Dungeons Make Raid Mechanics More Intuitive

I don't know how far beginner players usually go in terms of content, but I know they DEFINITELY do NotG. I remember doing the raid for the first time not knowing what's going on most of the time, spending it watching two LvL105 players flying around and winning. It wasn't a fun experience at all, and I can tell I'm not the only one in this stance with all the first-timers I've done the raid with.

Being an introductory raid, NotG needs to leave a good first impression that leaves starter players feeling satisfied regardless of whether they win or lose. The raid is great! It just needs to be improved a little further. Here are some aspects of NotG that can be worked on:


INTUITIVENESS
Definitely the number one aspect that can be improved on is how easy it is to tell what's going on. Entering a raid room immediately plunges you into action, leaving little room to read the room instructions lest your teammates leave you behind, which then creates a lot of pressure on the beginner players to follow suit.

One way to remedy this is to add a longer downtime before a raid room starts (like the countdown before lootruns). You can also put a short introduction about the room in a title text so beginners know what to expect. Giving players more time to process what's going on will make the experience less frustrating.

DIFFICULTY
Being an introductory content *and* a raid, NotG needs to strike a balance in terms of difficulty. NotG needs to be easy enough to be enjoyable to new players, but hard enough to fit the raid standards. As we all know, it's incredibly challenging to beat NotG with three at-level players. This doesn't necessarily warrant a nerf, however. Instead, you can make NotG easier by, again, making it intuitive.

Fighting the boss for the first time can be overwhelming with all the noises, particles, and damage everywhere unnecessarily adding to the difficulty. This can be fixed by easing players in to the boss fight mechanics. Showing the threat of holes, one-shotting yellow texts, and lava particles everywhere early on familiarizes first-timers to the boss fight, making it a lot easier to tell what's going on and how to deal with it.



I personally love NotG, but it took a lot of time and patience before it grew on me. I like to do the raid at-level because I want to trust that the suggested level for it is reliable. By giving NotG some love and attention, it can show to new players that raids can be a fun and exciting content that they can look forward to.

 

The title of "Rework Nest of the Grootslangs" is very misleading. I was about ready to come in here and ask if you had a few screws loose. What I think you should be advocating for is for raids to be explained better. NoTG, gameplay wise, is pretty good now. Its been nerfed more times than I have fingers to count to the point that you could definitely do it at level if you arent using random hodgepodge gear.
Instead of changing anything in the raid, I think it would be better if there was some way you could get in game instructions on how raids work, and give you very basic example challenges of stuff like Hold, which occurs in all four of the raids. This way the player can not only learn the goal of doing a raid, but also the meaning of some of the words used in the room explanations, like "hold", "destroy", "platform", and "gather"
Also, the "upcoming attacks" do not one-shot. You'd have to be low for them to kill you.

 

ok yeah you're right. changing it now

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Sprinkling those challenges everywhere like in caves, dungeons, quests, can definitely help players get used to those mechanics (much like SLAY challenges). But I understand that it's a pretty huge ask to do so.

I agree with the in-game instructions yeah, like a tab in the content book where there's information about game mechanics, including raid challenges.

I did mention adding a delay before a challenge room starts so players can read the instructions first, but I don't know how effective that would be in practice.

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I'm guessing they stack on top of each other sometimes. It's not exactly "one-shot" but you do take all the damage at once.

 

Me meanwhile instantly dying with 40k ehp…
They don’t exactly oneshot but they are really annoying and can apparently stack (which should not be the case considering it is supposed to be an introductory raid). Additionally the boss (mainly the last one) could move a little slower/ use Charge less often since it 1. deals a lot of damage to the player it is locked onto, which is a big threat to low level players who may not be able to get away since they aren’t aware of its speed and 2. is just painful to hit even as a high level player if it is not locked onto you since it moves so fast (it often completely dodges all 7 spin attacks from my trickster, not to mention having to hit arrow bombs for focus on archer)