Over the weekend, Tacitus posted feedback for some player responses on the new Instant Adventures that were added in 1.9. Are the new IAs fun? For the most part, but they could definitely use some tweaking to match the level 50 equivalents. Keep reading for some thoughts on how to do so.
In regards to players saying that IAs are more fun with larger groups, which aren’t as prominent now that players can use mentoring:
Originally posted by Tacitus (Source)
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.
There’s also the fact that numbers may be skewed right now due to the popularity of other 1.9 features, like Conquest.
Regarding the new integration between IAs and zone events that occur more frequently in the new IAs:
Originally posted by Tacitus (Source)
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.
The auto-leveling system does seem off, as reported by many players in the thread.
Players also reported that the teleport system in low-level IAs isn’t working as it should. Tacitus responds to that, too:
Originally posted by Tacitus (Source)
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).
Some good suggestions were also offered by players, including these:
* You need to be able to choose specific zones off the list and if necessary be auto mentored down to that zone (without having to travel to the zone).
* Rewards need to be sorted, they seam very random and very variable.
* More variety in lower level zone events, If I kill one more miner in Stonefield I will scream.Other than that, it’s great and should be rolled out for all zones in the game asap.
Tacitus’ response:
Originally posted by Tacitus (Source)
* 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).* 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.* 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!
Crazy ideas, eh? Sounds interesting.
Many players are commenting on the subject of low rewards for the lower-level IAs while mentoring at level 50. It’d be nice to see a boost in the planarite seen, at least, and possibly even PA experience. We’ll have to see what Tacitus comes up with!
