Yeah. What Jiggedy said. I didn't use the line with my paladin for the first 50some levels simply because it was pretty much useless. I think I *attempted* to use it a handful of times with my chanter, and had extremely poor results (like pulling a whole camp instead of just the two or three you might have if you'd just pulled normally).
The problem with the lull line was threefold:
1. Very high resist rate. Also, you didn't necessarily know when it had been resisted (I don't recall ever getting a message one way or another). Also, the "critical resist" was high enough that in conjunction, you pretty much couldn't use it to pull singles from a camp. I remember using it a few times when soloing at low levels with my chanter to split pairs of mobs up, but that's about it.
2. It didn't reduce the agro radius that much. A lot of people *still* don't understand how this line works. It is not a mez effect. It does not prevent mobs from agroing on you. What it does is reduce the radius around a mob that it will react to things (like a friendly mob getting attacked or a KoS person just being there). Today, the range reduction is sufficient that even the low level lulls are usually sufficient to break up a camp if you know how to use them. Back in the day, the low level ones still often left the mobs with large enough agro radiuses to encompass the other mobs in the camp (resulting in chain agro even if you didn't fail to overcome them).
3. Very short duration. They've adjusted this back, but it's still very usable. These spells literally used to last about 2 ticks. So you could maybe cast it on two mobs and if you were *really* fast, pull a third one. Not very stellar for breaking a camp. When they upgraded them they increased the duration (too much really). Suddenly, mobs would be lulled for 3 minutes at a time. They've since pulled it back to about 40 seconds, but that's more then sufficient to break any camp I've ever run into.
If your only experience with the spell line has been in the last year, then you don't really know the history. For a long time, this was a very very very useless spell line.
As to the topic. I don't think that you can compare LDoN to "classic" EQ dungeons directly. They teach different skills. Sure, traveling to an area in a dungeon, breaking that area, and holding that area did (does) require an amount of skill. However, once broken, those camps were *easy* to deal with. Yes. You had to pay attention to repops (which you don't in LDoN), but that was about it.
LDoN, on the other hand, requires that the players essentially constantly "break" the dungeon. You can't just sit in one spot killing the same spawns over and over. Again. Once broken, a classic dungeon is no more difficult then sitting on a zonewall pulling singles. Heck. Do EC/WC in PoV sometime. It's remarkably similar to holding various camps in LGuk back in the day. You kill the mobs in an order, they respawn in that same order. Once broken you can single kill those mobs all day long. In LDoN, you've got to have a method to break spawns (single pull), or handle multiple pulls (CC). It's certainly more energetic then a classic dungeon.
Which is "better"? That's really hard to say. I honestly like the classic style dungeons. Sure, it was quite a bit of effort to get to the camp and break it, but once you did, it was "yours", and you got the benefit of a nice continuous stream of exp and loot. It was less stressful. You could take breaks now and then as needed. While LDoNs are more "exciting", I generally just can't handled more then one or two in a row on a given night, even if we do them in 40ish minutes. It's just too exhausting.
I also still don't like the timers. Everyone still has this "complete mission as fast as possible" goal. Personally, I'd like to just take our time and explore the dungeon. Clear it at our own pace. Investigate the traps and the treasure chests. IMO, that would fullfil the stated desire of the instanced dungeon far more then the timers do.
I'd also like to see a bit more backstory involved. Why just have the instanced dungeons (as someone put it: "A game within a game"). These things just appear and exist purely for going in and killing stuff. Sure, that's nice and all, but it reminds me of the kinds of D&D games back in the day that young folks would run where your group just appeared next to the entrance of the "dungeon", and proceeded inside. No backstory. No reason for them to be there. Nothing. Sure, there's a "mission" the Wayfarers sent you on, but those are paper thin really. Who actually bothers to read them except to see what they are collecting, or how many kills they need, or whatever?
If you can instance dungeons, you can instance much more complex structures then what they do with LDoN. Why not make the whole thing a "short" instanced quest? You're sent in with a vague goal (find and kill MobX, or rescue NPCY, or recover artifactZ). Put in doors and keys in the dungeons, so you have to clear to the right area to get through the next. Don't like doors? Make them quest NPCs (with little instanced "flags" to go with them). You have to find and talk to the orc cook to learn about the secret entrance to the guard barraks (which opens that "door"). Then you must go in there and kill the captain to get his map (which opens up another section of the dungeon). Then you use the map to get to the main fortresss, where a key you maybe had to find off some other orc gets you access. Inside, maybe you can find what you're looking for...
I can think of a zillion ways to make use of instanced zones to really really spruce up the game and make it more immersive for the players. They are really just barely scratching the surface with what they're doing with LDoN. The example above is just a single "mini-adventure" that could be done in similar time to a current LDoN (maybe a bit more time). However, why not have actual "quests" that instance zones for you as you go along? The same process currently used where you turn in bits to get the next part of the quest could instead be used to initiate an instanced zone where the next part of the quest is done. You could make quests of any length use this method. Whichever group is with the quester at the time goes along for this portion of the quest. The "bits" are what's important for triggering the next portion, not a particular group.
I'm still kinda on the fence in terms of how they implemented LDoN. I don't have a problem with the dungeons themselves, I just don't like all the structure surrounding them. The adventure points for rewards stuff is reasonable, but the aug system turns the game into a "Do LDoN or other stuff" situation. So many useful augs are only useable on stuff you have to buy with adventure points. Heck. I'd be ok with it if we could turn in any LDoN reward item for full adventure points. Then at least there could be an upgrade process going on, where you feel like it's worth spending points on stuff that's not the "best", but is worth getting today. My biggest problem is that for the most part, no item slot available in LDoN for less then 1k points is going to be anything but a downgrade. So I *have* to spend that many points before I can make use of any of the really nice augs. That's a whole hell of a lot of time...
And I still think the timers were a bad idea.
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King Nobby wrote:
More words please