Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

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Vindal
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Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Vindal » Fri Jan 06, 2017 8:32 am

Last night we went in to do dreads boss. A little later than what we normally do ... around 1am. Before we even gathered up we checked the door and it is still locked, fantastic ... lets roll.

So we gather up the keys that took us 3 or so real life days to farm and stomp ourselves into the archfiends lair ... and no boss. Keys were used, door became unlocked, no boss inside. A mechanic like this makes sense for something like Ring Leader where a key can be farmed by a level 20 between running from town to town, but for something that requires hours and hours and hours from multiple people ... kinda leaves a sour taste.

State of the dreads in general -

Dreads keys for the last several weeks have been primarily farmed by a single guild. As we have grown and started competing for these keys I have a new found love/hate for this oad. Battling it out 6v6 against another guild for control of a square is currently the most fun I have in the game, it is exciting every time it happens. What's not exciting is having to stand on the square for three hours with five other people waiting for it to spawn - this is probably the least fun I have in the game right now.

Because dreads keys are competitive, it takes several of us to win a square pretty much all the time. If another guild has 4 online, we probably need 5. So 5 of us are stuck sitting on a square for two or more hours sometimes because the spawn timers have a multi-hour window they spawn in, and if we leave we risk losing the square we just fought for, and therefore the key. This ends up being a ton of man hours spent for a boss that takes 7 minutes to kill, and sometimes isn't there when you unlock the door.

Ultimately I think this OaD/Key area was a fantastic design on paper, but in the current state of the realms, it just doesn't work. It was designed so that an entire guild effort would be required and not just a single person could farm it, but in a way a single person pretty much does. He is a madman. While I look forward to beating down or getting beat down several times a day I know that a beatdown win comes with several hours of staring at the screen waiting for something to happen.

I can only imagine how some of the smaller guilds fee as they will never run this oad, ever. Even though you can kill the boss with a party of 5, as it stands now it takes the combined effort from probably 12 of us to stay competitive for the keys.

I don't have any suggestions on how to fix it unfortunately, and maybe I am the only one that thinks it isn't the best setup, but my goal here is to have that conversation. The amount of time it takes to stay competitive for this OaD is absurd, and while it definitely has its fun moments, I have already found myself starting to loathe the idle time associated with it.

Thanks build team for the time you spend building, and for letting us have these kinds of discussions.

Thi
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Thi » Fri Jan 06, 2017 9:12 am

Damn that's a well written post about the flaws with that OAD, 100% agree with your comments.

Respect went up for you man, well done.

P.S.: But yeah, we are the guild that has done it more times than we can remember, but the key setup/timers are life consuming..
Thi
You can find me online on Lightning.

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Folder
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Folder » Fri Jan 06, 2017 10:00 am

I knew the boss despawned but didn't know how early. I'm not entirely against bosses despawning as I think it can make for an interesting bit of lore behind a boss. So this boss only shows up between, say, 6pm and midnight, ok. Wasting a key does suck and I've been there a couple time so I understand the sentiment. I've said a hundred times before I'm not a fan of wasting keys like that, it feels BAD as a player to have spent all that time farming. I can deal with it on RL but Dreads is a different story. That said, you do learn the boss despawns after wasting a key so you do gain...uhh...something I guess, lol.

Key mobs - 5x key mobs, each having a 3 hour spawn window. Let's take the median and say 1.5 hr spawns for all of them. That's 7.5 hours of waiting for a spawn. Daily. I've spent an inordinate amount of time in this place because I'm competitive and I do what it takes to get the best stuff, but the time requirement is quite crazy. Reduce spawn windows to 30-45 minutes imo. This will encourage burst pvp action and people will feel more inclined to spend their time in dreads going for keys. When a guildie asks what key is next and I say "It can spawn now or any time in the next 3 hours" they don't exactly want to sit around for all that, and who can blame them?

Here's my big secret. The only reason I can do these keys so much is because my work has me at a desk most of the day and I can remote to my home pc with my tablet. So I just let it sit there for hours until a key spawns. Or well I did until Defiance came along, now it's more complicated :D . Point is these keys are, imo, unobtainable for your average player. If the area is designed as not being doable by casual players, ok, that's builder's call. But even at that point there's a big difference between the place being hardcore and it becoming not fun because of needing to camp for hours.

TLDR; I suggest reducing key mob spawn windows to 30-45mins. Boss spawn window is probably ok.
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Vindal
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Vindal » Fri Jan 06, 2017 10:42 am

I agree that I am not against bosses despawning either as it can make things quite a bit more interesting. Bosses only spawn at night/day on weekends/ etc. But definitely blowing 20 hours of manpower to go into an empty room makes you feel real shitty.

A shorter spawn range definitely makes for more pvp action and far easier to schedule. Instead of saying yo I need five guys to be online from 8pm to midnight for this key, I can say be on at 8 and we have 30 minutes of fighting to do, and yes ... a smaller timer means much more fighting.

Since we are sharing secrets the only way I stay competitive is I am a network engineer and I am full time work at home. Then at night I work on my Masters Degree which also keeps me in front of my computer. I have EO up on a monitor while I have something productive on my others. So not only are these keys unobtainable for an average player, they some of them are also unobtainable for your power player that works a 9-5 job. Which while that circles around to making it a guild effort, a single guildie will never get a key, best case scenario you could get it with two.

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Folder
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Folder » Fri Jan 06, 2017 11:04 am

Dreads was so easy back in the day when no one else knew key spawn times :D .

Would love for more people to chime in on this, and to hear Lat's opinion on it.
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Vindal
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Vindal » Sun Jan 08, 2017 12:44 pm

Bueller...Bueller.

Vhexim
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Vhexim » Sun Jan 08, 2017 2:08 pm

I play alot. 12 hour average. Have pulled a 27 hour shift.


Fuck those keys.


It's not fun to sit there for hours because 1 or 2 clan members are online and then 6 men come in faded and drop you. There's no competition. And you sat there for 3 hours. Then you do it again, on another spot.

No.

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daedroth
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby daedroth » Sun Jan 08, 2017 3:44 pm

Vhexim wrote:I play alot. 12 hour average. Have pulled a 27 hour shift.


Fuck those keys.


It's not fun to sit there for hours because 1 or 2 clan members are online and then 6 men come in faded and drop you. There's no competition. And you sat there for 3 hours. Then you do it again, on another spot.

No.


3 hrs x 5 is not fun.
Disclaimer: Any ideas I come up with may not even meet my approval. I am just posting an idea based on the topic I have just read.
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Folder
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Folder » Mon Jan 09, 2017 9:50 am

Lateralus! The people demand an audience!

For real these 3 hour spawn windows are nuts man. I get the original intent of them but the reality is that if you want these keys you are forced into many, many hours of camping and it's not fun. Literally all that needs to be done to "fix" dreads is make the key spawns a half hour window. This will encourage active pvp and people won't be so frustrated about having to potentially wait for hours for every key.
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Lateralus
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Re: Dreads Bosses Despawn?! Dreads in General

Postby Lateralus » Mon Jan 09, 2017 1:18 pm

I never set it to despawn so I'll have to check that out.

I agree about a shorter window my idea for the oad was as much pvp as pve which I believe succeeded. It sucks that one clan dominates it but since there are only 2 oads atm it makes it even worse :/. I'm doing my best to get my next project finished up asap


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