Shard dungeons: the wall that stops lower geared players from getting gear?

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#1

Hi Riley,

I had an interesting conversation on voice chat the other day with another player about the chance of rolling a decent shard dungeon.

As it stands, as per my previous thread, I identified with the help of the community that over 50% people do not enjoy Tradu Crypt and 1/3 do not enjoy Tradu Forest [1]

The reasoning as per feedback from the community:

Insights about Forest

  • Tank keeper can crit on his random jump and potentially instakill squishies.
  • Mushroom spawning RNG can occasionally spawn several under or inside the boss.

Insights about tradu crypt

  • Worm boss is unreasonably long
  • Worm boss elites scale too hard
  • Soulkeeper fight can be a bit dull if you are fast enough to kill the adds as you have to wait for the boss to appear.

So this explains why I have so many left over tradu crypt and tradu forest shards

My worry is this; If Tradu crypt and Tradu Forest really are the wall, there are potentially many many players feeling less motivated to get geared up right now, creating an even bigger retention wall for the game when it comes to end game content.

Theoretically, if Tradu crypt and Tradu Forest are our problem children here, here are the (unconfirmed) numbers.
If i want to get a run of shards in the shortest possible time from level 3 (because 1 is easy to choose from) up to level 9 and 5/7 of the shards I regard as shards that i want to do and the shards jump in steps of 2 because I have the dps to kill it in under 15 mins up until level 7 (data from the armory suggests that this is part of the wall) the percent chance of getting that run up to level 9 is as follows.
COUNT(3,5,7,8,9) = 5.

shards I want to complete / possible shards to get on a roll
5/7 = 71.42%

percent chance of getting a clean run up until level 9 with shards I want to complete
71.42^5 = 18.58% chance of not getting a forest or crypt whilst trying to roll up to level 9.
= 81.42% chance of getting a tradu crypt or forest shard

Hypothesis: For up to every 4 out of 5 shards i tried leveling up, I got a forest or crypt which no one wanted to do or we could not complete

Is the above hypothesis to your experience?

  • I have had this happen to me
  • This has never been a problem for me.

0 voters

@Riley_D can you confirm my numbers or are my maths way off?

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#2

I think shard dungeons in general are harder because you need to get a good shard have the specific strategy for all bosses and mutations, as well as complete the shard in time which compound into a really hard experience for those that havent been around for ages. I personally enjoyed the breaking in high level shards as it provided some exciting challanges for high end players, but I can see how it might be hard to go above 5-6 for regular/casual gamers. So they just start to farm the first few bosses of the hard mode raid.

I would like to point out a fault in the calculations though

This is the chance that you do NOT get a crypt or forest up to level 9.

#3

Thank you and updated.

1 Like
#4

Yes I think the intention was to not make shard dungeons irrelevant so good point by the way!

1 Like
#5

Make it not tied to any specific dungeon, make easier dungeons give a little less reward somehow , and repeated runs on the same dungeon have diminishing returns. Give the players more choice here, can anyone see how this would hurt?

#6

Yep like yesterday, hello lv8 Forest :roll_eyes:

#7

I mean, this feels a bit like a repeat of the previous thread, which I guess I didn’t really weigh in on specifically but I did read. I was honestly surprised by the voting in the last thread, that about 50% of people liked Crypt and 2/3 like Forest as-is. So I guess it depends on which way you look at it.

The other thing on this is, I’m not sure we should necessarily optimize for Shard 5+ being easy? I guess the thought process is that the gearing-up goes Tradu Mines -> Shards 1 - 5 -> Normal Raid -> Shards 6-10 + Hard Mode Raids

Once you’re talking about Shards 6+ and Hard Mode Raid, I think you’ve entered the realm of “very hard content” which I expect to be a bit of a wall and most people in the game not to achieve. Obviously I want everyone who wants to put in the time and effort to be able to achieve anything they want, but at the same time it’s supposed to be challenging at that point and require quite a bit of effort.

At any rate, that’s not to say that I won’t be making some tweaks to some of these dungeons (because I will be), but I just want to be clear in general, that the intent is not really that Shard 6-10 is something that can be accomplished without a significant amount of effort.

4 Likes
#8

Yeah, I agree that these two dungeons a bit more annoying/problematic/less-fun than the others, but I think they only really need minor tweaks overall to be in-line.

#9

Yes sorry i just wanted to be 100% sure that this was the scenario that the community was facing as i had not considered it in that light until the math was discussed.

I agree 100% with what you wrote.

#10

You reaching; the tactic for gearing up is doing the first two hard mode bosses over and over under different raid leaders until you are geared up; with 10 people that gives around 20 chances for a drop or more plus the 2 hard mode tokens you are guaranteed for the first kill that week.

#11

You can only get one drop a week and only one chance to loot a piece of gear for each boss, so if you kill the first two over and over you won’t get anything except dyes after the first kill of both.

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#12

You only get one “chance” at a drop per week no matter who the raid leader is. If you go back in with a different raid leader, you can do the fight again to help someone else or to get a chance at a drop for:

  • The boss pets
  • Dyes
  • The cape (on Boss 5)

But you will not have a chance to get gear more than once per week. Basically if you get a token, you had a chance at a gear drop as well. If you don’t get a token, then you never had a chance to get a drop, either.

1 Like
#13

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