Are you happy with the current raiding structure in this game?

[Fendred]

Instead of moving onto SCoB, I've been helping new players through Twintania. There are two sides to the same coin when it comes to "fights are poorly designed" as Cryptic has put it. A well designed fight tests the skills of the players and does not hide the challenges they must face with obscure mechanics. Arguing that Twintania's mechanics are anything but obscure is laughable when you see how many new people die consistently to the same things everyone else did back in 2.0 and 2.1.

Glowing symbols do not tell the player what is about to happen, so they stand there in a state of confusion and get killed. Even if they figure it out, you've chosen mechanics that go against common sense. Some of the best new players I know do something very intelligent: They figure out that the symbol is a fireball (truly an impressive feet I've only seen maybe one new person do on his first try ever) and they run away from the group. Why? Because we're taught to care about whether our companions get hit with stuff. That was smart. Making the fireball disperse its damage evenly among party members like some kind of alien energy bomb was not.

And why in the flying... is a move called "twister" a land mine? And why is a dark energy ball called "hatch" when it has nothing to do with hatching eggs? The least you could do is name the abilities in an intelligent manner. That's like if I started labeling all the variables in my computer program "x, y, z, and bacon" and expect to be handed an A by my programming instructor. Any professor will skin you alive for doing that.

I could go on to describe all the problems with that fight, but apparently everything except dive bombs is messed up in some way. If I have to explain to a highly intelligent player what every little thing does in the fight and how to deal with it, the encounter design is pretty sub par.