Sentinel’s Fate: The Hole — 3 Months Later
Today, we reflect on a dungeon that I had high hopes for when it was first announced, but which underwent dramatic changes within 72 hours of its launch. 3 months later, there are no clear answers on the current intended audience of this zone, whether we’ll see any rollback of those changes, and going into the next expansion — EverQuest II: Destiny of Velious — will these lessons in design and balance be learned from?
The Sanctum of Scaleborn
Why, 3 1/2 years later, is the Sanctum of Scaleborn still such a popular dungeon in EQ2?
When a player is short on Levels, short on Alternate Advancement points, or just wants a sprawling dungeon adventure, the Sanctum of Scaleborn is one of the best bang-for-the-buck zones EQ2 has yet seen. You never know who you are going to meet, where you might run into other players, how you might build and tweak your group, and just what success you’ll have in defeating various names.
Echoes of Faydwer tried to echo this success, but its Mistmoore Castle and Kaladim were overpopulated and unforgiving. Their target audiences were stacked hardcore groups, not the rag-tag bands of players you could have such success with in SoS.
Sanctum of Scaleborn has a lasting legacy. So after 3 expansions without an accessible sprawling contested dungeon, it was time for a worthy successor.
The Hole
This zone was announced (and promoted heavily by yours truly) as a sprawling contested dungeon for 3-6 players of levels 86-90. It seemed many player’s hopes and prayers had been answered — Duos and Trios now had a chance to get their hands dirty. Playing this zone in Beta, players were thrilled at how they could smoothly progress through the expansion levels by grouping OR soloing.
Then Sentinel’s Fate launched.
Through a combination of different tricks and techniques discovered during Beta, players zipped through the levels:
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- Saved up heritage quests, missions, collections, and other quests that had been held back for months were turned in.
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- Refer-a-Friend bonus which rewards 300% XP.
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- XP potions rewarding +55% XP.
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- StationCash potions which restore player Vitality (+100% XP)
Further, there were some design elements to the quests in The Hole, and a specific encounter, which allowed incredibly fast leveling:
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- Nearly every mob in The Hole had a very high chance to drop an item which updated one of the repeatable faction missionsy. Between the high drop rates, ability to pick up and turn in the quest repeatedly to burn through a pile of these dropped items, and the large amount of Quest and AA XP rewarded for completing each mission, the XP coming out of The Hole was like a fire hose.
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- A large multi-mob encounter located in The Hole had a bug which caused the entire group of mobs to respawn if one mob was allowed to live and reset to its default position.
With these techniques and tricks, players were able to rocket to level 90 within hours of the expansion launch. The EQ2 developers panicked.
An Overreaction
Within 48 hours of the expansion, developers took drastic measures to prevent other players from blowing through their 6 months worth of development work in just a few hours with a number of measures:
- The repeatable quests were changed to daily repeatable quests.
- Drop rate on the items from mobs was reduced by about 75%.
- Items were changed to only be lootable if you were on the quest.
- XP awarded for turning in these quests was reduced by about 90%.
And 3 months on, some of the quests in The Hole are still broken. Specifically, certain mobs refuse to drop any of their ‘update’ items. A fix is forthcoming.
Going Forward
Clearly, it is a poor use of development time to design, build, and test gigantic zones like this if within 72 hours they will be heavily adjusted such that they no longer serve their original purpose. Players need to be allowed to level and earn AA at a reasonable pace in an open-ended dungeon crawling experience. This is the type of content that EQ1 manages to add year-in and year-out throughout 14 expansions, but which EQ2 has repeatedly struggled with.
Forcing all players to solo quest to reach the next level cap is not a recipe for success.
Maybe some day, a way will be found to develop and expand the abilities of characters without increasing the level cap every 2 years. Raising the level cap eats up 4-6 months of development time that could be spent adding something other than linear ‘treadmill’ content.
I thought this was what all those adornment slots were for (white, red, yellow, blue, green), but now it looks all 5 slots will be implemented and in-use by mid-year, so once again we’ll be forced to have a level cap raise either this year or next.
Further Reading
EQ2 Forums: Is there a Getting Started Guide for The Hole?
If you have further suggestions about threads for readers to check out regarding player reaction to this zone, please post a comment.
Did you like this article? Was it too long? Would you like to see an article about something else? Please post a comment!
Tags: sanctum of scaleborn, sentinel's fate, the hole
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Comments (19)
Magson
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I think the article was the length it needed to be for the content provided. I know I’ve not been in the Hole much, and what little I have been is more often the instances made from the “wings” and even there I’ve only been in 2 of them, and 1 was only to grab the update needed for my myth conversion. I still have no idea where the “mercury” for that quest is. A swash stealthed down and I just used my Vet Call to go to him. I have no idea where we were at all.
Rumor has it that the mobs are easy enough that SK’s are solo-pulling whole rooms, and I know that when we killed the mercury things that our group was coercer, wizard, and swash. No tank, no healer, and we killed them easily. Perhaps a slight tweak upward on mob difficulty is in order? I don’t know though — I’m 90 on my SK and my Coercer and just do instance groups wth them now, so I’ve not been back to the Hole in a while.
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Twisted_Mentat
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Trash is certainly duoable for any 2 level 90’s, as long as one of them can nuke heavily, heal or mitigate the incomong damage. Mosty the names require 3-4 lvl 90’s or a group of 85 ish players, depending on the healer.
Point was that the hole was supposed to be a place to level for characters fresh into SF and in that it fails. Tbh I think its to resrictive in where you can travel (3 wings but all are unique but linear coridoors)
FD classes or people with enough faction can walk through certain wings at will and simply pick off or plant flags on any update/name they like and the questhub is blocked by paired ^ mobs that though can be spealthed past, is an unwelcome #no-entry# sign for many of the less self-reliant classes.
SOE should drop the mobs difficulty back down a step or 2, maybe add in some extra tunnels/teleports inter-connecting each of the wings, up the droprate on the daily quest items (maybe let them be repreatable every 3-4 hours and make them a source of gold not aa/xp), let people have an easier time getting to the hub or move it to the actual entrance and move the startermobs to the top of the pit. As for the factions in there i have no idea why a contested zobne would allow people to freely roam around entire sections, ditch the aggro-free walking around and introduce something meaningfull like timed challenges to kill certain mobs with a checkpoint system(to prevent flag running), make the mobs autospawn at the target location for that group and reward victories with varied plat/faction tokens/class specific adept spells based on a course challenge rating, bonus plat/tokens for no deaths, evacs, fast runs, etc.
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Roldor
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Interesting article and great topic. I could have done with about three to four times the length or longer. It would have been awesome to see each of the three wings put under the microscope. A closer examination of the basic quests and some mud maps of the dungeon would have been cool too.
– Roldy
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Feldon
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Even though The Shadow Odyssey itemization made huge strides in closing the gulf between legendary and fabled gear (never have such powerful items been put into the hands of players who have never raided), the typical duo/trio folks usually only have T1 shard gear and may not have their fabled epic weapon.
It’s hard to balance a contested zone for 3 players with low-level legendary that isn’t completely steamrolled by a solo player in full fabled and mythical. But unlike the developers and some players, I’ve never felt this was that big a problem. A decked out player is only visiting those areas to level quickly, catch up on AA points, or get transmuting materials. They’re not ‘exploiting’ by any stretch.
Mentat,
I do think the mobs scale up rather quickly and there’s not enough ‘easy’ mobs. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the teeming masses.
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Feldon
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Roldor,
I started to write a Guide to The Hole but stopped when all the changes went through.
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Lessing
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Why did SOEs actions (the ones under ‘An Overreaction’) turned the Hole from awesome (beta) to awful (live, 48h later)? Just by toning down the repeatable quests? I dont think so.
The Hole was never a good idea for launch day. Just 3 groups in it, and mobs become quite scarce. But I cant imagine that being much different with SoS tbh. Also, SoS is very linear as well. I see too much uncritical nostalgia here. SoS was a hub for some quests many people took time to do only much later than KOS launch, maybe thats why people are so fond of it.
If anything, the Hole isnt linear enough. People get down to the quest hub, look around, scratch their heads and wonder where to go from there. Also, a map is strongly missing to make people more comfortable within the zone.
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Gazzaroony
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This game should be settled by now as far leveling paths go, it’s 5 yrs old and they are still trying to work out what they want it to be.Content changes and thats understandable it’s an mmo and mmos change it’s the nature of the beast, but we have had constant mixed messages on how leveling is done in EQ2 from the getgo.
It’s just confusing for new and old players alike.
Personally I think it’s a case of too many cooks have spoiled the broth now as so many different people have passed through the EQ2 team that it’s a just a mess of different ideas and different directions and mechanics.
I’m taking a long break now till the next expansion, i’m not in the mood to roll toon after toon to max level this time.
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Kyrmyn
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I’m one of those players that hit 90. Granted not in a few hours – but I did use my amassed collection of 55 percent XP pots, bought a couple of vitality potions and racked out 10 levels in less than 24 hours.
Who cares? I still went back and ran through all the quest content for AA. Our guild wanted to be up and raiding to get credit for first kills. I wanted server and worldwide discos.
But the unanswered question in this article is the lack of level history on eq2players for toons that leveled quickly. Is this punishment from Sony for our “sins” or is this a legitimate technical problem.
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GP
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I do not mind the write up, you base your opinion and give some reasoning to back it up. Commentary is good to read every now and again.
I disagree though Feldon, you write, “Raising the level cap eats up 4-6 months of development time that could be spent adding something other than linear ‘treadmill’ content.”
TSO is a prime example of it didn’t matter that we didn’t have level caps increased, it was a horribly small expansion. There simply is no justification for having this little amount of content other than the dev team is literally just a few people, and all of the talent has gone elsewhere. I think you could give the SOE team 2 extra years of development time, and they will still come out with the same small expansions, because honestly we pay for them and that is what they are after. If I do 8 hours of work and you pay me $40, or I do 200,000 hours of work and you pay me $40… which are most people (who are no longer passionate about the game) going to do?
How are the EQ1 expansions (for anyone that plays)? Do they generally deliver more content than EQ2 expansions do? I quit after Luclin in EQ1, and I seem to remember each expansion being extremely large, so I am not sure why EQ2 content is so tiny.
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Feldon
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Lessing,
The Hole could definitely use a map. And perhaps some kind of symbolism like a blue portal or signage, green portal or signage, and red portal or signage to distinguish the 3 areas. To be a contested zone, they could have added more mobs off to the sides (not cluttering up the main paths) as optional content. The Hole was light on mobs in my opinion.
Ultimately, it comes down to, what’s the bang-for-the-buck? 1 hour killing group content should = 1 hour of solo questing as far as gaining levels or AA points.
GP,
I understand your points, but saying “not having the treadmill didn’t make TSO awesome” doesn’t mean we need the treadmill. It means that the team need to do something other than the ‘typical expansion (no cap raise)’ and the ‘typical expansion (cap raise)’. Somehow, we have to get back to player growth, clear itemization, AND great content year-in and year-out. And I’m not sure how that happens.
Also, I don’t know how much EQ2 dev time from SF (not TSO) was diverted to FreeRealms.
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GP
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Good Points Feldon
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Zizzu
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No doubt SoE dropped the ball on this one. Seeing people level in ONE day from 80 to 90 was the biggest mistake SoE every done. Basically, SoE made leveling ez mode and also made the expansion pretty much worthless. On top of that, several Devs were either dismissed or put on suspension. Also, Brenlo, the FORMER Senior Producer, is now history… thus making this expansion the worst ever. Now, SoE is trying to pick up the pieces, break in a new Senior Producer who has zero experience with EQ2, and move forward with another expansion that will either make or break this game: Velious.
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zerigo
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I though TSO was the best expansion to date. Now, I know there was a lot of things added in between launch of TSO and Sf. But at launch came with 20+ group zones, ranged from so easy its 3 man-able, to zones that took lots of practice to beat. The 12 zones that came with SF were boring after a few weeks, and had huge jumps in difficulty. Solo content was boring as hell, and lacked rewards worth doing them. Had i not leveled to 90 in the hole in a day, i don’t know if would still be playing. Having said that i think the content in SF was not worth the ticket. However, the raid content seems pretty solid so far, but the itemization need tons of work, i still don’t know what to expect to drop when we kill stuff.
-Z
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Feldon
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For Itemization and Group content, TSO was pretty solid in my opinion. But they painted themselves into a development corner.
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shazz
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Interesting article Feldon thanks. I feel we were left in a hole with SF after questing and trying different formula’s our toons sitting at level 87/88 what now, it isn’t always easy to get full groups to run the instances, so we self mentored ran Scaleborn to grind out the last levels to 90.
We all play Eq2 in different ways, not all of us end up raiding, so I applauded the changes for people to be able to do 3/4 man groups it opened up some content but The Hole, the few times we have ran it has been confusing to say the least, the quests, getting around it.
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Lomax
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I’m not a fan of the Hole. I only experienced it a long time after launch and found its grindy and not very rewarding XP wise (about 2 hours gets me 1/3rd of a level for a good run). In principle the idea of an open dungeon is nice but the people asking for it are after something completely different in game play from me.
Personally I found SOS and The Hole to both be very grindy (Others have said the same about SOS, I remember one of the older raid guild tanks who formed a group up for there describing it as dull, graphically it is ok, but I understand where he’s coming from there), repetitive mobs to kill with the occasional boss type mob around, just killing over and over again makes me feel like I’m participating in a game zone instead of adventuring in Norrath.
I would instead like to have seen more random events happening in there, patrols wandering around with the occasional named that entices us to keep on playing. A few puzzles with walls/moving blocks/set piece rooms for X number of people would also have spiced things up. On one hand we complain about low frame rates in the game, and yet you cannot move in the hole without pulling on mob, literally end to end I have to shuffle forwards 5 yards to pull the next mobs, then 5 yards and pull etc.
How about instead we have this big vast zone, and we adventure through it finding mobs here and there instead? Imagine the excitement when you find a cavern where a band of orcs have setup camp there? Or maybe with a scattering of dead adventurer bodies with the monster that killed them still prowling around etc. Or a room, glowing with light that has chests in there which attack you! That would just be so much more imaginative and fun then the current wall to wall monster killing grind.
The other part of the grindyness though seems to be a growing problem with EQ2, they need to slow things down, make mobs then hit harder and give them abilities that we care about more. There is just way too much AoE going on, some people like it and just want a zone that gives endless grinding, personally I find that dull as I don’t play EQ2 to earn XP and collect digital loot, I play it to have fun.
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Sigtyr
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I totally agree with Feldon here, me and my wife duo mostly and we had a hard time keeping the interest up in the ROK soloquest 2. Now it seems that SF is just another boring solo timeline with either no challenge or too hard content.
Like Lomax I play to have fun and what happened to group dungeons that where doable? What happened to the idea that if you do dungeons while leveling up you will have a pretty good equipment in the end, nowadays leveling and equipment are 2 different things and especially equipment is very grindy and more or less unattainable for casual players.
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Twisted_Mentat
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TBH i’ve found that the best duo/trio content now are TSO instances, opened by a level 80 (auto-mentored if need be, remember that only zones that auto-scale need to have this done) character.
The increased level cap and gear options have turned most of the easy zones into something easily beaten by pretty much any duo combination, while the toughest zones are now a lot more forgiving of mistakes and casualy geared characters. Best of all you can do the daily shard quests and earn some decent AA and marks towards TSO shard armour for your casual main, or leveling alt. IMO shard armour is still the best armour option until 89-90, the SF quested gear’s ok, but nothing special.
While this is not a great option for everyone, many of these zones would not have been visted by more casual types that did not meet the(then) strict requirements these zones had the 1st time around. If your a raider then obviously you have better options, this is strictly to help out the more casual player.
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Charn
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There are two contested zones that really stood out as great zones in EQ2 for me (and two somewhat less popular, though fun zones as well): The Living Tombs (and to a lesser extent, The Silent City) and The Sanctum of the Scaleborn (as well as Palace of the Awakened). The reason for this (imo) are 2 fold:
1. They had solo AND group content (though less in Sanctum in the beginning, less in Silent City, almost none in the Palace). This allowed people to be productive while looking for a group. It was OKAY to be solo because you had stuff you could kill and quests you could do. If you happened to get a group, great! You could go deeper in, but no one wants to sit in a zone and /shout LFG! for hours while doing nothing (at least in EQ1 you had the excitement of dodging a “Train to Zone!”).
2. They had all had huge, VERY in-depth and lengthy quest lines that had an awesome reward at the end. The Peacock quests took you through the Tombs and the Silent City, and many of the quests COULD be done solo or with a small group while you looked for a larger one. And, of course, The Claymore quest series took you through Sanctum, into PoA then ultimately into x2 and x4 raid zones.
The Hole has . . . umm . . well, quests I can do to get enough faction with all three factions so I can, . . . umm . . . buy appearance gear . . .oh, and it also has some quests I can do and mobs I can kill to grind my way to 90 so I can, uhh, . . .umm, . . .I guess do instances and stuff. Of course, if I could have gotten a group to DO instances, I would have been doing some of the lower level instances on my way TO 90, getting better drops and earning Marks so I can buy better gear (and soon, fabled gear as well). Basically, the ONLY reason to go into the Hole in the first place seems to be just to grind my way through levels ’cause I can’t find a full group of six . . . which, to me, is a lackluster reason at best.
To me, Sony would be better off making a contested zone with a good mix of solo content in the beginning of a zone (and enough of it) as well as a lot of group content deeper in. AND, tie in a huge quest line at the expansion’s launch (and not months and months after the expansion was out . . . I’m looking at you EoF and the Sword of Destiny quest /tsk /tsk). Otherwise, these will be little used and pointless zones and the time to develop them could have been better served elsewhere.
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