Remove Frost Dragon from Onslaught

I suggest removing the frost dragon from onslaught before dd2 support is sunsetted. Just the dragon, not the drakenlord.

I thought the Drakenfrost update was awesome, as are most of the updates. (Pirates and protean shift were amazing)

But I really was confused with making a dragon fly around the map freezing lanes a mandatory repeated unavoidable experience in onslaught, seems very out of place. Removing the dragon from onslaught would be an improvement.

- It makes ancient power reset grind worse. I don't mind the time investment, but this makes it more annoying. AP grind with limited resources is bad enough. More annoying is the last thing AP grind needed to be.

- The dragon is an incursion experience, it doesn't belong in onslaught. The other incursion type bosses aren't in onslaught.

- No matter how fast you are at lighting torches the lanes get frozen momentarily, totally unavoidable. This doesn't feel good as part of the normal gameplay.

- Console performance issues make twitchy hero control questionable. Forcing players to run around the map literally putting out fires (or lighting them) in addition to the normal gameplay just makes frame rate drops and stutters and delayed or ignored inputs much worse to experience. At least mastery was temporary, but onslaught is the entire endgame, why make it annoying with the frost dragon?

EDIT: I think it would be acceptable to make the first floor the repeating drakenfrost dragon map appears to be 89 so it doesn't affect the AP reset grind.

EDIT: Maybe make x9 maps random between frost keep and temple so people can reroll to get the other map if they prefer.

Edited March 18, 2019 by oxbowdvcorlone

dd2 staff if you see this plz do what he says

Or at least put drakenfrost keep after floor 80 so it doesn't interfere with AP reset grind

Got a point there... the dragon has swag

I'd like to see the map on rotation in Onslaught, but sans the dragon mechanic. 

Yeah, the map is awesome

Yeah I definitely agree with this. That mechanic in Onslaught is not fun. It's beatable, I'm not complaining that it's hard. But it's still annoying. I would really love to play that map in it's regular version. Heck, I even created a thread about this recently too.

I know hitting The Lost Temple all the time would be stale which is why I also agree on not going back to the time where that map is on every 5/5 and 9/9. So I'd rather fight Betsy every 9th floor now. Boy, I really missed playing that level (in full force).

Edited March 12, 2019 by Paloverde zfogshooterz

I'll chime in on your thread too... moar bandwidth on this subject is good ;D

I guess I've done lost temple so many times it's grown on me. Used to dislike it but that was with 3 map floors... now aside from bugs I kinda like it.

But running around lighting torches is not fun. It's really annoying while doing AP reset grind.

Edited March 12, 2019 by oxbowdvcorlone

9 hours ago, oxbowdvcorlone said:

I'll chime in on your thread too... moar bandwidth on this subject is good ;D

I guess I've done lost temple so many times it's grown on me. Used to dislike it but that was with 3 map floors... now aside from bugs I kinda like it.

But running around lighting torches is not fun. It's really annoying while doing AP reset grind.

Yeah, It's mainly the three-map floors that got me really tired of the Lost Temple sometimes. But that is a dope map I have to say too. Was literally amazing the first time I loaded into that map. :)

Drakenlorded DK is already annoying and unfun when I'm just climbing Onslaught. I have not hit the point of encountering that map in my AP runs so...I can't imagine how much more unfun that would be.

Edited March 13, 2019 by Paloverde zfogshooterz

im at the point i need to do Dragon Frost Keep every AP now.. and witht he announcement of DDA i cant see the point in continuing the AP grind.. I'd love to and probably would continue with DFK wasnt in the list of maps.. at least the dragon part of it the rest of the map would be fine without the frozen lane mechanic

11 hours ago, LJMjollnir said:

im at the point i need to do Dragon Frost Keep every AP now.. and witht he announcement of DDA i cant see the point in continuing the AP grind.. I'd love to and probably would continue with DFK wasnt in the list of maps.. at least the dragon part of it the rest of the map would be fine without the frozen lane mechanic

I'm also considering to stop playing. The AP grind is not that fun, and with the dragon it's just annoying. Maybe time to go to another game until DDA is out.

Deleted

Edited March 14, 2019 by oxbowdvcorlone

11 hours ago, LJMjollnir said:

im at the point i need to do Dragon Frost Keep every AP now.. and witht he announcement of DDA i cant see the point in continuing the AP grind.. I'd love to and probably would continue with DFK wasnt in the list of maps.. at least the dragon part of it the rest of the map would be fine without the frozen lane mechanic

 

On 3/13/2019 at 12:53 AM, Paloverde zfogshooterz said:

Yeah, It's mainly the three-map floors that got me really tired of the Lost Temple sometimes. But that is a dope map I have to say too. Was literally amazing the first time I loaded into that map. :)

Drakenlorded DK is already annoying and unfun when I'm just climbing Onslaught. I have not hit the point of encountering that map in my AP runs so...I can't imagine how much more unfun that would be.

I agree with both of you. I was in the middle of AP reset grind and this freezing mechanic is the 3rd time they've made the AP reset grind worse. I started playing another game assuming they'd eventually adjust AP to be less annoying. Now that DDA is in the works I'm worried that adjustment may never come.

i doubt it will get changed and i stopped playing because of how ridiculously unfun it is heh . one of my last posts on the forums regarding dd2 updates was "DD3 or bust" . no disrespect but it feels like who ever came up with some of these ideas doesn't really play the game . i cant believe people are not complaining about the " a mythical item has appeared" spam in the chat window lol . i wanted to climb high in onslaught but there is just too many annoying things going on in the game for me to do so . my new addiction is The Long Dark Interloper runs .

i have backed DD:A though and i am very optimistic about it :) 

I just had another idea... what if frost keep is optional... like make every x4 and x9 map random between frost keep or lost temple. Then people can reroll to play which one the want.

Or maybe keep temple x4 and make x9 random frost keep or temple.

Seems some people prefer the frost dragon over lost temple (I'd rather play temple)... But if it's random someone could just reroll until they got temple or frost keep if they prefer.

Edited March 18, 2019 by oxbowdvcorlone

6 hours ago, oxbowdvcorlone said:

But if it's random someone could just reroll until they got temple or frost keep if they prefer.

Sounds like the eternal rerolling to avoid headstrong so players can cheese with WM. Not really challenging you if you opt to skip any challenge. I remember a day when you only had 3 rerolls for a floor and each floor had 3 maps so you had to make a choice of when to spend those rerolls, now people just spam them.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Exglint

I lean towards appreciating the unique challenge of the keep. I suppose every 20 levels would be more convenient, but I feel like it's working as intended i.e. forcing me to actually pay attention and try hard. With the ("new") retry wave feature, we probably need something like this, even if it can be frustrating to fail a wave.

I know it's working as intended. Mastery was challenging. I never really protested mastery. But ancient power is an extended grind.

In general I (and many players) are not a fan of challenging being hero focused. I don't know if it's because I play on console but the hero control has never been "crispy" and gameplay is difficult because of stutters, frame drops, ignored and delayed inputs. Hero focused challenge makes the game uncomfortable to play and not fun imho.

I like lane modifiers and things that challenge build creativity. But the torch lighting stresses hero piloting.

Again if these things were something you complete and be done with it'd be tolerable. But to lace the entire endgame grind with it is unbearable imho. Especially pushing the AP grind over the edge for me (I'm not alone).

Dd2 is not a great action shooter or whatever... dd2 is however a really fantastic tower defense game.

I respect that some people just want the build as fast as possible and want the interesting part to be their hero control action.

My favorite part of tower defense is making a plan, putting a defense together, building it, and watching the symphony of destruction. I'm ok with losing because my build or plan needs to be better. I'm not ok with losing because the game frustratingly didn't register my shooting a torch fast enough so mobs walked through frozen defenses all while I wasn't able to deal with a boss because I was forced to light torches during combat... over and over again while I grind AP.

Edited March 19, 2019 by oxbowdvcorlone

11 hours ago, oxbowdvcorlone said:

My favorite part of tower defense is making a plan, putting a defense together, building it, and watching the symphony of destruction. I'm ok with losing because my build or plan needs to be better. I'm not ok with losing because the game frustratingly didn't register my shooting a torch fast enough so mobs walked through frozen defenses all while I wasn't able to deal with a boss because I was forced to light torches during combat... over and over again while I grind AP.

I wish Lawlta or someone from CG would weigh in on this. I'm kinda surprised this is the direction the game has taken. If this was the spirit of DD2 from the beginning I don't know if I would have put over 1000 hours into the game.

If there is absolutely no hope that the lane freezing dragon would ever be separated from the AP grind then that would be good to know... And it would be clearer to players what CG's vision is like for their tower defense franchise... DD2 and DDA.

Edited March 19, 2019 by oxbowdvcorlone

DD2 broke from DD1 because players complained about AFK mechanics. We didn't want maps where you just sit around, so therefore elements that force you to move around were introduced - assassins, rollers, etc. 

However we now face the opposite issue - missing the ability to AFK at times. 

To me, DDA would be more successful if different game modes were made with this in mind. Some modes should be able to AFK, while others shouldn't. Mix things up, and don't universally apply one or the other to the whole game.

I agree. I don't want to throw around the term "afk" tho...

Ideally it would be nice if there were 2 paths to the same thing. 2 ways to grind AP, 2 options to grind loots...

1 option would be more hero action focused where the challenge would center around your hero control (like frost keep). Might be a little annoying but the tradeoff could be that the map is faster and easier to build.

2nd option would be less hero focused and more build focused (like lost temple). No annoying hero action game mechanics but more tricky lane building. Would take longer and be more annoying to build but tradeoff is you wouldn't have annoying hero control challenges.

I feel like CG has tried to cater to both kinds of players but have put both of these elements in the extreme.

Up until mastery and the frost dragon the focus has been on building. Now the introduction of annoying hero challenges in the grind has upset players like myself who prefer the tower defense building part of the game.

I think players being able to choose frost keep or lost temple in onslaught would resolve this.

Edited March 19, 2019 by oxbowdvcorlone

15 hours ago, oxbowdvcorlone said:

I know it's working as intended. Mastery was challenging. I never really protested mastery. But ancient power is an extended grind.

In general I (and many players) are not a fan of challenging being hero focused. I don't know if it's because I play on console but the hero control has never been "crispy" and gameplay is difficult because of stutters, frame drops, ignored and delayed inputs. Hero focused challenge makes the game uncomfortable to play and not fun imho.

I like lane modifiers and things that challenge build creativity. But the torch lighting stresses hero piloting.

Again if these things were something you complete and be done with it'd be tolerable. But to lace the entire endgame grind with it is unbearable imho. Especially pushing the AP grind over the edge for me (I'm not alone).

Dd2 is not a great action shooter or whatever... dd2 is however a really fantastic tower defense game.

I respect that some people just want the build as fast as possible and want the interesting part to be their hero control action.

My favorite part of tower defense is making a plan, putting a defense together, building it, and watching the symphony of destruction. I'm ok with losing because my build or plan needs to be better. I'm not ok with losing because the game frustratingly didn't register my shooting a torch fast enough so mobs walked through frozen defenses all while I wasn't able to deal with a boss because I was forced to light torches during combat... over and over again while I grind AP.

My usual playstyle hero-wise is monitoring the lanes and react/response if anything goes wrong. So having to light the torches while also anticipating the frozen lanes is sorta distracting in some way. And indeed there are some cases where I couldn't deal with the situation just because of frozen blocks....

Which is also why I prefer the lost temple and also the replay wave was a great QoL feature. If I lost, I'd just adjust what wrong and we're good to go. In Drakenfrost Keep I'm at the mercy of plethora of variables of stuff that can go very wrong due to my inability to react/judge correctly. Which is pretty annoying.

That feature alone in Nightmare or Just Chaos would be ok as there isn't any lane challenges I have to worry about. I would be able to focus on the dragon completely which is why it's pure incursion - it's like a mini-game style gameplay. There's a reason I never like Chaos mixing with incursion from the very start.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Paloverde zfogshooterz

Yup I feel the same way. I can't watch my build and study the behavior of enemies and see how things are working if I'm running around lighting torches. Assassins are bad enough for this but I've learned to deal with assassins *by using cc in my defense builds*.

There is no build strategy that helps light torches

Edited March 19, 2019 by oxbowdvcorlone

5 minutes ago, oxbowdvcorlone said:

Yup I feel the same way. I can't watch my build and study the behavior of enemies and see how things are working if I'm running around lighting torches. Assassins are bad enough for this but I've learned to deal with assassins *by using cc in my defense builds*. There is no build strategy that helps light torches

I managed to at least ease myself a bit by adding Automation to my WMs. However, with terrible lane schedules things can still go completely wrong. Definitely not fun.

Personally "*by using cc in my defense builds*" does help, but not really either. There are times where you have to light a torch or the situation was so bad but you don't have time to hit a CC area either which results you in getting screwed by them when you're going to light a torch or deal with the situation.

I will also add my $0.02 here in that it sucks for the Onslaught grind. It's just too much, especially since you might not be optimized since you're resetting a lot doing the A.P. grind. The lane B.S. (mutators), the Assassins, the (what feels like) "not enough d.u.'s" for the map and then the Dragon is just too much...especially if you are doing solo. You can't be everywhere at once.

Edited March 21, 2019 by Tigorus