War of Elements feedback

Trokair

Apprentice
I figured this belonged here rather than in General.

This is just my feedback from a new player to the shard. I consider myself a pretty typical player. Used to play UO, read a little about the UOF and jumped right in. I was using a dexxer, Katana/Parry, nothing fancy. I did parts 1/2 and bosses 1/2. Here we go.

My favorite part, the variety is great! For my first event it was pretty cool to have something unique to experience. Some of the animations on the bosses looked epic as well. I also had every experience from being PK'd, guardwhacked, and straight up PvM killed. Managed to get my body back each time too (I got guardwhacked trying to find my body).

My least favorite part, scaling/crowding was not so great. I didn't expect to run in there with my Exceptional Katana/Fortification Ringmail and rack up a huge score but it was at times difficult to even get in a hit on regular mobs during the first parts before 3 dragons, 2 mages, and an archer murdered everything in sight. I know that everyone is aware of the problem with 50 tamers being in the area but it got to the point where I just spent time picking off the mobs that wandered away from the dragons while badly injured. Otherwise I often saw the mob drop before I could get in range.

Crowding on the first boss was even worse. Forget trying to figure out exactly where the boss is so you can get close enough to hit it, there is a 6 person deep mob surrounding the thing so even if you knew where it was pushing through just didn't seem to work. This is specifically for Boss 1 as I spent all of Boss two waiting for the area to clear from the Air Elementals who were slightly over spawned. Speaking of which I watched at least 15 people take that gate and get insta murdered by 25+ Air Eles. I suggest moving that away from the action. I got in early enough that didn't happen but I'm sure I would have been frustrated at having 0% chance of survival. The "be careful" message just isn't enough in my opinion if the gate is going to be swarmed like that.

For the Bosses I scored in the top 20 on the first boss (don't know if it matters, just proud of myself) when stuff rained from the sky (Do people have an auto-loot for this? I didn't get anything in my pack and everything seemed to instantly be picked up). I saw pictures of the rewards and looked at both the old and new system but have no idea if I get anything from those points, if everything is board position, or if everything is luck of the draw. So I enjoyed it, got killed a few times, saw some cool stuff, and at the end of the day I ended up with a discarded but unidentified set of platemail legs that I have yet to ID. Minus one horse and some bandaids.

My conclusion from this is I feel kind of lost. This server wide thing happened, I got in there and killed some stuff. Admittedly had a decent time doing it but walked away with nothing and I have no idea if I was even close to anything. I realized after the first two parts that there really wasn't a point if I didn't have a dragon.Trying to get close enough to the Bosses to score points was in the very least annoying enough to push me away from it in the future unless I bring a character with range. And Elementals are my *favorite* thing to kill in this game. I just feel kind of meh about it. I'd try it again of course but the reason I only played in 2/4 was I just lost interest as my best effort felt useless.

Suggestions.

Move the gate away from the action. Don't know how other events work but especially the Air part needed this.

Find a way to spread people out. Maybe have something like 5 Major bosses that are spread out then summon the big guy. I don't know but the crowding on the bosses is intense.

Wiki page for the new system and/or full explanation if the event is different. I admit I may have just missed it but I have no idea how the event system is supposed to work. The Invasions page on the Wiki is blank too.

More stuff like the first boss. I know the healing through poison annoyed some people but I thought it was an interesting move when I expected 50 dragons to just faceroll the boss. I enjoy gameplay through mechanics so I appreciated that more than something like an area where no pets can go.

Lastly I'd like to thank the Devs for doing this at all. This post isn't meant to come off as complaining, just contributing. I'm happy that the Devs seem so involved with producing stuff for a game that I really do love. I missed UO but I've found a good home now :D


Disclaimer: I know, I should do more reading. It might all be out on the wiki or the forums. These topics have been covered, I'm an idiot, etc. etc. This is strictly my own feedback to the developers. Constructive posts are welcome an appreciated. Everything else will be ignored.
 

[Legato]

Master
They fixed the gate issue about halfway through, but the water elemental gate was a poor choice at best. I died instantly to the monster with the huge long tentacles, which by the way, was neither dead nor alive as I couldnt pull a health bar OR name off him..Yet it still killed me in a charming 2 hits.

Mini bosses would be cool but would really get just as crowded as the main boss, so no point. people just flock to it anyway.

The spawn rates still need tweaks. I died once in Serps hold when about 25 elementals spawned all at once, within about 3 seconds. It was nuts. couldnt even get off a recall and my pets got fucked royal.
 

diminished

Grandmaster
I didn't attend the boss part but it looked like it had the mechanics of the arch daemon which has 2 attacks that clear people out from standing right next to him. My other suggestion to getting close enough is bring refresh pots.
 

Trokair

Apprentice
@diminished I had the refresh pot idea after the event. Glad to hear that that would work.

@Skye Wolfbane How? I wasn't able to grab anything before it all disappeared. Something I need to set in Razor? If it was from the regular mobs that wouldn't have worked for me. Cleaning up after the tamers I tried for a while but ended up grey and chased around/almost killed for looting the wrong corpse.
 

Skye Wolfbane

Governor of Trinsic
Yeah just looting. There's on reason to go gray. In events like that, just set your options to warn you before committing a criminal action and then don't loot when you get the message. There was enough spawn to lore off and kill. The fire one was a bit tougher because so much grouped up in the walls and behind the buildings. Guess Serpents Hold isn't a good spot for those things. Oh well, now they know!
 

Trokair

Apprentice
@Skye Wolfbane I have criminal warning turned on. It saved me from attacking people's pets multiple times but I wasn't prompted that looting would be criminal and I went grey multiple times trying. The one time I was guarwhacked was actually from trying to grab some bandages from another corpse to heal myself right after a death. No warning at all just grey then whacked so I'm not sure that the criminal prompt is working correctly when it comes to looting or at least not there during the regular event or the boss events.
 

Blaine the Gypsy

Grandmaster
I have tons of suggestion, but here's one from above that totally should happen. Split everyone up basically them choosing which boss to fight at. You have enough players to do this with and would make people feel more accomplished. Killing one boss at a time lacks risk. I currently have a story in waiting that would split people up/their choice of where to go.

Someone asked me where's the boss? My response was "Ah the thing under the 50 meta dragons. Good luck".
 

Swayze

Grandmaster
One thing people don't value at these things and they should is the experience they get on their meta talismans and meta pets.

These events are constant spawn under protection of town guards. The spawn wasn't super difficult as well so you could constantly hit something with barely any running.

Like many people have said, they made millions of gold on top of all the experience they gained.

In my opinion, that is a reward in itself.
 

wreckognize

Grandmaster
Someone asked me where's the boss? My response was "Ah the thing under the 50 meta dragons. Good luck".

I really felt like those bosses were heavily weighted in favor of tamers. You can simply stand offscreen and send pets in to rake in points, pull them back heal them up and send them back in. Bosses could also have some attacks that help prevent this.

Earth boss could use some kind of root spell, which prevents pets from moving for the duration. Coupled with the possibility of a large damage AoE attack. And get rid of that poison heals nonsense.

Wind boss could use some kind of chain lighning that will zap pets and their owners, regardless of range.

Fire boss could use some kind of energy attack that prevents ranged healing energy from reaching pets for a certain amount of time.

And water boss could do some kind of tsunami attack, utilizing those wave effects, that could cause anyone and any pets caught in it to spin in a circle, unable to move for like 10 seconds or something. I think that effect travels for more than one screen if I recall correctly.
 

dobber

Grandmaster
I really felt like those bosses were heavily weighted in favor of tamers. You can simply stand offscreen and send pets in to rake in points, pull them back heal them up and send them back in. Bosses could also have some attacks that help prevent this.

Earth boss could use some kind of root spell, which prevents pets from moving for the duration. Coupled with the possibility of a large damage AoE attack. And get rid of that poison heals nonsense.

Wind boss could use some kind of chain lighning that will zap pets and their owners, regardless of range.

Fire boss could use some kind of energy attack that prevents ranged healing energy from reaching pets for a certain amount of time.

And water boss could do some kind of tsunami attack, utilizing those wave effects, that could cause anyone and any pets caught in it to spin in a circle, unable to move for like 10 seconds or something. I think that effect travels for more than one screen if I recall correctly.


IMO the invasion was heavily favored to dexxers -- 1% spawn rate for balrons, instant killing 90-99% of mobs, being able to take advantage of tamers/bards. Pretty rediculous how the top players were almost all katana users. Yet, still room for dexxers to cry about something I suppose
 

Trokair

Apprentice
It was working..do you use steam or razor?

Razor. I've had it work in Britain before so I know that it is functional in the client just didn't see it at all during the events. May have been because of the changed ruleset? (ie. Guards exist but can't be called on Eles).

Either way this is good information for me so next time I can try to scoop up some earnings during the next event.

Quick side question, is there a good way to find my corpse in the pile? I basically randomly clicked until I found it which took a lot of time at one point.
 

Skye Wolfbane

Governor of Trinsic
I just use cntl/shift and bring up up all the corpse bars and click. Also Steam shows you where you died on the map, as long as you have it up. But in a mess like that it would still be hard to pinpoint.
 

Swayze

Grandmaster
We had 2 tamer favoured bosses (Ocllo and Minoc) and 2 dexxer/archer/mage favoured bosses (Serps and Nujelm). I thought that was fair.
 

Trokair

Apprentice
I just use cntl/shift and bring up up all the corpse bars and click. Also Steam shows you where you died on the map, as long as you have it up. But in a mess like that it would still be hard to pinpoint.

Okay I was doing that as well although I actually found random clicking to be more effective in the large pile around the 2nd boss. Glad to know I'm not missing a trick somewhere.
 
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