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Necropolis Feedback

Discussion in 'Release 16 Feedback' started by Hraw, Apr 14, 2015.

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  1. Hraw

    Hraw Avatar

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    SPOILER ALERT:
    I'm not sure if what I'm about to say would be considered spoiler material (I didn't finish the instance) so don't continue if you don't want to see info about Necropolis.






    Intro: I'm a new player, this is my 6th day in-game. My character is level 39 and I am currently playing a heavy armor wearing melee style warrior. I tried both with 2 handed halberd and 1 handed spear with shield. I am using the augmented plate purchased from the blacksmith in Soltown. I had no idea what strength/level of character Necropolis was "meant for", but I wanted to check it out and get a feel for it. I didn't see the video Weins posted until after I gave up or I may have not even tried. He was level 65 and pretty well decked out compared to my character and he took a lot of damage in the same area that I never got past.

    Quest: Initially, I just went to Necropolis and ran around inside the Barrens killing Spiders, Wolves and Skeletons until I found the stairs leading up to the big doors with the 2 NPCs outside. They both essentially told me they were there for someone else and that I had to go back to Ardoris to hire one of them. They both seemed to be hinting that the other one was inferior as a guide (I like cheesy humor). So, I didn't really like running all the way out there for no reason, but oh well, I'm just testing. Back in Ardoris, I had accepted the quest from the Fat/Old one before I realized it, and then the Thinner/Young one (Samael I think) wouldn't let me hire him until I fired the first one. So I talked to the first one and fired him and he said come back later if I change my mind. But then Samael still said the same exact thing as if I had never fired the Old guy. To me, this feels like a bug - the NPC told me what to do and I did it, but it effected no change. So I proceeded with the Old guy as my guide. And by proceeded, I mean I walked all the way back to Necropolis.

    Inside: Now that I have the quest, I can open the doors and enter. Inside I can talk to my guide and there is a Lady Researcher in the first left chamber but she was unresponsive to me completely. I said Hello and nothing (several tries). Later in the same gaming session I noticed the Blacksmith in Soltown was acting the same way so I'm not sure if this was a bug with the Lady Researcher or just the game being pre-alpha wonky. The circular entry room with Skeletons all around was kind of neat in that my guide was there with 2 "ghost-like" NPCs guarding a door. I killed a few Skeletons and then talked to the NPCs quickly, opened the door and ran away from the rest of the Skeletons, not because they were hard, but because I wasn't sure if they were never ending.

    First Area: I encountered Earth Elementals for the first time in here. I like them. They were challenging to me with my build. Actually, I could not beat them reliably with my 2-hander, using the shield I could fairly easily kill one at a time, but two at a time was too much for my character's current set up.

    The mobs in here do not seem to ever respawn after they are killed (I assume that is intended since it is a solo instance).

    One major annoyance: after my first Earth Elemental fight, a new in-game friend needed some help so I was going to leave Necropolis to help him and come back. But there seems to be no way out without completing the whole scene. The "spritn" video posted by Weins a few days ago shows him unable to open any "exit" doors with the message "The Spirts Will Not Let You Leave" or something like that - I had the same message even on the entry doors I had just come through a few minutes before. This is annoying mainly because this is not an easy instance and if a newish player goes in and is too low of a level to complete, that newish player may feel seriously stuck. And all typing "/stuck" does is return to just inside the doors (the ones that won't open) so it doesn't help. I got out by creating a party and typing /zone friendsName to zone to my friend's location. But I don't know how many newish players know how to do that. As a side note, when I went back later and eventually decided Necropolis is too tough for my level 39 current build, the only way I could think to get out was to quit the game then come back in and choose the "Start on World Map" option from the main menu (I was frantic until I remembered that option since all of my friends list was offline at the time). Again, this is a major annoyance to me - I'd be surprised if the devs really intend for it to work this way (not bashing them by any means, just giving feedback). At the very least, it seems I should be able to get out the entry doors if I have the death debuff or just typed "/stuck" or something.

    Second Area: I loved this area, completed it first try. Basically it is a lot of spiders and I was fighting multiple mobs at the same time as I made my way through - felt like a creepy gauntlet. It was a very long fight with lots of area-of-effect goodness. Thankfully, I (just today) got pretty decent at combat skill stacking so my focus bar never dried up. No way I could have managed this fight yesterday without trying to just run past the fight.

    There are crystals to mine (a few that I found) and there are some dead end passages. There is also quite a bit of water and holes where I sank into the water. And since combat doesn't work in water, I took a lot of damage trying to jump my way to where my combat skills would work. The overall gameplay in here felt very rough, I kept getting hung on things, jagged rock edges and stuff hanging from the ceiling ... it may be intended but it definitely wasn't smooth. My guess is that this was really released before it should have been - it was that rough (to me).

    Third Area: I never got past this area alive, I explored past it a few times after dying, but I found myself getting cc'd (crowd controled) over and over and completely immobile/knocked out while taking pretty significant damage (I have 20 dex, 40 damage resistance and 15 damage avoidance and +20% resistance to stun effects/damage). Basically I couldn't seem to isolate the air elementals to fight them one at a time - maybe I could have with some ranged combat, but I'm not built for ranged fighting at all right now. The first little chamber had 2 air elementals that just tore me up. I don't think I ever got the first one down to half health. Again, I felt like I was cc'd constantly over and over and just couldn't fire off more than one skill in succession nor move to the mobs to get in melee range. After seeing I wasn't going to kill those 2 air elementals, I tried just running through the area (like Weims did in his video), but the golem earthquakes and several other helpers always cc'd me enough to drain my health before I could outrun them.

    I had fun spending some time in Necropolis and I think this will be a great instance come release. I enjoyed trying to get info from the Spirit NPCs and the "translations" were pretty funny to me. Obviously, I'm going to have to learn the runes pretty well (the runic text was in English for R16 so I didn't have to "translate" today). This instance is for very strong fighters (that may be in release notes somewhere that I missed, I wasn't worried about being underlevel, I just wanted to see it and try, I'm glad I did).

    Cheers :)
     
  2. Katrina Bekers

    Katrina Bekers Localization Team

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    This is a great instance, and I really can't wait to follow the quest line (no spoilers) at the next stop.

    Thanks for sharing your feedback.

    The air elemental crevice is tough, I had a very hard time with them, and I was able to overcome them just before I enraged one of the spirits (they behave like ghosts, but you can't even fight them!). You need to carefully plan and execute every move, and without the godsend that's Death Touch, I wouldn't be able to get away with my skin.

    Remember that this game will NOT tell you what level/strength are you supposed to be to beat a specific area. You have to discover if you're "good enough" by a simple metric: how often you're forced to flee, or die.
     
  3. Hraw

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    Oh I absolutely *love* the way the game doesn't put areas/instances/gear into level gated type restrictions. I think it is fantastic. But I'm afraid that most new players coming from other games are going to have the opposite reaction if they are not expecting it. The problem is stumbling into the instance and having no way to get out unless you know how to use the "/zone" command (and have a friend online at the time or happen to know someone else's character name) or remember that the main menu lets you start on the world map (and understand what that actually means). Both are great options, but they are fairly SotA-specific; no other mmo I've played before has those type of options (that I know of).

    You guys that have been here a while do that stuff without thinking - I was trying to share the perspective of an experienced mmo'er new to SotA ... let the devs know that a new player could easily feel very trapped with the way things are right now *in the Necropolis instance*. Let's face it, we can't control how new players perceive the game, I had played UO many years ago so I had some idea, but players coming from most modern mmos trying out SotA expect a lot of hand-holding (even if they don't realize it is hand-holding).

    Anyway, I played around with Death's Touch but it fizzled a lot. I didn't want to rework my whole build to reduce fizzle chance and at the time I didn't understand combat skill stacking. Does stacking magic skills reduce their fizzle chance? I'll have to experiment and find out how that works. So far, I'm concentrating almost exclusively on non-magic combat. I'll definitely go back to Necropolis - being inside was very fun and challenging, my favorite combination :) But I was annoyed with not being able to leave through the entry doors when a new friend needed help.
     
  4. Hraw

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    Ok so heavy armour was the culprit on the fizzle chance. I had a 60% chance to fizzle on Death's Touch while wearing heavy armour (but not all magic skills were affected that way). The more pieces I swapped out for light armour, the more the fizzle chance was reduced. Stacking doesn't seem to affect the fizzle chance.
     
  5. Raok

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    Yeah, the only way to lower fizzle chance without changing armor that I've found is the final skill in the Focus tree which is quite expensive both to reach and to level up. It reduces fizzle chance by 5% each (I assume additive so 60%+5%=65% at level 1, need to confirm that though) and if it caps out at 5 then that's a 25% reduction, which is quite hefty.
     
  6. Hraw

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    I just finished Necropolis. I respec'd to magic with light armour and it wasn't a breeze but it was pretty easy compared to melee. I died twice and both times it was due to getting stuck on the rocks and not being able to move (character was "vibrating"). I also kept my 2 handed halberd equipped - no idea if a wand/staff would have made it even easier. I could take on twice as much in light armour using magic skills as heavy+melee yesterday and I didn't get cc'd near as often nor for as long (at least it seemed that way). I started it at 40 today vs 39 yesterday, I doubt that made any real difference to speak of ... hit level 41 while inside.

    The last skill in the focus tree ('Follow Through') caps at 2 points (10% reduction)

    So after playing melee for a week and not even getting close to getting through Necropolis - I respec'd and knowing nothing about the magic side, completed it easily - didn't even use the life/healing tree at all (Death Touch was useful for sure)

    So I guess my feedback is: we have some serious balance issues not related to ranged combat (which is well known) - I remember the exact same situation with ESO where in beta all the feedback was that there was no reason to do anything but play light armour/magic and it never got addressed before release. I hope feedback like this makes a difference when Portalarium gets to the balancing (I know that is a ways off and that's fine with me), I'm just saying I hope it is addressed because I generally prefer melee to magic and would hate to see this degree of imbalance come release (especially in PVP land).

    I really enjoyed most of the fighting/interaction today that I never got to yesterday in Necropolis, there was a "gauntlet" of Skeletons further along similar to the spider gauntlet I mentioned above - extremely fun to me and challenging; almost all my "wind-up" skill casts were getting interrupted in that fight

    The only thing I don't get is the slime area - it was so easy, it seemed pointless. After lots of hard fights, it was trivial, I don't remember my health bar ever dipping once (whereas all the other areas I had to try to survive).

    Anyway, overall, I say keep this stuff coming Portalarium! I could only imagine how much fun duo co-op would have been in there with a friend (I know this one is solo only, but I'm just saying I hope to see fun co-op instances with this same quality, challenge, etc.). I'm sure all the rough spots will be knocked off as it is polished.

    thanks
     
  7. Sold and gone

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    one more thing about the fizzle chance. If you are not using reagents and have some fizzle chance, reagents lower the fizzle rate also.
     
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  8. Spoon

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  9. Hraw

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    Yeah I use the v key quite a bit, but I haven't found anything yet that tells "why" the fizzle chance is what it is, am I missing something? I just experimented until I figured out the heavy armour was doing it.

    thanks
     
  10. Spoon

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    No you are not missing anything obvious.
    The only clue you get to that is if you hover over equipment and check out their stats.
     
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  11. Hraw

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    Oh I get what you are saying now: the fizzle % in red on the heavy armor tells me how much fizzle chance I add by wearing that piece. That makes sense, didn't see that before.

    thanks
     
  12. Spoon

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    also one more thing which is not mentioned anywhere but in hangouts.

    In the magic sigil skills on the left has increased fizzle due to armor, those on the right are not affected as much.[​IMG]
    Making death magic most affected and life magic least affected.
     
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