Treasure Room is Far Too Confusing

I spent my entire first run in the first room and came out with over 400g, ~24 parchments, around 15 motes of harmony, 3 Shan'ze stones, 15 Elder Charms, and a few greens.

Potentially not the most lucrative strategy, but really cleaning up that first room and then of course finding keys to open the chests at the end after time runs out worked pretty well.

I think a week lockout for a five minute run is excessive.

There's no lockout. You can run it for as many keys as you have, and you can find more than one key per week, although it is suitably rare.

Considering the whole idea is you're heading into a treasure room, and we want it to feel exciting that you're able to come out with a bunch of treasure, yeah of course we're not going to let you chain-run it and just get tons and tons of gold and tons and tons of items. We'd have to reduce the amount of treasure you can find considerably, which really undermines the entire fantasy of being in a treasure room.

The change in drop rate functions as an effective lockout. It's not exactly like other lockout mechanics, and there is a possibility of exception, but I think it's reasonable to consider it just like other lockouts. Once you've gotten one key, you would probably waste tremendous amounts of time if you set your sights on getting a second key each week.

Also, when you said you're not going to let people chain run it to get tons and tons and tons of items, you make it sound like that was what I suggested. My feeling is that the scenario is punishingly short to become familiar with on what is effectively a once a week basis FIVE MINUTE event.

For sure, and that's all reasonable. You can say "once a week" and be mostly correct, my intent was to correct a common misconception that it's literally 1 key per week. You can argue it's close enough, but my goal is accuracy in information.

What I would have done is allow a person to zone into the scenario, but then be able to take a "practice" option where you get no rewards. When Blizzard's people did internal testing on this stuff, I'm sure it felt like a lot more fun. They probably did not wait a week between each time they tested it out. I think it's extremely easy to forget how SHORT five minutes is and how LONG a week is in real time.

I think it's reasonable to expect a tutorial or practice run on everything in the game, because in general we're fairly experience-focused with everything we do. We tend to go away from punishing mechanics, we try to make things clear and concise, and we want the experience to be fun at every moment. That said, this is running into a room of free stuff to pick up, and even if you only open three of four chests, that's three or four chests of free stuff for 5 minutes of just running around. Obviously at the end of that you may be frustrated that you didn't do better, but I don't think that means we need to rush out and make a tutorial. It's ok that you didn't do well your first time. Next time you'll do better. It's free stuff. It's supposed to be high-tension, and everyone that goes in thinks they can do better next time. Letting people discover how something works is OK sometimes, not everything needs a tutorial, especially when it's a piece of content for level-capped characters that's essentially for fun and doesn't directly increase the power of your character.

The fun thing about soloing old instances is that you get to take your time and take in the atmosphere and the artwork. You notice a lot of things that you miss out when you were doing it with a group because in a group it's "gogogogo".

So what did you guys do with the game's very first "solo scenario"? You added a timer ...

But ... it's not supposed to be like soloing old instances. :)

I spent my entire first run in the first room and came out with over 400g, ~24 parchments, around 15 motes of harmony, 3 Shan'ze stones, 15 Elder Charms, and a few greens.

Potentially not the most lucrative strategy, but really cleaning up that first room and then of course finding keys to open the chests at the end after time runs out worked pretty well.

...wow.

I opened all but 2 chests in the first room. Couldn't figure out where to go when I got to the end, so I just went back and got the ones I'd skipped. I got a total of: 3 elder charms and a lot of gold.

Of course, I've also gone 0 for 12 in LFR this week. I think my random number generator is broken.

Hah! Well... yeah maybe I just got lucky. Haven't done my run this week, and now I'm getting nervous. ;)

For sure, and that's all reasonable. You can say "once a week" and be mostly correct, my intent was to correct a common misconception that it's literally 1 key per week. You can argue it's close enough, but my goal is accuracy in information.

That's fair. It is good for anyone curious to know the exact situation.

03/13/2013 06:54 PMPosted by Bashiok

I think it's reasonable to expect a tutorial or practice run on everything in the game, because in general we're fairly experience-focused with everything we do. We tend to go away from punishing mechanics, we try to make things clear and concise, and we want the experience to be fun at every moment. That said, this is running into a room of free stuff to pick up, and even if you only open three of four chests, that's three or four chests of free stuff for 5 minutes of just running around. Obviously at the end of that you may be frustrated that you didn't do better, but I don't think that means we need to rush out and make a tutorial. It's ok that you didn't do well your first time. Next time you'll do better. It's free stuff. It's supposed to be high-tension, and everyone that goes in thinks they can do better next time. Letting people discover how something works is OK sometimes, not everything needs a tutorial, especially when it's a piece of content for level-capped characters that's essentially for fun and doesn't directly increase the power of your character.

Hey now, my first time I killed the boss and got out with Tenwu. But of course, I went to youtube to look this stuff up before my first time. I'm not sure that's a good thing for players to feel like is the *right* approach. And right now, that is very much the right approach. You are simply cheating yourself if you don't make use of third party resources on this.

I'm also not a fan of the term "tutorial." People hear "tutorial" and they think of pop ups, NPC's offering tips, and the like. It can be fun to explore yourself. It's not fun when exploration feels punishing to your weekly five-minute long opportunity.

I admit, if this were just a series of rooms linked together with no major goal other than hopefully opening chests, I'd feel different. In large part, my feelings about this are influenced by the fact that they also decided to attach achievement parts to it. Five minutes a week to try to learn the place for these achievements just feels obnoxious.

But that's true of anything. You're at a disadvantage for anything if you don't look at a guide first. And certainly if you're an achievement hunter you would. If you're just a casual player you might jump in, go WHAT IS HAPPENING and run around furiously trying to open chests ... and that's kind of what it should be like. It should be high stress. There are supposed to be traps and events to slow you down that you aren't aware of. If you didn't open a ton of chests that's ok, it's free stuff even if you only open 1.

Yes you're at a disadvantage if you don't buy the strategy guide for every new game that comes out, but discovery of the game, its mechanics, trying to interpret the design intent, and overcoming those challenges is part of what makes games fun. At least for me. If you want to look up videos for everything before trying them though you can.

I think the disconnect here is if you feel like this is a piece of content that owes you something; a minimum reward level and you feel cheated if you're not allowed to achieve that. It's not. It's free stuff that isn't directly related to character growth or improvement. You can run it every week or never run it and probably not be any better or worse off in the long run. It's just fun. If fun is looking up the strategies beforehand, cool, and if not, good luck!