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f13.net General Forums => The Secret World => Topic started by: schild on January 19, 2014, 07:08:21 PM



Title: The Polaris / Other Dungeons
Post by: schild on January 19, 2014, 07:08:21 PM
Dungeons that don't autoscale based on the size of your party suck the worst bad game design ass in online gaming.

Needless to say, wife and I won't be finishing the Polaris anytime soon as the worst part about online gaming is still other players.

Is every fucking dungeon a minor raid dungeon?


Title: Re: The Polaris / Other Dungeons
Post by: Goldenmean on January 20, 2014, 12:23:22 AM
Not really sure what you were expecting. I don't know of any MMO with instanced dungeons that autoscales to party size for single party dungeons, and only a few that do so for raid dungeons. As with every other game of the ilk though, you can just brute force it at higher power levels if you want to see the content. Polaris normal mode is easily soloable in the proper spec even before endgame gearing.

And yes, every dungeon in the game expects you to have 5 people at the appropriate power levels to complete it. The only real exceptions are the quickie holiday or event dungeons they toss in occasionally. Those can be easily done with fewer.


Title: Re: The Polaris / Other Dungeons
Post by: schild on January 20, 2014, 02:24:00 PM
:(


Title: Re: The Polaris / Other Dungeons
Post by: luckton on January 20, 2014, 04:27:28 PM
I heard EQ2 has solo/duo dungeons, or some crazy thing like that these days.


Title: Re: The Polaris / Other Dungeons
Post by: Miasma on January 20, 2014, 04:39:14 PM
Autoscaling would be awesome.  It's a real shame because I was surpised by how good the handful of dungeons that I managed to get into were.  I assumed they would just be trash, trash trash, boss (tank and spank) repeat.  But there is very little trash, the bosses actually have interesting mechanics and the atmosphere and story for each zone leads into them as a finale.

I particularly liked polaris, it has a good /spoiler...


Title: Re: The Polaris / Other Dungeons
Post by: schild on January 20, 2014, 04:51:18 PM
I just finished Polaris. It was aight.


Title: Re: The Polaris / Other Dungeons
Post by: Ginaz on January 20, 2014, 07:37:07 PM
Rift has some sort of solo/duo dungeon type of thing.  I don't know of any other MMO that does, except maybe for WoW with their scenarios.


Title: Re: The Polaris / Other Dungeons
Post by: Goldenmean on January 21, 2014, 01:54:15 AM
Yeah, WoW has scenarios, Rift has the chronicles which are designed to be 1 or 2 player versions of old raid encounters (which is a pretty cool idea IMHO, as it means you can catch up on old storyline. The ones I did weren't even vaguely challenging/interesting to play though), Everquest 2 has instances designed to be soloed/duoed (and mercenaries make doing their full party dungeons easier with a small group also), LotRO has a lot of 3 man dungeons, and practically every asian action MMO (Dungeon Fighter Online/Rusty Hearts/Vindictus/etc) has dungeons that you can solo on most difficulty levels.

Autoscaling single group encounters is an entirely different problem though. It's practically impossible to scale a trinity style MMO single group instance without just making it faceroll dull/uninteresting. You could autoscale assuming fewer DPS than usual easily enough, but let's face it, DPS is never the problem, and there's no way you can scale around having 1/3rd of a healer unless all of your character classes are hybrids.

Anyway, random theory aside and back on topic, I still think that The Secret World has some of the best dungeon design out there. Practically no trash packs, just boss after boss, and while the bosses are a mixed bag, there are plenty that are great, and on nightmare mode, most of the later dungeons are a good challenge, and many encounters just flat out don't work if you're stuck in holy trinity mentality.

Oh, and if it helps, Schild, they recently added Scenarios as endgame content in TSW. You're a ways away from them, but they come in solo/duo mode as well as the group option.