clearing the zone once, but it's hard to care enough to slog through it.In response to "but it's not intended for a guild like yours" my rejoinder is that it's not all that useful to any guild since farming Lair/Labs is a much better use of a new raiding guild's hours. I'm all for having a range of raid content from super easy to super hard with loot scaled appropriately - unfortunately, there's a big gap in the middle at the moment and Icy Keep should have instead been designed to fill it.

Maamadex

05-31-2010, 01:59 AM

<cite>ranga wrote:</cite><blockquote>My guild hasn't tried this zone yet - we probably will this weekend. But from this discussion it appears that 'non-scrubs' will qq about any zone that is released but is not for them either because it's too easy or because the loot isn't 'non-scrub' Get this guys - SoE doesn't make content solely for YOU!BTW what is a scrub? is it someone who is very casual for any number of reasons, is it an undergeared new player? or is it just a schoolyard insult thrown by ppl who should probably know better?</blockquote>Icy Keep is just annoyingly bad in some respects. Not to say some of the fights aren't fun and the change of scenery isn't nice and all but....I've yet to experience another expansion, going all the way back to T5, wherein raiding has been easier. Labs, Palace, Lair are all really accessible for a fledgling raid force, so are T8 zones. There really is no reason for Icy Keep, and there's no reason for how awful the loot is. True there are some good items here and there but, whew. Its just, about as relevant as Shard of Love was for progression or gearing up a char for the most part. I know its being looked into or being fixed but a lot of the items are pathetic. Horrifically bad. Chests might as well just drop manas. I just don't see how it fits either. If someone wants to learn to raid go do TSO or WoE or Kunark, no reason to add new content that is almost instantly worthless for most players be it "scrub" casual or hardcore.

Banditman

06-01-2010, 10:45 AM

We've run this zone twice now, and I actually have some real problems with it.It's an ok zone. Pretty easy, up until the last three mobs before the dragon. Corrival, Twins and the Ice Maiden however . . .Those fights are NOT for the casual guild. Sure, my guild completed them, but then again, we're (usually) working on hardmode mobs. Most certainly, those fights, the loot is NOT in line with the difficulty.Corrival:Not really all that hard, just a somewhat long fight, and easy to get it screwed up if people aren't paying attention. Consider changing the model on the Dark / Light adds to make it a little more obvious which is which. Asking a casual guild to dig through the buffs on a mob during a fight might be a bit much.Twins:This has loads of potential to be a really fun fight. However! The "combining" really needs some sort of cue. We know that the mob has to combine, but we can't find any cue in the script that tells us how to make that happen reliably. Basically they just run around killing people until by some miracle of circumstance they combine.The mem wiping needs to be toned down GREATLY, or, if as some have intimated, there is a way to avoid it, that cue needs to be more pronounced.Ice Maiden:This fight has some DPS requirements that are going to be FAR beyond any casual guild. It won't even be close. There are AE stuns, potential for tons of adds and the statues that are not trivial as the fight progresses.Listen, we've cleared this content. It doesn't make two (*&@# to me whether it is changed. However, I think that for the (apparently) intended audience, the final encounters of this zone are far too difficult.Either the encounters need to be softened, or the loot needs to be upgraded. Either way is fine with me, but right now, the fights at the end of this zone are going to be way, way too difficult for the quality of loot they drop.Once again, I'm ok with leaving the entire zone the way it is. In saying that, it also needs to have loot commensurate with the difficulty. Right now, no one is going to do this content because it's currently not properly balanced. The only reason we did it is because the hardmode mobs are currently broken.

Yimway

06-01-2010, 02:58 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>Twins:This has loads of potential to be a really fun fight. However! The "combining" really needs some sort of cue. We know that the mob has to combine, but we can't find any cue in the script that tells us how to make that happen reliably. Basically they just run around killing people until by some miracle of circumstance they combine.The mem wiping needs to be toned down GREATLY, or, if as some have intimated, there is a way to avoid it, that cue needs to be more pronounced.</blockquote>I have to agree strongly on the twins. It's an aweful fight, and sometimes they just bug out and wont combine at all.If something more reasonable was done about the mem-wiping on the combine points (3% varriance?), it could be a really fun encounter.

Ebarel

06-02-2010, 06:42 AM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>Either the encounters need to be softened, or the loot needs to be upgraded. Either way is fine with me, but right now, the fights at the end of this zone are going to be way, way too difficult for the quality of loot they drop.Once again, I'm ok with leaving the entire zone the way it is. In saying that, it also needs to have loot commensurate with the difficulty. Right now, no one is going to do this content because it's currently not properly balanced. The only reason we did it is because the hardmode mobs are currently broken.</blockquote>- adjust the encounters that are too hard for the target audience (i also generally think reading/finding a single buff on a mob for the strategy is just a plain bad idea).- the loot is generally crap, just plain transmuter fodder. do something with it or just let the mobs drop mana/infusions- do NOT leave the zone as it is. if that is intended, remove it after a month and make it a seasonal thing. nobody will ever waste hours there killing trash and mobs just for adornment raws. There is a huge disparity between the rewards and the otherwise nicely scripted fights. The idea for the fights is great. Adjust the difficulty to the target audience, replace the loot with stuff people not killing hardmodes would wear. It would be a real waste of the effort you put into the scripts which are nicely done.- make an option to do the last mob only, like in VP