Hate new instant adventure design

[Elminster]

Before when you used to join an instant adventure at 50 you would get 30 people in a raid and the invasion was huge.

Yes now you can Que in whatever zone you want. But the groups are 5 people or so and im on most populated server in game...

Old version was much better. Huge parties and huge invasions are what MADE it fun.

[Josgar]

When I did the Silverwood one it automentored me to level 12 against a level 17 event. The entire conquest was
"Complete the event"

Really? The old ones had special tasks.

And there were only five of us so it became uncompletable. Eventually, I unmentored to 50 and just blasted the mob out of anger.

[Tectonics]

Why is this in the PVP forums and not the quests and adventures one??

[Reicta]

My experience has been great.

I've done IA for Silverwood and Gloamwood and both have had large-sized raids during peak hours. The quests are fetch/kill/defend like usual; I haven't gotten anything that just says "complete the event."

My only complaint is that the new zones are not generous enough with teleports, and Silverwood doesn't even teleport players at all. Having to travel 700+ meters every few quests becomes very tiresome.

[zetans]

IA is great, however it needs tweeking.

1. You need to be levelled appropraitely, I was down levelled to 22 and put up agaiinst 26 level mobs, which I could barely hit.

2. You need to be able to choose specific zones off the list and if necessary be auto mentored down to that zone (wihtout having to travel to teh zone).

3. rewards need to be sorted, they seam very random and very variable

4. more variety in lower level zone events, If I kill one more miner in Stonefield I will scream


Other than that, its great and should be rolled out for all zones in teh game asap.

[Tacitus]

Before when you used to join an instant adventure at 50 you would get 30 people in a raid and the invasion was huge.

Yes now you can Que in whatever zone you want. But the groups are 5 people or so and im on most populated server in game...

Old version was much better. Huge parties and huge invasions are what MADE it fun.

Agree that the large groups are better (though the max raid size has been 20, not 30). If people go with the Random option, the system tries to clump up people into these larger groups (which is why we reward the Random option).

Right now, yeah people can queue for the zone they want by traveling there. We have no immediate plans to change because we want to give enough time for the "newness" to wear off and see how people play on average. We are also very concerned about fragmentation as we add IA and will monitor how it plays out over a longer period of time.

We already have some ideas ready to try out should we choose to, but we wanted to get some better numbers before we proceed with anything.

When I did the Silverwood one it automentored me to level 12 against a level 17 event. The entire conquest was
"Complete the event"

Really? The old ones had special tasks.

By "old ones" I am assuming you mean the normal adventures. The new ones are pretty much the same format as those. The "Complete Event" adventure is a step at trying to integrate zone events into IA and have been added to SM/SS as well.

Some tuning of this integration is very likely, especially for FM/SW.

And as an aside, I am not very happy with the level you get auto-mentored to, and will look at getting that adjusted tomorrow and added to a hot fix as soon as I can.

My only complaint is that the new zones are not generous enough with teleports, and Silverwood doesn't even teleport players at all. Having to travel 700+ meters every few quests becomes very tiresome.

Unfortunately, these tuning parameters came in VERY late, and I did not have much of a window to tune them better. They will be refined and included in a future update (hopefully hotfixed with some of the other fixes I need to do this week).

IA is great, however it needs tweeking.

1. You need to be levelled appropraitely, I was down levelled to 22 and put up agaiinst 26 level mobs, which I could barely hit.
2. You need to be able to choose specific zones off the list and if necessary be auto mentored down to that zone (wihtout having to travel to teh zone).
3. rewards need to be sorted, they seam very random and very variable
4. more variety in lower level zone events, If I kill one more miner in Stonefield I will scream

Other than that, its great and should be rolled out for all zones in teh game asap.

1. Agreed, and as noted above, I will be tuning this.

2. Our preference is not for players to travel to a zone to do only a specific zone so don't expect this to get easier. We incentivize the Random option because we believe it is what gives the best play experience in the long term. We will be watching these metrics and making adjustments accordingly (once the newness wears off).

3. Not sure exactly how you mean this, but the rewards are currently the same as they were for SM/SS IA with two exceptions:
-- There are not currently any "chase" items for low level IA, and
-- Random equipment caches have been added to replace rewards that would have come from normal questing for players that are still leveling.

4. Oddly enough, strictly speaking there is MORE variety of activities in SF or GW than there is in SM or SS. Unfortunately, the narrow geography of many lower level zones create choke points, meaning that certain areas get an overly high amount of repeated visits and start to feel repetitive (and the area with the Miners is probably the worst of these choke points). We'll continue to watch and/or tune that too.

And more IA is most certainly coming. I have already begun work on the next zone to be added, and we have all sorts of crazy IA idea to try out going forward!

[Sariina]

Agree that the large groups are better (though the max raid size has been 20, not 30). If people go with the Random option, the system tries to clump up people into these larger groups (which is why we reward the Random option).

Right now, yeah people can queue for the zone they want by traveling there. We have no immediate plans to change because we want to give enough time for the "newness" to wear off and see how people play on average. We are also very concerned about fragmentation as we add IA and will monitor how it plays out over a longer period of time.

We already have some ideas ready to try out should we choose to, but we wanted to get some better numbers before we proceed with anything.

I'll let you know how I play IA now. I don't bother.

Even if you spam chat for a defend starting in EI or any of the top zones you'll only end up somewhere between 5-10 people. If it's on the main land you get a trickle of mobs and it's so dull you may as well have a nap instead, and an EI defend is a death sentence that fails every time with just a few people.

P.S. Also, I only play at peak times and on the most populated server in the game . . . it's so laggy lately because of how many people are on you think you could get a few to come out for 4k planarite in 4 minutes, but that seems not to be the case.

[joecrow]

I'll let you know how I play IA now. I don't bother.

That's my new style, too. I could do them after a conquest while I wait for a new one, but there is no point. I used to teleport to EI, play some IA, then go do something else. First time I tried the new IA, I was sent to Freemarch. Needless to say, that was enough for me to decide there were better ways to spend my time now. No more huge fun planar invasions.....

[Khelendross]

I rather like it. There are some things to be done. I think the rewards for rifts and invasions need tuned up to be attractive to mentors. I also think in terms of purely mentoring that dungeons need a pass. When Storm Legion comes out this needs to be looked at very hard in order to keep old content useful.

But I love the bosses, I love the adventures, and for newbie players (I'm leveling a newbie warrior through IA's right now) the exp is great and being able to constantly be with 5-10 other players makes the game so much for fun for leveling. Ultimately while it needs to be attractive to high level players, the most important thing is how it feels to people new to the game or people leveling up characters. My one concern is wether you get enough rep and gear to keep yourself properly geared as you level up. That is one problem I am seeing. Not sure how to solve this issue actually unless you put a quest NPC at level hubs that give you gear for your class every 5 adventures or so.

[jerwel]

Tacitus, the reason that I am disliking the new IAs is that while the quest rewards are level appropriate (~8k exp for each completion) the mobs DO NOT provide level appropriate exp even though they actually take as long or LONGER (for me) to kill while mentored.

I was doing the gw IAs and was getting about 300 exp per kill (plus 250ish for each quest update) and each mob took about 6-8seconds to kill (about the same as I can do on EI) where as on EI I get 1500 exp per kill and the quest updates for EI IAs was ~500ish if I remember right. Further, I was MUCH MUCH less survivable as the build I use while soloing on my warrior is simply not viable while mentored (44rb which btw this build is about our only dps solo build, anything else and you HAVE to tank cause... well you guys decided that we dont need heals and tank souls should NOT be paired with dps souls and still do ok damage.... yay 3% damage mods per point....) while this is more a component of the mentoring system (my crit went from 30ish % down to 7!!!!% my ap also went from near 1k to 111 LOL. I had better stats when I was REALLY level 24.)

Basically If you really want 50s to regularly use the random IAs the exp needs to appropriately scale to their level from ALL facets (monster kills, quest updates, and quest completion). As it is its not worth while. (oh and look at how mentoring REALLY messes up some builds, do I really have to carry around a build for if I get a gw IA and one if I get a sw IA and one if I get a 50 IA? I also think your stat calcs are WAY off. A full p40 and good sigil (3 100 is ess and 3 50 is) and my stats are worse than a decently geared person who is REALLY that level.)

[Sonoko]

Am I the only one who dislikes the new IAs having zone specific artifact sets on faction specific zones? Unless I'm missing something, isn't the only way to obtain these either buying them off of someone on the other faction, or leveling up an opposite faction alt to farm and mail to yourself? They seem pretty rare too, considering I've only seen one ever on the Wolfsbane AH.

If you're going to put stuff like this in can we please just have cross faction grouping?

On an different note, that "bug" right when 1.9 launched where I got teleported into a different server's Freemarch was insanely cool. Please tell me that was actually a case of a WIP feature leaking into live. Because functional cross-shard IAs sound incredible and would likely allow IAs in every zone to have full raids 24/7, which would be such a huge improvement to IAs as they're waaay more fun than when you only have 2 other people with you.

[toxicheals]

I loved instant adventure pre update from level 45-50 awesome! Now with the mentoring scaling down I have 2 frustrations. The first being as a level 50 the chests are green garbage, add planerite, or a badging system something more eye catching. 45-50 I used to get a ton of planerite which really encouraged me to keep adventuring over and over. Now I am getting terrible rewards during each phase when mentored down. It is great reward for the low level players but for a 50 its terrible. There should be a separate reward system for the mentor, and the mentee. I should receive the same planerite I do if I was in a level 50 instant adventure because I am helping the mentee taking away from the epicness of 50 events.

Basically improve reward for mentors.

Thanks

[Avriana Lightbreeze]

I'm not a big fan to the changes to IA in 1.9 either. I love the mentor system (BRILLIANT). I love that I can now go do quests I missed and world events I missed in lower level zones and get a little xp for my trouble.

However, I really don't like what's been done with IA. Specifically, I don't like that I now have a choice to do random adventures of any level, or adventures in the zone I'm in. I'm a fairly advanced level 50, and the most bang for my buck as far as IAs go is Ember Isle hands down. I also think the EI adventures are much more fun and interesting than the ones in SS and SM. The rewards are also better.

What I would like to see when I open the IA panel are the following options (for a level 50 character):

1) Random IA (any zone, any level, as you have it now)
2) Ember Isle IA (basically, level 52 IA, like it was pre-1.9)
3) Shimmersand & Stillmore IA (basically level 50 IA, like pre-1.9)
4) IA for zone I'm currently in (assuming it isn't one above)

Sometimes I enjoy doing the low level IAs, but sometimes I want to do level 50 (or 52) content because I am, after all, level 50. Having to travel to the zone to join a level 50 IA really defeats the whole purpose of IA, doesn't it?

With the new IA, I feel like you are sacrificing the level 50+ player experience to try to boost the lower level playing experiences. This is unacceptable to me. I've been playing this game since beta. I've devoted a lot of time and money to it compared to a new player.

[ironwill96]

I completely agree with the prior poster. The issue is that you didn't scale all the rewards properly.

I was doing IA this morning in Gloamwood on my level 50 and we triggered a "defend against invasion" kind of like you get in Ember Isle. I was getting like 20-30 planarite per invasion defeated rapidly. The problem is, on Ember Isle i'd earn 5-10k planarite in the same time period I earned < 800 planarite doing the lower level instant adventure. That is just an unacceptable drop in the rewards from where it was pre 1.9.

I shouldn't have to travel to Ember Isle to do "instant" adventure. It isn't instant anymore if I can't just queue and teleport.

Please bring back the option for us as level 50s to do Ember Isle or any random. Or, give us more bonuses for the random or fix the scaled rewards to be appropriate. We also get junk drops from low level mobs and can't pick up good crafting nodes - unlike on Ember Isle where drops can be useful from random mobs we kill and we can gather crafting nodes that are useful to us during EI IA as well.

[Cellice]

They really need to add more rewards. The experience is not enough. It's borin runnin with 3 people in the group. I like how doing ones in ss ha a lot of people and a lot of mobs. I was spammed with planar rewards. It felt rewarding and awesome! Kinda like lottery wheel lol . Runnin around with 3 others and no defending wards and maybe a reward every 10 quest is just sad. I had such high hopes