iGouger, you must not have tried 5 foot's barbarian build. You classify 2wf barbarians as something only viable in heroics when it performs nicely in EE content.

Flav wrote on Jul 5^th, 2015 at 1:57am:

Yeah, and they weren't even that far off from a reasonable solution, but they just couldn't be bothered to get there.

There was plenty of whining, of course, but there were legitimate complaints about Champions too - a cautious party of not-uber players could play everything right and still get creamed an hour into an adventure on HH by champions that spawned in multiples. The really good players only died if they gotr careless, but a lot of OK players died just because of the increased variability of difficulty.

And that's bad for the game. Having a challenge that applies more to better players is good, a challenge that applies more to mediocre players is bad.

Plus, it drove an even bigger wedge into the gaping crack BB/Streak drove into the population, noobs couldn't even pike with a zerging TR because a champion would one-shot them. No fun.

They could have made it way better - just make champion spawn rate replace Dungeon Alert. The really skilled players could get as much challenge as they wanted by going faster, and the less skilled could get through by going slow. If they did that, they would have the added bonus that speed runs would really mean something, because going a little faster gets a lot harder.

Meursault wrote on Jul 5^th, 2015 at 8:17am:

I agree it isn't ideal (and wasn't), but difficulty spikes during quests are good design, imo. Better than some of the quests now where ok players do ok right until the boss and then they get their arse kicked. At least with champs you'd get an idea early on of the parameters you're working in. Design as is can breed a false sense of capability.

Some Guy Here On The Boards wrote on Jul 5^th, 2015 at 7:43am:


Yeah I haven't. I think last time I did a TWF barb build was a couple years ago before all the newer barbarian enhancements, so I'm probably a bit out of my league when talking about barbarians nowadays. I remember looking at the barbarian enhancements when they were updated and I thought some of them looked really strong, though I have yet to try out a new barbarian build.

But anyway, from what I've seen, I'm still not convinced that the current endgame permits as much build diversity as the heroic game does. It still seems to me that the easiest and most efficient way to run most endgame content is to run one of a handful of ranged or caster builds. Monster champions only exacerbated this issue.

Though one positive thing to come out of the monster champions is some of the remnant exchange things. Eternal Flasks are nice, as are the cloak/bracers for certain builds.

kum-gulp wrote on Jul 5^th, 2015 at 9:53am:

I see your point, and if I'm understanding correctly then I agree with you and think that's a good goal but not one the Champions "solution" was anywhere near achieving. I agree that there should be some way to gage the difficulty before you get to the end boss having invested an hour of play.

Ideally the quest entrance should give you the information (some say extreme challenge, so between the challenge rating, the level, and the difficulty you should know about how hard it is). Second best is to have a fight fairly early on that lets you know if you're way over your head. But champions didn't give that. The same quest on the same difficulty could be very tough but OK if you took it slow on one run, but Tomb of Horrors brutal on the next, different only in the spawn pattern of champions, which you have no way to predict or control.

So you got (get? Not following closely) players who would like and could handle the challenge of hard but stick to normal and are bored because Hard or Elite is too unpredictable.

I'm not saying quests should be completely predictable, I'd love it if they had more randomization for things like trap location, etc. But randomizing the CR isn't good randomization, it keeps people from knowing what difficulty to run.

They could have made Champions have a fixed number per difficulty and a fixed number spawn simultaneously and players wouldn't know which mob was going to have the Champion allotment, that would have been much better because you'd know how hard the fights were, just not where the hard fights were, so you'd still need to be careful with each mob. That would give more challenge, but still let players make an informed decision.

I still like the replacing Dungeon Alert best, but this also would have been a better Champions implementation than what we got. Of course, replacing Dungeon alert would mean they couldn't use DA as their "exciting" special challenge for some adventures as they've recently done, but I think we could all live without that 

Quote:


http://www.ddovault.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1416652172

kum-gulp wrote on Jul 4^th, 2015 at 12:53pm:



no shit.  VON was always a joke after MoTU.

5 Foot Step wrote on Jul 5^th, 2015 at 11:25pm:


I am thinking this too.

OP ran von's on EN, thinking they where as hard as the old epics when cap was 20.

Von EN is not hard at all. Von EE is not really a challenge either, for half-decent characters/players.

Go solo storm horns EE, then we are talking.

Von is simply not the benchmark anymore. Move on.

5 Foot Step wrote on Jul 5^th, 2015 at 11:25pm:


EN? 

/Thread. 

OP:  Gee.  I ran the easiest epic quest on the easist difficulty and it was...easy.  This game sucks.  I'm going to play something else. 

Response:  Sounds great to me.   Have a great time, champ.

kum-gulp wrote on Jul 6^th, 2015 at 1:33pm:

Agreed, and with no end in sight 

WOTC saw that happen with D&D 4.0 getting panned and Pathfinder, with their extensive playtesting and revisions, rising to prominence, but so far Turbine has resisted learning from the mistakes of others.

I don't go to the main forums anymore either, I'm allergic to fanbois 

Skoodge wrote on Jul 4^th, 2015 at 12:32pm:


The silly Fallout Shelter game on my iPad is feeding my fix while waiting... Mindless.

OnePercenter wrote on Jul 6^th, 2015 at 8:28pm:


Damn, I forgot about that.  Finally realized the Simpsons Tapped Out works on my kindle, so I'm busy with that.