Windstone Feedback

Pecannius

Pecannius

Dalayan Elder
Not sure if this is the right forum for this, so feel free to move it.

I've been in Windstone with a ~T9 group several times. First off, thanks for all the hard work from the people who created this zone, I know it's a lot of work to do this so thank you! Also thank you for hanging out in the zone while you waited for us to finally make it to a boss.

We talked briefly about the trash in general, I just wanted to follow up with it.
The main issue our group had was the total time of clearing trash vs the boss when combined with how little the trash offers.

The night we were going for the dwarf dude, it took us I'll say on average 1 hour to clear to him (with slightly lower dps due to having an endurance group make up). The boss attempt doesn't las very long. So we're spending about 90% of our time there clearing trash, since the trash repops are ~30 minutes i believe.

One of the devs stated that that this was the same respawn as in EF. The difference between EF and Windstone is what the trash offers.

In EF:
-There are quite a few quest drops that are very useful for people in the T9-10 area.
-Exp in EF is much better than windstone.
-Money is much better than windstone with EF's cash nameds. (Our group, through 4 hours including ~3 wipes in windstone, walked away with 200pp each, really low).

I mean no disrespect in the following statement, just saying it for a point of reference: In terms of just money/exp, we would have been better off farming rats in necropolis or kaesora.

If any/some of these benefits of EF trash were present in Windstone trash, then it would make the trash clearing less mundane. Just throwing out a few random suggestions off the top of my head. If they don't make sense or aren't viable I apologize:
-Duplicate quest drops from EF to drop in windstone.
-Reduce the health of the trash so the clears are less mundane. (With so much AE dmg / ww / dbs, we had to wait on cleric mana a lot).
-Or less trash mobs throughout the zone.

The bosses themselves, I don't have much feedback on besides that they are definitely difficult to do on tier. As they should be. It would be nice to have more attempts on them instead of wiping once and having to clear for another hour, but that hopefully could be mitigated in other ways mentioned above.

Thanks again for the great zone, we really enjoy it!
 
you could always change your group from an "endurance" group to a regular group....
 
honestly, I disagree on the exp part. Exp in emberflow when it was new and on tier was awful, it took FOREVER to kill mobs. In fact, EF exp was even nerfed - the ZEM was reduced by 10%. don't get me wrong though, I'd certainly say Windstone exp is "okay" at best - definitely worse than Kaesora or First Ruins. It went from 0% ZEM at Torgiran to 15% now, I think it should be around 40-50%. It could actually be an effective, challenging, fun exp area if it gave competitive exp.

Agreed on the cash, a full clear of the zone from the first to last boss yielded 1,500 platinum. EF cash is generally low these days too though since most cash named are just vendored, the days of selling robes/quivers/etc for 15-20k each are behind us, but we didn't get a single BoE and nothing vendored well.

Biggest disappointment was the bosses. I'm sure they need tweaking but considering it's supposed to be comparable to EF, they were the most anticlimatic boss fights I've ever seen.

Overall though there's a lot of potential to make this into a useful zone and not another Ethereal Dojo
 
if the bosses i killed were indeed intended to be tier 9 then they need to be grossly buffed considering i solo'd one to 93% using like 60% of my health unstanced/no clickies etc (so was just testing what it hit me for and stuff lol). I'm sure slaar didnt want to balance the bosses around our group since it was all tier 13 toons but from when we killed them they were tens of times easier than EF bosses.

the trash was semi challenging and i think most of it was in a good spot for tier 9ish. the only mechanical gripe i have with the trash is the non stop blinding mechanic that eats predator through a good chunk of the mobs. the exp could probably be buffed like 20% and be fine but the cash should be drastically increased since like eisley said our group that lasted like 2.5ish hours yielded a total of 1500 plat.

also to the guy commenting on the clear for getting in attempts on named. that is how almost every six man in the game works other than fae named and a couple tier 13 mobs. it's good practice to take necro/monks/rogues that can feign or sneak back to attempt new six man content or you're going to have a bad time
 
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booster said:
i just wanna say that the end boss "event" thing is pretty fricken cool and should be a standalone thing with player betting.
Click to expand...

I yelled to the heavens for this to be the case but Slaariel just laughed at me.
 
yeah, it's a cool little mini game that probably would have been better served elsewhere. it'd likely be a balancing nightmare but it's really hilarious and reminded me of a mobile game or a tcg or something. definitely did not see that coming. but, as the final boss of a new zone, i probably would have preferred an actual boss.
 
All trash should now have loot, which was not the case on initial release. It might get another bump in vendor price or quantity, but for now, at least everything has loot. Some things are still up in the air with what will drop from trash, so please keep in mind this is not the final version of the loot. With respect to the boss difficulty, some of the 'bosses' are mini-bosses and thus easier, however their loot is not as good as the Big Bosses. We are currently considering how to make them more rewarding, considering how deep in the zone some are. I know the initial release was a bit of a 'rough draft,' but we have made changes in response to some of your feedback and are continually working on the risk vs reward zone balance. We had honestly planned on shutting it down after the long weekend of the 17th, but we had a good turnout and have left it open in response. Thanks so much for coming out to test this!
 
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Spent some time in this zone, some things about the fourstones/undead area, What is this area's intended tier? The Undead boss was super easy compared to the trash, or the trash was a little to hard. They ware about dunking Memu/Soicon/Nifera/Draeos/Sabuti/Erude, I don't want to spoil it but it just felt like the numbers ware a bit high if this was intended for T9-10, Some of there abilitys would drop soicon to 15%, more than enough to drop an on tier cleric to blood aggro levels, much less a caster.

We Spent about 4-5 hours in there and walked away with 1633plat, Thats a improvement but still dismal.


P.S. I don't wanna sound rude buuuut, Blind is a bad mechanic, It is not fun, and it loves to bug out on this client forcing you to reload. Please consider replacing this with anything else that isn't unresistable mez.
 
Draeos said:
P.S. I don't wanna sound rude buuuut, Blind is a bad mechanic, It is not fun, and it loves to bug out on this client forcing you to reload. Please consider replacing this with anything else that isn't unresistable mez.
Click to expand...

I agree.

The only time that debuffs that take control away from the player has ever been fun is that one fight in turruj where you kill each other.

Blind and mez should really exist for players to do to mobs and not mobs to do to players. I feel the same way about the buggy, shitty implementation on this client of silencing casters.
 
I'm ok with really short blinds but not being able to do anything for a while is boring.
 
the problem is that they are buggy. anyone who's done the clear to the fae boss Oracle has experienced the joy of having to repeatedly alt-f4 and reload if you stay blinded for longer than 12 sec, because you know it will last forever.
 
Is this where we lobby to have unresistable mezzes and charms removed from pofire/
 
I agree about killing groupmates!

We've literally wiped our raid because we spent too long focusing on killing the next guy to get charmed before.

2muchfun
 
Some of the trash was way more difficult than the bosses. Bosses maybe should be buffed a bit and trash debuffed a little. This was with a T11/12 tank tho, so basing it off of dmg/survivability vs emberflow trash/bosses.
Tho, I can also see it another way (ie. weak bosses hiring super strong goons to do their bidding/protect them). Then that could make since because there were definitely alot of very strong trash mobs along the way that made me more edgy than skycallers in EF.

Trash definitely was very abundant took about 3+-hrs to get to last boss.
There is one particular spot (you probably know where I'm talking about) that I'm not sure if anything will be implemented there but I thought would be a good spot to maybe add a questline that gives you a group port clicky (maybe put a high CD on it) to that spot or a flag to enter some portal (maybe on event to make portal spawn) at the first deadend after ZI that takes you to the spot.
 
not really sure how this is classified as a T9 6man zone. i went in with a group id say pushing t8/9 gear. we couldnt make it even 15 mobs into the zone. after talking with some friends. im told even t12/13 toons are running oom or having trouble tanking stuff in the northern part. i think it needs rebalanced for sure or atleast change it to a t10/11 6 man zone. i feel for any on teir people who attempt it.
 
Yeah there are one or two mobs in the northern wing that are really rough to tank, but the whole bridge area is pretty easy. I will probably end up lowering the damage on the Assassins and such.

As to the clear, I know it's long but with the map layout and the structure of the Calyth fight... tough call. This discussion has happened several times amongst the devs so we recognize there is room for adjustment here.

Finally, a further enhancement to the zone was derailed by my partner and dev-bro taking an unannounced vacation so the stuff we were working on got back-burnered for a bit but rest assured there are very very friendly additions on the horizon.

Just making sure you didn't think I forgot about my zone!!
 
I'm curious as to if your meant to bring enchanter to this zone, let's just say we tried to split these 2 white cons and got both anyway when one was out of los , so linked obviously , these two said mobs then decided to emote at same time and explode our group pretty much, the beastlord died instantly , just one of the ae's was hitting the tank for 3.7kish so two at the same time along with being hit by melee is pretty rough. maybe we just need to fool around with the zone more idk first time trying it out last night, it presents a challenge but those white cons we encountered were just whoa. With one healer we were having to med every 4 to 5 blue con gemanthians because of all the group healing, when we brought 2 it wasn't as bad, but that doesn't leave too much room to bring a enchanter as your already sacrificing a spot for second healer

setup was ...Warrior,cleric,druid,monk,beastlord,magician


the monk and magician being ringers
 
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