Dear Kyronix, nobody likes fiendish calling AI. It takes otherwise fun encounters and turns them

Mervyn

I again have to disagree with you Pawain, I’ve been in discord with other tamers doing the roof and we all for sure were bored. (Although it gave people the opportunity to play another game or browse the web at the same time) they all agreed it was so boring without spawn. 

Pawain

Mervyn said:

I again have to disagree with you Pawain, I’ve been in discord with other tamers doing the roof and we all for sure were bored. (Although it gave people the opportunity to play another game or browse the web at the same time) they all agreed it was so boring without spawn. 

Then you should have told them to go to Doom if they want spawn.  Easy fix?

I dont believe anyone would talk to you anyway.

Mervyn

deleted

Larisa

It's fine now....why do you want everything so easy? The roof before...at least for me..was a snore-fest...hardly any healing...nothing taking damage..no spawn to contend with....THAT isn't fun...for me anyway.

drcossack

Mervyn said:

I again have to disagree with you Pawain, I’ve been in discord with other tamers doing the roof and we all for sure were bored. (Although it gave people the opportunity to play another game or browse the web at the same time) they all agreed it was so boring without spawn. 

it's the same for me.  Pawain's idea of fun is banging his head on the wall with a bad party composition *cough* Doom with nothing but tamers *cough*, where they spend more time running around dealing no damage to the Dark Father, or just flat-out die repeatedly.

I'm in a (mostly static) group of 3 (occasionally a couple other guildmates will join us) when I do the roof, and we bring at least 2 characters each.  Outside of Juo'nar, do you know how much attention we pay to what's going on?  Very little.

For the 3 of us, the addition of spawn due to pets won't change a thing.

KHAN

Larisa said:

We just did 2 runs on Test Center...5 of us, all tamers, one bard tamer...2 dimeasaurs, a dread spider, a cu and a fire beetle for the first run. Kyronix said he cut the spawn in half from what it was yesterday, this is the first time I have been able to test it.

It was tricky, even cut in half the spawn was insane! BUT if you know what you're doing it's not bad at all.






The worst was Ju'nor.....we didn't have any deaths until him lol but we ran off, rezzed up, regrouped and got it done.

The second run we went in with different pets, some weaker...I brought my phoenix, most of the pets had some sort of AOE though so that helped a bit with spawn.

The second run was much worse..I think he might have upped the spawn a bit just to test...a LOT more deaths the second time around, a LOT more spawn...but we managed to get it done too.

He said he will be tweaking it a bit for the next publish, but from my point of view? IF you know what you're doing it's not bad at all. You have to pay attention and be good at healing pets and party members...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Thanks for not posting a picture of me wearing a death robe!

Kyronix

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

KHAN

I agree with @Larisa , it IS doable, but, in my opinion, the spawn from Jou'nar needs to be cut back. I will continue to test, especially after the next patch to check Jou'nar out. 

KHAN

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

@Kyronix Thanks for following along and seeing the results. I don't think it's all that bad. EXCEPT for that Jou'nar guy, and his spawn! He sucks. LOL

crunchnasty

I mean I understand some ppl getting frustrated, but we are talking about the highest level end game thing you can do in all of UO. @Kyronix seems to be on the right track here, can we at least let him get through the trials and publish the final result before we declare the sky is falling?  

Larisa

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

Yeah I figured the second run was like it was yesterday.

The complaints I heard were:

Too much work for no to very little reward...spending 30+ minutes to do the rooms (Which we didn't have to do) and an hour on the roof, fighting all that spawn, pets dying and losing skill points which you have to work back up and then to get no drop at the end made it not fun for them.

I countered with:

It's basically end-game content and they don't want to flood the market with tons of arties/legendaries, getting items like that is supposed to be hard and you're supposed to have to work for it, and you don't get NOTHING...you get gold (I get roughly 200k sent to the bank before we get kicked out, which might not be a lot but it's not nothing!) and some pretty good loot off the corpse.

Pawain

It took an hour to do the roof with six people?  Now we have to find 6 others who are roof ready and then spend an hour there.  

Does not sound like fun.

CovenantX

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxZl_qtCW5k

However, if this "Fiendish Call" ability gets any adjustments such as a cooldown or reduced chance to proc, is it also going to affect other encounters that have this ability as well?

personally I don't think it's that bad, but I don't use tamers for the most part anyway.

However, I won't complain if it spawns less often for the templates I use either. =D

Kyronix

Larisa said:

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

Yeah I figured the second run was like it was yesterday.

The complaints I heard were:

Too much work for no to very little reward...spending 30+ minutes to do the rooms (Which we didn't have to do) and an hour on the roof, fighting all that spawn, pets dying and losing skill points which you have to work back up and then to get no drop at the end made it not fun for them.

I countered with:

It's basically end-game content and they don't want to flood the market with tons of arties/legendaries, getting items like that is supposed to be hard and you're supposed to have to work for it, and you don't get NOTHING...you get gold (I get roughly 200k sent to the bank before we get kicked out, which might not be a lot but it's not nothing!) and some pretty good loot off the corpse.

Great feedback, and thanks for spending the time to test! May be interested to know your run time was around 25 minutes give or take,

Larisa

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

Kyronix said:

Larisa said:

...most of my party was not happy with the results and didn't think it was fun at all..I think I am the only one that enjoyed it and thought it wasn't bad at all.

Can you elaborate?

 As I mentioned, the 2nd run didn't get tweaked like the first one since they had to be done manually and I had to go.  In the first run, with the exception of the streaky-ness that will be resolved in the next update, you guys steam-rolled through each of the bosses with relative ease with the exception of Juo'nar.  Even then, when the party had to face some deaths, the arena was large enough to accommodate a regroup/rez area that got you all back in the fight fairly quickly.

Yeah I figured the second run was like it was yesterday.

The complaints I heard were:

Too much work for no to very little reward...spending 30+ minutes to do the rooms (Which we didn't have to do) and an hour on the roof, fighting all that spawn, pets dying and losing skill points which you have to work back up and then to get no drop at the end made it not fun for them.

I countered with:

It's basically end-game content and they don't want to flood the market with tons of arties/legendaries, getting items like that is supposed to be hard and you're supposed to have to work for it, and you don't get NOTHING...you get gold (I get roughly 200k sent to the bank before we get kicked out, which might not be a lot but it's not nothing!) and some pretty good loot off the corpse.

Great feedback, and thanks for spending the time to test! May be interested to know your run time was around 25 minutes give or take,

You know me, I LOVE testing stuff! It was my pleasure! And only 25 minutes for the first run? it felt like a LOT longer lol...all that spawn! But I had a blast...I felt like I was actually working for something...I am looking forward to this change

Violet

Ran it three times tonight, this was without Kyronix to adjust the spawn down for us.

Spellweaver Tamer(without focus) w/ AOE Pet & Sampire
Spellweaver Tamer(without focus) w/ Single Target Pet & Sampire
Spellweaver tamer (without focus) and Necro Tamer w/AOE and Single target pet (non-optimal pets).

All were doable.  Sampire and Single target pet was the quickest.

Two tamers w/AOE AND Single target was definately doable.  We messed around a lot.

Some observations:

Jou'nar was the only one which presented any challenge, for a couple of reasons (but still extremely doable)

1.   Mortal Strike from Banshees.
2.   Streakiness, within seconds of the pull 1 set of Skele dragons had spawn, within seconds of that, a second set spawned.
3.   Chain pulls into Jou'nar, like nonstop
4.   Occasional para from adds and consume dropping as a result (mostly due to Jou'nar's chain pulling)

I threw down a poison field on Virtuebane to see what would happen.  HAHAHA~  Over 10 different add waves spawned because of that alone. Just in case anyone was wondering if small damage has an effect.... IT DOES!  

I only kept record of Ozzy.  Took 10 minutes for the two pets to kill it, and we had 16 add waves spawn in that time.

We experimented a lot with the two tamers so we took our time.  Would guess under 30 minutes to kill it with 2 of us if we were to go again with the current add spawn rate.

Mervyn

So my takeaway from people who have actually tried it is. They thought they wanted easy mode but when presented with a challenge and overcame it, they were given a higher sense of achievement and enjoyment. 

Maybe now it’s time to start riding the bicycle with the training wheels off?

Perhaps you’d all also enjoy the content more if you couldn’t just log out to prevent your pets dying. Maybe take a veterinarian with you to res those swampies for the sampires?

Petra_Fyde

Who reported the lack of spawn as a bug?  Mervyn
Who is spreading the misinformation that it can be solo'd by a tamer afk?  Mervyn again

Maybe it is a bug, and maybe it does need to be fixed, just as long as everyone is aware that it's nowhere near as easy as Mervyn likes to make out and extra spawn from this fix doesn't make it OTT.

I only ever go there with my alliance friends, we are a mixed group of tamers, mystic weavers, an archer or sometimes two and I usually go on my bard with provo masteries running.  As it stands the only one of the four we manage to do with minimum extra mobs is Annon, all the rest summon a lot, and while I provo as much as I can given the wait time between uses, most of Juanor's summons can't be provo'd and you can't provo anything onto Virtuebane.

The group has already abandoned Doom as no longer fun, we don't want to have to abandon this too.  Doom would be ok if we could do one dark father at a time, but the leash is too short to do that. 

I don't, won't, play a sampire. Personally I don't think such a character should be possible. You can't be 'good' and 'evil' both at the same time. Chiv and Necro should not be possible in the same template.  But that's just my personal opinion and choice.

Cookie

 Petra_Fyde said:

Who reported the lack of spawn as a bug?  Mervyn
Who is spreading the misinformation that it can be solo'd by a tamer afk?  Mervyn again

Maybe it is a bug, and maybe it does need to be fixed, just as long as everyone is aware that it's nowhere near as easy as Mervyn likes to make out and extra spawn from this fix doesn't make it OTT.

I only ever go there with my alliance friends, we are a mixed group of tamers, mystic weavers, an archer or sometimes two and I usually go on my bard with provo masteries running.  As it stands the only one of the four we manage to do with minimum extra mobs is Annon, all the rest summon a lot, and while I provo as much as I can given the wait time between uses, most of Juanor's summons can't be provo'd and you can't provo anything onto Virtuebane.

The group has already abandoned Doom as no longer fun, we don't want to have to abandon this too.  Doom would be ok if we could do one dark father at a time, but the leash is too short to do that. 

I don't, won't, play a sampire. Personally I don't think such a character should be possible. You can't be 'good' and 'evil' both at the same time. Chiv and Necro should not be possible in the same template.  But that's just my personal opinion and choice.

This is just a perfect post, I'd like to officially invite you to be my winglady in Felucca Petra, you display a lovely combatative attitude.

• Harrassing Mervyn - Tick Box.
• Team Player - Tick Box.
• Understand the root flaw regarding Sampires - Tick Box.
• Beautiful Grumpy Attitude - Tick Box.

We need more players like you.   

Violet

Mervyn said:

So my takeaway from people who have actually tried it is. They thought they wanted easy mode but when presented with a challenge and overcame it, they were given a higher sense of achievement and enjoyment.

 
Dont try to speak for me.  Or anyone else.  I had no problem with the change, just that how it spawns needs evaluating, and Kyronix is doing that. So please, again, don't speak for me.

jaytin

Wow @Petra_Fyde I totally agree with everything you just said!
I don't have a Sampire, I don't want to have a Sampire, Sampires should not exist and the Devs should have made that template impossible to use.
I don't play a tamer either, I don't want to play a tamer.
The Roof used to be one of my favourite group activities, GROUP as in 6-8 of us usually, I don't know anyone who could solo it. The Rooms are a necessary chore but not fun.
Let's just re-name UO as Sampires Online and be done with it.

Mervyn

People also should try adjusting their pets, maybe take one with frienzied whirlwind rather than sticking armour ignore on every single pet they own.

drcossack

Mervyn said:

People also should try adjusting their pets, maybe take one with frienzied whirlwind rather than sticking armour ignore on every single pet they own.

great idea, take a multi-hit ability like Frenzied Whirlwind to the roof on TC where pets can trigger spawn through Fiendish Calling.  Do you have any idea how bad an idea that sounds?  Do you WANT tamers to get destroyed?

Larisa

drcossack said:

Mervyn said:

People also should try adjusting their pets, maybe take one with frienzied whirlwind rather than sticking armour ignore on every single pet they own.

great idea, take a multi-hit ability like Frenzied Whirlwind to the roof on TC where pets can trigger spawn through Fiendish Calling.  Do you have any idea how bad an idea that sounds?  Do you WANT tamers to get destroyed?

The best way to help control the spawn is to have pets with some sort of AOE ability....we had pets with goo, pets with WW, pets with wither, pets with poison....it helps the spawn control A LOT.

Violet

drcossack said:

great idea, take a multi-hit ability like Frenzied Whirlwind to the roof on TC where pets can trigger spawn through Fiendish Calling.  Do you have any idea how bad an idea that sounds?  Do you WANT tamers to get destroyed?

Thats actually what we used last night, it wasn't a problem. However saying that, I disagree with Larisa, I think taking the amount of pets she had with AOE most likely increased the spawn, particularly the goo/wither/etc.  

There are ways to control the spawn, it all comes down to tactics. I would have loved to see how they engaged the encounter. 

MissE

I am away still, so can't go and test,  but sounds to me like they just screwed shadowguard to go along with the screwed up doom system.   Those areas used to be fun, now, if they  have made shadowguard like doom then this is just another dungeon that will fall into the can't be bothered category.  Shadowguard already had the problem of doing those rooms for absolutely NO gain, ie loot worth having, only to get into the encounter and killing the bosses for the 'rare' drop, but with such a short loot time you rarely even got time to pick up the gold if you looted the body due to being kicked out after what 2 mins? Don't suppose in this change they have actually given you 'time' to loot the damn thing before it kicks you out @Kyronix?

I am kinda getting over having areas I used to like being screwed up to where it just isn't fun any more.  ie Doom, Despise, Wrong, and seems like now shadowguard.  Lets not talk about the absolutley atrocious zippy encounter where you spend literally HOURS going quest chains which on siege have the added bonus of costing you $350k for ONE item you need, not including all the nets/hooks needed to speed up the sea serpent etc part, all to get the crappiest rewards like 'titles' unless you are one of the few lucky ones to get a crystal. 

I don't know, it seems like the fun police keep getting a run and screwing over areas to cater for the 'few' over powered players.  Starting to get OLD.

Mervyn

Lol picking up the gold. I think you need to reassess your time management skills. Meaning, stop picking up the gold. It’s the equivalent of instead of buying reagents in a shop, going out into the forest and picking them up one by one.

Also, pardon my ignorance but what has changed in despise?

Faeryl

People are crying foul because pets and tamers are now subjected to the same experience as every other class...? It's hardly the end of the world. As some have mentioned, it's completely possible if you go in tactically. It's a higher level encounter, it's not meant to be easy.

And frankly, the highest end rewards in game (as SG supposedly has) shouldn't be easy to get. It should be a challenge. It shouldn't be stupidly impossible, but it also shouldn't be "sit back and spam heal your pets" easy. And that's coming from me, whose main character has been a tamer for the last almost decade.

Personally I feel they're going in the right direction, but they just need to find the balance between not too easy, and not insanely impossible, which it sounds to me like Kyronix is working on.

Concerning SG though, it is incredibly grindy. If there were perhaps some other incentive (for example, more frequent lesser drops, like the peerless), I would be more inclined to do it. But as is, that is a lot of time and grinding for an entire group to potentially get nothing repeatedly.

Khyro

We ran several runs on TC. Juo'nar is the only one that can be a problem, and that's more due to his "pull in" mechanic than anything else:

drcossack

Khyro said:

We ran several runs on TC. Juo'nar is the only one that can be a problem, and that's more due to his "pull in" mechanic than anything else:

I had trouble with Virtuebane as well, but I fully acknowledge that was solely because of my 3 client setup.  With other people actually there, it wouldn't be an issue - it's not as easy to juggle healing, dealing with spawn, and keeping 'Bane e-fielded just to prevent him from re-targeting.

Faeryl said:

People are crying foul because pets and tamers are now subjected to the same experience as every other class...? It's hardly the end of the world. As some have mentioned, it's completely possible if you go in tactically. It's a higher level encounter, it's not meant to be easy.

And frankly, the highest end rewards in game (as SG supposedly has) shouldn't be easy to get. It should be a challenge. It shouldn't be stupidly impossible, but it also shouldn't be "sit back and spam heal your pets" easy. And that's coming from me, whose main character has been a tamer for the last almost decade.

Personally I feel they're going in the right direction, but they just need to find the balance between not too easy, and not insanely impossible, which it sounds to me like Kyronix is working on.

Concerning SG though, it is incredibly grindy. If there were perhaps some other incentive (for example, more frequent lesser drops, like the peerless), I would be more inclined to do it. But as is, that is a lot of time and grinding for an entire group to potentially get nothing repeatedly.

Yes.  I play everything: Mage (usually mystic/necro or mystic/weaver), Tamer, Sampire, Thrower.  I don't have a problem with the changes, outside of Juo'nar (and only because Skeletal Dragons en masse are nasty...plus his pull-in mechanic.)  For Juo'nar, I would limit it to one wave every 30 seconds or so?  It prevents it from getting too out of hand on a boss that's already fairly annoying to deal with.  The time can, of course, be adjusted - Juo'nar is the hardest boss of the 4, but he's, in his own way, the easiest, due to having lower resists than the other 3.