Avoiding the mistakes of the last expansion

I posted this in Newbie by mistake and it actually had good discussion, but wanted to move it here, the higher traffic zone, to get more attention.

So we have an impending beta coming, like every fall. And if history is any guide, many problems will go live that should be caught in the beta. I'm talking the disaster that is Skyfire, a zone universally detested that got little to no scrutiny. The dumb ideas of this zone (vampires procing drunk effect on tanks, terrible wizard port in, drakes bombing groups) would have been caught if people actually played in the zone. But they didn't.

Listen up DBG: no one tests the adventure zones. ROI, MS, Triton, TR, etc, will all use the beta to learn strategy for the raids so they can clear them on launch day in their silly race to be first. I know, I saw it. I was recruiting with a top 5 guild at the time and was totally put off by it.

I was in the beta. I saw what happened. No one exped to 110, they were all boosted to 110 by devs. And raids were just to work out strategy, even as they were being tuned. I remember an angry raid leader in TS berating us for failing on Cactiki and saying he didn't want us to be the only guild not to clear it on launch day. As I recall, cactiki was hella hard in beta.

There was no talk about how ridiculous Skyfire was, or the Majestic Cockatrice in OT, the insanity of level 109, or any other issue raised after the game went live. They weren't grinding. People were boosted to 110 so they could raid and that's what you saw, people from top raiding guilds all gathering in POK at the temporary quest givers. No one went out and exped in OT, SF, Goro, HS or ST.

So here's a modest proposal. Trickle out the beta, grind zones first. Let's say the expac has 8 new zones. Release two per week for a month and somehow, make it so you have to play in the first zones to move on to the second pair, etc. After a month, then release the raids. So by the time the raid zones come out, yes, ROI, et al, will still use them to work on strategy, but at least the exp zones will actually have been tested.

Or we can just have another zone like Skyfire, a total write off.

Thorough testing is good. I am Not on board with your crusade to use that testing to bland out environmental features and thematic variation. Your presumption to speak for a "universality" of opinion isn't welcome.

Totally wrong with this.

RoF expansion showed that people did not want a tickle expansion.

Personally, I would prefer to have all raid content released immediately so it gets tested and tuned properly.

Very few guilds got granted level 110. Mine did not. Myself and quite a few of my guild members actually grinded out exp in BETA to reach 110. So you are totally incorrect in your assumption that everyone got handed level 110.
However, grinding to 110 was not difficult. There is nothing gained by grinding exp in a BETA during a level increase expansion. That time spent mindlessly exping gains nothing.
I will agree to your idea that it would be nice if some of the design flaws were discussed during BETA, but delaying the raid content in an effort to make sure design flaws are given testing time is a massive overreaction.
I prefer to trust that the many months of feedback on these forums about "unfun" zones like Skyfire, OT and Veeshan's peak will have trickled down to the devs ears and we will avoid some of that crap in the next expansion. Absurdly difficult named in the T1 hub zone is not fun. Mobs that can hit you but you can not hit back in Skyfire is not fun. Vast amounts of see invise mobs in Veeshans peak is not fun. Sarnaks throughout the expansion with their stupid riposte is not fun. etc etc etc.

Ultimately, the raid content needs far more time to tune, tweak and adjust than it is actually given, and any time taken away from that is a loss for the raiding community. No thank you very much.

The insanity of 109? Did I miss something?

Or are you referring that it took a little bit longer to get through that level than the others? If so... that is your complaint?

Biggest mistake of last expansion was Skyfire. What were they thinking.

Lilura, after you were corrected in the last thread i am surprised you are repeating the same false and insulting accusations in another thread.

They wanted something different. A challenge, or at least what they thought would be a challenge. And in all honesty, the zone is challenging. It is not a boring cookie cutter zone. It has elements that are not found in other zones.

Now as players, many see it as frustratingly challenging instead of excitable challenging. And therein lies the problem. What developers may think is exciting, players may see as frustrating. The thing is, though, you cannot please them all.

I applaud the devs for taking a risk. For thinking outside the box. For having elements that are not generally seen. Maybe it did not work out the way we wanted it as far as exciting/frustrating goes, but give them some credit for trying. Hopefully they will continue to brainstorm and think of elements that we, as players, will deem as exciting next expansion...

I have a strong preference that they continue innovating zones that are different by more than just the sprites that generic mobs wear.

Skyfire was the challenge VP should have been, not a T1 zone.The same with OT the mobs should have been the easiest of the expansion not the hardest.

I hope with the next expansion the zones get harder as you progress not easier. I have nothing against challenge just in the right order.

Thorough testing is good.

Incentivize testing the non-raid content... sure if that is what it takes to get people doing it in beta.

Nobody cares who finishes the raids on the first day except the people that care about it. Since they are kind of key to tuning the raids in beta... let them have their fun.


As players we have historically complained about hard/unusual stuff (OoW when it was current was brutal for the undergeared and those that like to hit mobs without knowing what they did for combat) yet looking back that is often the best content and funnest to replay. Tower of Frozen Shadow is hard at intended gearing and level... and remains brilliant. Not saying RoS Skyfire will be considered classic --but I'd rather the team stay creative and interesting.*


*which has nothing to do with the practical reasons for them re-using zones.

It seems to me that your complaint is that raid guilds did not test the group content well enough. So then why didnt group guilds test the group content? IIRC everyone that pre-ordered got a beta invite. So if you hate skyfire so much you only have yourself to blame for not testing it.

Also: I like skyfire.
2nd also: At least the chromos dont strip your buffs like old skyfire

It's hard to give feedback when there is so much not done in an expansion or when there is as little communication as there was last year. I spent very little time in group content because I kept waiting for AA and spells/disciplines to be done. We never did get any communication about AA. Getting a feel for the content requires the perspective of having the abilities of the expansion. The lack of communication also made it seem like feedback of any kind would have been futile.

The premise that hardcore guilds didn't test the zones is ridiculous. Expecting hardcore players to react as negatively as you did to challenging mechanics is also ridiculous. Plenty of us (including myself) did all of Skyfire's progression before 110 and leveled most or all of the way to 110. It didn't, and still doesn't, seem bad to me. I wish RoS had a more accessible T1, but Skyfire being misplaced in the theoretical difficulty hierarchy is very different from whatever your opinion of the zone seems to be.

Forcing us to test things we already test anyways because you're of the misguided belief that we'll agree with your assessment of the content is pretty naive.

I think they should have a final week, where they test the content with live rules, so that we don't get annoying holdups like the rez-bug. and where everyone is bumped back to ros-state, to simulate the initial rush-in with the entry zones.

When i copied my char to test RoS, I noticed that most people were already level 110, so I doubt neither OT or SF where tuned with 106 players in mind. Pretty much everything was conning red to me...

There were a large share of players who choose to level up in EoK-zones, that indicate a tuning problem with the RoS-entry zones.

The only thing challenging about Skyfire was staying awake. The population density was way too sparse. The drakes and drunk vampires were annoying, but not difficult. Sometimes it seems the dev team mistakes annoying and time sink with challenging.

It's objectively more challenging than had those mechanics not been implemented. Was the zone significantly more challenging? No, not really, but people still came here to complain it was too hard.

Was it annoying? Yeah, I guess. I still think the drake mechanic is pretty cool. The real issue IMO is that 1) RoS has no T1/outdoor zones that aren't annoying and 2) there's no reason to go back to zones. If I were giving tons of feedback like the OP wants, I'd probably recommend making Skyfire harder and perhaps more densely populated. I'd also make it a T2 zone and add Bathezid Trade Gems to the merc tasks or mob loot tables or something so that there's a reward for killing there.

That's just my opinion, though, and you're more than welcome to disagree with it. This thread isn't about whether or not Skyfire is a good zone, so I'm not going to debate that. That was not my point. My point is that the OP's premise is fundamentally flawed. Same thing with the majestic cockatrice or the grind to go from 109 to 110. Can you call them annoying? Sure. But I thought they were fine, the people I did them with thought they were fine, and we all tested them extensively. The conclusion that we did not provide feedback on things because we didn't test them is fundamentally wrong. People's opinions on Skyfire are not relevant to that.

Drake bombers unfair to boxxers!

Not one thing you said was correct. I think your confusing Dev in-action with player in-action. Every single thing you mentioned was reported, multiple times, by raiders and groupers alike. We as players did not choose to have stupid drunk procing Vampires, bombing drakes, ect. That was a dev decision. It's not our fault that the Devs don't do a long enough testing time and don't fix everything that is reported before launch. That is completely out of our control...

Level 109 was meant to be a hell level. Again, Dev decision. It was also not really that bad.

Also, your solution is pretty much exactly how it was anyway. Their are generally 0 raids ready for raid testing when beta first launches. As well as zones not ready and much more. Beta is slowly trickled out already. Were you even there?

I also know for a fact that the raiders your bashing are the ones out testing nearly everything. We have people out Mapping the new zones, testing the progression quests, XP groups grinding to 110, tradeskilling, testing spells / discs, and everything else under the sun.

I'm not trying to be an really, but you couldn't be anymore wrong. /shrug