Pilgrims Traverse early feedback

[ThurinTurambar]

Strong disagree on those bosses, imo they're like Orthos ones and have no place in deep dungeons. They're just trying to turn deep dungeons into standard pve, which is just homogenizing the whole game and closing doors to people, which goes to the opposite of their statement of intent.

It's past 50 that we're literally back into Orthos hell with oneshots everywhere. It's not casual friendly even if there is more checkpoints for entry (which are appreciated).

Essentially what this new dungeon is bringing in terms of content is:
- Nothing for the casual playerbase because other deep dungeons were already beyond them past floor 30, so it changes nothing for them.
- Nothing for the solo challenge community, because it hasn't changed in terms of format or content for those either.

You act as if any death is a grave offense against the "casual experience".
From observing your posts over time, i get the feeling that your idea of the casual experience is unachievable while retaining other values.
Pilgrim's Traverse is making leaps for making the experience friendly to begginers or people who dont want to get that invested - new checkpoint floors and duty finder, very generous potsherd droprate allowing for nigh unlimited potions.
Another casual friendly new feature is how certain skills have much more visible casting animation on mobs, like fiery aura, or visibile dangerous buffs like the blazing scales on traverse monitor.

While some palace bosses are bit different in terms of execution, once you learn mechanics it was always a question of how many resources are you spending on them. Optimise to save an incense, steel, lust, strength, or the other way - optimise to use as many resources as you can to save time. Tell me, whats the difference between boss of floor 20 in potd and boss of stone 10 or 40 in PT?

You're also wrong on the solo perspective. If someone wants a challenge in just soloing, they will have fun doing it blind on their job of choice (or class like some gamers do).
PT is quite different in terms of item management compared to other 3 dungeons. Pomanders are aimed much more at actually fighting the mobs instead of heavy floor wipe reliance. Also heavier accent on adapting to the circumstances, with votives having additional randomness to them.
For more extreme soloing it is pleasant thus far, less difficult start is nice for score runs, while keeping pace to kill everything under 30 minutes is challenging in 41-60 both to very large floor layout and mob mechanics that make it more difficult when multipulling (for example the one mob that makes you disoriented, making dodging aoes harder)

I would however say that the difficulty progress ends on the aoe part. Mob hp and auto attack damage stagnates around stone 60, i would prefer to see it still rise in a significant way after that.

[Valence]

If the only thing we and the devs can think of when it comes to difficulty is "OHKO non telegraphs" to memorize, then yes, I'm sorry to say, but I think this kind of difficulty is off putting and too binary. They weren't much of a problem in POTD and HOH so why is it all the fuss in EO and PT now? I do recognize that they have done some things to be more friendly and your points on checkpoints, enemy skills or potsherds are good. But they're not addressing the core of the problem with their general pve direction that's also starting to overtake deep dungeons to make them even more of the same slop we're getting in standard pve. Why the need to homogenize everything like this? What's up with this company that constantly cannot do anything else than homogenize? Especially when it's already been a gigantic complaint among the playerbase notably on jobs, they continue nonetheless?

Now it also made me think, what do we expect in terms of difficulty from deep dungeons? Because so far I don't see anything that's going to seriously draw casuals beyond Stone 50-60? Maybe 70 if we push it? So what do we do? We just accept that they'll only have access to the first floors and be done with it? I mean, that could be a valid take, but then as I said, it doesn't change anything comparatively to what older deep dungeons already offer: casuals will do the first story floors, set for a series of floors to farm for xp (probably floors 51-60 instead of 21-30 this time due to the additional checkpoints), and that's it. On the other hand, obviously you want the deep dungeon experience to remain difficult enough past a certain floor level to still keep its feeling of accomplishment, but I seriously do think that if the only shit that we're going to get is luring trap > 4 OHKO untelegraphed moves at once > party wipe, it's not fun, it's frankly frustrating. There is some things one can do to attempt salvaging it when it happens (pop a pomander of storms in EO, an incense or witching here), but bruh. But I guess past that point I do have a fundamental disagreement with their pve design and i'm incredibly frustrated to see it finally make its way into deep dungeons too, which are supposed to be all about semi randomness, unique runs, using one's brains with crowd control and other effects, and not playing fucking DDR once more. We already have everything else in pve that's literally tailored for that.

While some palace bosses are bit different in terms of execution, once you learn mechanics it was always a question of how many resources are you spending on them. Optimise to save an incense, steel, lust, strength, or the other way - optimise to use as many resources as you can to save time. Tell me, whats the difference between boss of floor 20 in potd and boss of stone 10 or 40 in PT?

You're speaking of resources within the frame of solo runs. Normal parties just get through by doing the mechanics correctly and burning down the boss.

The difference between the boss of floor 20 of POTD and what is found in stones 10-40 is quite obvious to me: it has telegraphed AoEs only (not super interesting), and adds to burn down. It's a simple boss really. Extremely casual.

You're also wrong on the solo perspective. If someone wants a challenge in just soloing, they will have fun doing it blind on their job of choice (or class like some gamers do).
PT is quite different in terms of item management compared to other 3 dungeons. Pomanders are aimed much more at actually fighting the mobs instead of heavy floor wipe reliance. Also heavier accent on adapting to the circumstances, with votives having additional randomness to them.
For more extreme soloing it is pleasant thus far, less difficult start is nice for score runs, while keeping pace to kill everything under 30 minutes is challenging in 41-60 both to very large floor layout and mob mechanics that make it more difficult when multipulling (for example the one mob that makes you disoriented, making dodging aoes harder)

I would however say that the difficulty progress ends on the aoe part. Mob hp and auto attack damage stagnates around stone 60, i would prefer to see it still rise in a significant way after that.

I don't think I'm wrong no, but we're talking about different things: you're getting something different, and I'll trust you there because that's your thing, but you're also not getting more or less of it. You're getting the same content, like casuals are getting the same kind of content aimed at them (story floors). I can some kind of midcore community making floor 99 clearance more broad, and appearing due to the welcome addition of the checkpoints, but that's not enough in my opinion. All matched parties I've seen so far are just wiping randomly to OHKO moves because they don't have the required discipline to deal with those.