Don't repeat Vecna Unleashed

[Lofen]

Just finished playing through this pack for the first time, and through the new quests that were released in the recent update - Spark of Life.
I should begin by mentioning that for what it's worth I enjoyed acute delirium and similar quests, so the occasional weirdness doesn't bother me at all.
Having said that - these sucked.

On a first play-through I usually solo with the sound on and do all the optionals, to get a feel for the quest. I did not bother with all the optionals in these, in most I just wanted to be done with this story. To be clear about my feedback - I felt these quests have nothing to do with dungeons OR dragons, they felt like someone's weak attempt at being whimsical, only without the humor or imagination to make it interesting, entertaining or worthwhile.
Apologies if this sounds harsh, it is honest.

Helping someone with test anxiety, or helping someone throw a party, or deal with real estate agents or practice for a date or help with a students loan, how is any of this on ddo? it's like the person in charge ran out of ideas and just started dropping in stuff from their personal life that they'd like help with.
I hope I do not sound uncaring - if it's a cry for help please get them the help they need.

As for the quests, I can only suggest that if you stick to bread and butter and apply yourself, eventually you'll be making amazing bread and butter.

 

[FVSHasBeenEvenMoreGutted]

i think its the games best expansion, except bark and the blade is competing with just business for worst expansion quest IMO...

 

[DBZ]

Procs that aren't on rune arms

 

[Glargfest]

Agreed. Too many liberties are being taken with respect to tone and theme and stakes lately. I’m hoping myth drannor brings it back to the style and feel of older ddo content while still making it unique and special.

The extreme challenge quests are great in those respects, so I know they can do it. And cordovan did promise that they would return to more serious quests. So I’m cautiously optimistic.

 

[Toede]

I don't think they care anymore. They are just going to do whatever they want until we finally hit the event horizon, game asthetic be damned. Their game so whatever but it sure is a shame.

 

[Titus Ovid]

Just finished playing through this pack for the first time, and through the new quests that were released in the recent update - Spark of Life.
I should begin by mentioning that for what it's worth I enjoyed acute delirium and similar quests, so the occasional weirdness doesn't bother me at all.
Having said that - these sucked.

On a first play-through I usually solo with the sound on and do all the optionals, to get a feel for the quest. I did not bother with all the optionals in these, in most I just wanted to be done with this story. To be clear about my feedback - I felt these quests have nothing to do with dungeons OR dragons, they felt like someone's weak attempt at being whimsical, only without the humor or imagination to make it interesting, entertaining or worthwhile.
Apologies if this sounds harsh, it is honest.

Helping someone with test anxiety, or helping someone throw a party, or deal with real estate agents or practice for a date or help with a students loan, how is any of this on ddo? it's like the person in charge ran out of ideas and just started dropping in stuff from their personal life that they'd like help with.
I hope I do not sound uncaring - if it's a cry for help please get them the help they need.

As for the quests, I can only suggest that if you stick to bread and butter and apply yourself, eventually you'll be making amazing bread and butter.

Spot on, thanks for putting my feelings into words. I didn't want to spend the energy again.

Cheers,
Titus

 

[Marshal_Lannes]

The Devils to Pay is a brilliant commentary on student loans. I enjoy almost everything about Vecna Unleashed. I find DDO quest design and variety to be first-rate. I appreciate that quests aren't stuck in 1991. It's great to have a dungeon crawl, but there is a lot more variety to quests and DDO taps into that. Take the time to read the stories, some are quite immersive.

 

[Smokewolf]

One thing I'd like to add, is Vecna' had nothing at all compelling gear-wise for casters. I've run it multiple times, as well as the raid, but don't ever see the need to farm a single item. Which, for me, is a first with a new'ish expansion.

Though, I did enjoy the Epic Destiny SLA nerfs that came with the Vecna's. It was great fun spam casting Epic SLA's to do Heroic levels of damage. (Sarcasm if it wasn't already apparent) So much so that I'm taking a break from playing a serious caster for a while. Should this nerf trend continue, DDO won't need a server outage to keep me offline.

 

[FaceDancer]

Many of the adventures have a bit too much "whimsy" of late. There is a serious lack of seriousness to the game (see what I did there?!?)

Adventures that are a little less slapstick & cartoon-y, and more grim and dark. Some adventures that offer morality/consequential choices would be good. Take the game off the rails just a bit. Tongue in cheek humor is okay from time to time, but this game feels like it's being made for my kids, not me (and I pay the bills. Hurumph!)

 

[The Narc]

The quests are good for your favor total and that is all.

 

[I dont Like gimps]

well on the other Hand "Villain X has a fortress at Y crush it" for the 500th time isnt exactly original either is it? Im not exactly a fan of Bday party planning either but its a nice change here and there. yeah the test anxiety quest is defo questionable why Not something like : that dude has some important infos about the Vecna cultist but hes having a trauma or whatever and cant properly recall stuff and we cure his Mind and he tells us XYZ

 

[CBDunk]

My group loves the 'whimsy'. Catastrophe, Devils to Pay, et cetera. Best stuff they've done in years. Haven't had a chance to run the three new quests yet, but they look great.

We're looking forward to Myth Drannor too, but variety is good.

 

[Lingal]

I like them all - except Grand Theft Aureon. As Marshal_Lannes said, "The Devils to Pay is a brilliant commentary on student loans." I don't know about student loans in other countries, but in the UK (excluding Scotland) the parody is spot on.

Footnote: In Scotland, local students do not pay tuition fees if they attend a university in Scotland.

 

[Ahpuch]

The ones in Vecna that really bothered me were What Dreams May Come and Party 101. Neither of those were a reasonable concept for Legendary characters (in fact they were pretty weak for Level 18s, they may have been appropriate for a level 5 character).

But Party 101 really stands out as quest that simply shouldn't exist for Legendary character. It wasn't the mechanics of the quest that were the problem but the rational and story. Why build a world of legendary characters taking on wanna be Gods only to have them run around a University and encounter security systems and students that were a match for those characters? Should Level 32 characters walk into a lecture and be fairly matched by students in the class? Should they be challenged by a security system designed to maintain student curfew? That seems like a world that doesn't need heroes. And it's all to help some dweeb have a party? Ridiculous and insulting.

Better writing could have at least made it reasonable. The Legendary characters could help rescue important students who had broke curfew to throw a party and got caught in one of Vecna's incursions. Of course that couldn't have saved the killer pies room. That part was simply too dumb to save.

IMHO part of this problem is the repackaging of the same content at multiple levels. Quests that may make sense for level 5s or Level 18s simply don't make sense for Level 32s (and vice versa). If the wildlife in an area or average mobs walking the streets of town can challenge Level 32s what are the regular people of the world doing? It breaks reasonable world building when Low level heroic and Legendary characters are saving the world from the same God like menaces. Why write something intelligent if it is going to come back to that incongruity? It seems like the devs agree that its futile based on those quests.

 

[I dont Like gimps]

The ones in Vecna that really bothered me were What Dreams May Come and Party 101. Neither of those were a reasonable concept for Legendary characters (in fact they were pretty weak for Level 18s, they may have been appropriate for a level 5 character).

But Party 101 really stands out as quest that simply shouldn't exist for Legendary character. It wasn't the mechanics of the quest that were the problem but the rational and story. Why build a world of legendary characters taking on wanna be Gods only to have them run around a University and encounter security systems and students that were a match for those characters? Should Level 32 characters walk into a lecture and be fairly matched by students in the class? Should they be challenged by a security system designed to maintain student curfew? That seems like a world that doesn't need heroes. And it's all to help some dweeb have a party? Ridiculous and insulting.

Better writing could have at least made it reasonable. The Legendary characters could help rescue important students who had broke curfew to throw a party and got caught in one of Vecna's incursions. Of course that couldn't have saved the killer pies room. That part was simply too dumb to save.

IMHO part of this problem is the repackaging of the same content at multiple levels. Quests that may make sense for level 5s or Level 18s simply don't make sense for Level 32s (and vice versa). If the wildlife in an area or average mobs walking the streets of town can challenge Level 32s what are the regular people of the world doing? It breaks reasonable world building when Low level heroic and Legendary characters are saving the world from the same God like menaces. Why write something intelligent if it is going to come back to that incongruity? It seems like the devs agree that its futile based on those quests.

I think the last part is getting sorta yeez but yeah its sorta hillarious when we save political figures (party crashers) from assasination and smash a devils cabal but 13 levels later we organise some Bday party for some random

 

[woq]

I think variety is good. The gear isn't bad at all. The quests are for the most part (not bark and blade) fast and fun once you know them. Even GTA is quite fast once you learn it.

I really like Vecna quests, especially the downstairs ones. The raid is good too, although it is far too easy on LH which causes most people to just slap through it and never even do any mechanics and most of the time theres no drops in the damn thing.

That being said, I do agree with the critique to excessive whimsy - I think there is enough now in the recent quests (Catastrophe, Vecna, Slice of Life) and I hope Myths go back to more grimdark, so I'd agree with "don't repeat" but not with "it is not good". The quota is now full on disney-quippy, any more and it would get abrasive - but at this point that line hasn't been crossed for me, though getting close.

 

[Mordenkainen]

Myth Drannor needs and should be ultra-hardcore D&D with a bit of old school "the 50 layer dungeon of doom" madness coupled with a cool overland concept.

Expecting. A LOT.

 

[Ying]

Overall the Vecna Unleashed expansion is well done. I find the lower area four quests a nice change of pace, yet still thematic with the Morgrave University motif. The social commentary about student loans is wonderful satire. I for one don't want every quest to be "Recover the McGuffin" or roleplaying murder hobos. GTA is a wonderful chance of pace, and I hope we see more "second-story work" design in the future. The expansion tie-in with four great figures from Eberron's pantheon of heroes (or villians?) is welcomed and excellent fan service.

There are some places where VU content falls down.

The way that mobs spawn in the first half of Bark and Blade makes it easy for them to get missed/skipped, then you have to backtrack to find the one mob that didn't trigger properly. Anytime I have to backtrack in a quest, I am greatly annoyed. The second half is just the opposite problem: There's too much running through a huge manufactury. Every time I do that quest with a character that doesn't have runspeed beyond 30% striding, I hate myself.

The exposition at the start of Vecna Unleashed (third quest) is annoyingly long, like Just Business in Sharn. To be clear: I don't care that there's exposition. I care that the exposition prohibits me from progressing the quest until it's complete. It's cute the first time. Maybe the fifth. After that, it's just old and annoying. Add an exposition skip option like you did at the end of Amber Temple.

 

[Lofen]

[...] with the Morgrave University motif. The social commentary about student loans is wonderful satire. I for one don't want every quest to be "Recover the McGuffin" or roleplaying murder hobos.

If I gave the impression that al I enjoy and would like to have is standard "go recover/kill" quests, that wasn't my point. My point was you could take "go recover/kill" quests and make an amazing stories and quests around them if you've tried, and once you've done that you'll find you've become a great story teller, and could easily tell a great story in different settings too, which in my mind is where Vecna Unleashed fell short.

The social commentary about student loans, was just that - a quest about student loans, that takes place in a university. This is so on-the-nose that I did not find it sophisticated, amusing or compelling, I found it irrelevant and out of place, standing out in a way that wouldn't allow it to be ignored, while not interesting (to me at least).

Now let's assume for a second that you have a burning desire to make social commentary part of the game. There are ways of incorporating it into the story in a manner that would make your message clear but not be offensive to the game itself. This is brings me back to the point of great storytelling. with the use of allegories and analogies, you shouldn't have to resort to bluntness in order to make your point, should you feel forced to make one.

This is why my suggestion is - get good at storytelling first, and if you feel confined by the "go recover/kill" theme - know that you're not there yet.

 

[The_Apocalypse]

The last handful of new quests... To me, it's like they were written for tweens, though, even as a teenager, I would not enjoy those quests. As a full-fledged adult, I wonder why I helped pay to get them made. As was said already, they could have used all the same mechanics with much better D&D-ish stories.