Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.


Insights on Set Dungeons from one of the designers


  • Nevalistis

    Posted 8 years, 7 months ago (Source)

    I don't mind a feature that's not everyone's cup of tea, or that's difficult, or different. However, I do mind that mastering a set dungeon is a season journey requirement and sits in the way of getting the extra stash tab (which is sorely needed, and really isn't optional at all). I spent an entire day playing the game getting more and more frustrated, pulling my hair out trying to complete any of the Wizard set dungeons. I finally got it, and didn't feel at all accomplished. I just felt relieved that the pain was over and I never had to do another set dungeon ever again, and a little sad at the precious leisure time I lost that I could have been having fun.

    For Firebirds, the set is just broken and it's impossible to get normal monsters to be set on fire, much less the huge amount at a time that's required. They just die instantly! Later, I realized that the designers seem to want you to completely nerf your damage... maybe equip a white wand to set them on fire, and then swap to a real wand to kill them? Not really sure, but this seems quite odd to me if that's the case. How is this at all a "victory lap" for collecting Firebird?

    So then I try Delsere. Well, I look up Quin's guide, and it looks totally doable. Except the live requirements of the dungeon is completely different than PTR! It seems that a monster only counts as being slow timed if it has never been slow timed ever before, and in addition to that you have to pull together 3+ groups at once in order to get the density required to get enough at once, and you have to do this several times. One mistake and there's not enough monsters or time left to complete it. I tried over and over and over and couldn't get it.

    Finally there's the Tal Rasha set dungeon, which I did end up defeating. It was actually trivial compared to the other dungeons, mostly because it gets easier when you get more powerful, which doesn't seem to be the case for the other dungeons. I say trivial, but it's not actually true because of the damn rock worms. They're completely invisible, and you have to literally walk right over them to spawn them, but then you can't be hit by them and they don't even have a tell before coming out of the ground. I had to memorize every single rock worm location, and then do a little dance to get them to spawn without being hit by them. And then, after all that, there's always 2-3 monsters left to kill and you run out of time before being able to find them, and by the way these invisible rock worms count towards the monsters left, and you can walk by them 10 times without them spawning because you happened to not walk over their tiny spawn area. Also, it seems that Tal Rasha isn't required at all for this dungeon - I didn't really see any use of it. I think really this is an Aether Walker dungeon. Maybe it should be renamed.

    And now to put the dagger into my heart, I find out after all of this that you can just bring other people into the set dungeon to do it for you, and they don't even have to be your class or set, and nothing they can do will cause you to fail an objective. The design of the set dungeons made me assume that they were single player, and nothing tells you that you can get help from your friends, and so now if I had any sense of accomplishment for doing a set dungeon, it's completely stripped by the fact that I could have not suffered at all and just beating it easily by abusing the multiplayer.

    Please don't make set dungeons a season requirement in the future.

    We've heard a lot of feedback regarding Set Dungeons in the Season Journey. Rest assured it's been passed on for discussion.

  • Nevalistis

    Posted 8 years, 7 months ago (Source)

    Are the set dungeons changing every season? Do we have to complete them all before next season to earn the wings and achievements?

    Set Dungeons are not exclusively tied to Seasons in any way. The wings/achievements aren't going away, and your progress in Season will roll down to non-Season (just like other achievements).

  • Nevalistis

    Posted 8 years, 7 months ago (Source)

    So basically it's an article saying set dungeons are fine and players are the problem? That's certainly what I got skimming it.

    Not at all - it's more about setting expectations. Set Dungeons are very, very different from the other ways most people play Diablo III. They're not meant to be jumped into and crushed on the first go around.

    We aren't trying to be dismissive of the massive amount of feedback we've seen since the patch launched. There's room for improvement, and we have some tweaks and bug fixes planned for the future based on what we've seen. Set Dungeons are a very polarizing new addition, and that's okay! We're glad to see it's a refreshing change of pace for the players who want it, and understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea.




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