TOPIC: Feedback for V7

Andrew I forgot to mention that Sean, the beggar, and the guard were all awesome on Sunday! … and the traitorous one, almost forgot.

I also forgot to mention, in the last room, when the rolls were revealed one at a time it would have been very cool if the “reveal order” were not always alphabetical. Having only run once maybe it was luck of the RNG that we did get an “in order” reveal. I’m not sure if the party should/could create their order, or if it should be random (or something based off a stat like dexterity or something). Might have the ranged folks go first all the time that way though. Just a thought!

I had a blast, thank you TD!

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The theming was great, the story gave it a good sense of place and purpose. I really liked the puzzles, I felt clever getting the answers to them, and it was always a group effort. I really liked how the last puzzle required players to remember earlier encounters, it makes the world feel lived in when you have carry over like that and each room isn't fully siloed from every other room.

My only real request is that puppets should be used more for monsters. That's not because the animation isn't solid, it absolutely was and the ghost was super creepy. I just really like puppets and enjoy when TD uses them. It's part of what gives TD its unique charm.

My feedback/review/experience this weekend. Some of this was relied to Andrew but all of it wasn't.

I waited till today and am having salsa no is it won't be as negative as it could be.

Overall I think this is my least favorite of the VTD and definitely had the worst experience of VTD.

On my first run on Friday the DM was having some sort of issue that made the video feed so bad at times that no one could read the clues. I do not fault the DM or TD for this. It happens, that said it made for a less than desirable experience. We then hit Plunder. It was worse than I expected because of the ever rolling dices (which was nice to see fixed after Friday). Why was Plunder worse. We run into a guard that is on the other side of a locked gate AFTER we have experienced a NPC that was actually a monster in disguise. Because of this I wasn't certain we should even open the gate for them. The videos of the guard and Gilbert took too much time for our first playthrough (including the discussion if we should attempt to open the gate). Plunder for me was just awful. It is not a strategy game. It is a gambling game. And I 100% understand that there are folks that enjoy this type of game. But for me it was like watching someone play slots. There was very little to do in the game. Roll and wait. Roll and wait. I could go on and on about how little I liked Plunder but this is about the entire experience and not just what I felt was 1 really bad room. The tdcharactercreator.com kicked out out of it it multiple times, I think the app was doing the same thing. I understand there was a bug that was fixed. Again not something that I fault TD or the website for. This stuff happens. Again though it does not make for the best experience. When we got to epilogue I voiced my extreme displeasure for Plunder, as did some others. We had a variety of reasons. Andrew, and I love Andrew and think he does an excellent job in epilogue, I think this one time he failed us. After we voiced our displeasure with Plunder he attempted to defend it. Because of that we felt the need to point out where we thought his defense was weak or wrong. I think he should just been okay I will note that, do you have any other feedback. He then did move us to other feedback of the dungeon, but because he was so defensive of Plunder I think it tainted our feedback on the rest of the run. Those 4 misses for me (bad video, Plunder, crashing website, and Andrew) made it the worst VTD experience I have had. HOWEVER the worst experience is not all bad.

Room 1 I love that we had people dressed as monsters instead of more cgi. I understand why video loops are used, but I would prefer a golem with live feed of monsters. It makes combat more alive than combat that I alreday feel is the weakest part of VTD. Again I understand that video feeds mean there is less 'overhead' and means overall we get more VTD. It just makes each combat less special to me.

Room 2 I liked the puzzle. Felt it was complex without being overly. I think solving though really helped on how the golem entered the room. It seemed very possible not to see there was a clock. Looking around the room for other stuff seems to seldom be helpful in VTD puzzles (sometimes it is but often not so), so I don't know how many groups asked to look around or not. Still I liked the puzzle. It seemed like it was not a 1 person puzzle, even though it could be solved by 1. If someone figured out the V in Raven then they might not know what the other letters/numbers are.

Room 3 I liked the animation of the ghost. It looked good. The combat itself was nothing special, but it didn't have to be. I know there was lots of debate often what color the ghost was so that might be something to watch out for when it matters.

Room 4. Plunder. I could make an entire post about why I don't like it, but I will leave it that I found the room to be boring if nothing else.

Room 5 I again liked having the actor as the fight, though again would prefer non-video loops. I think it worked well though and better than the orcs. I think because how he was defeated vs how they were seemed to work better, but I don't know.

Room 6 I liked the puzzle, though it seemed odd to have to climb the stairs to get to working on the puzzle, I imagine that was so Warton could make it to there from where ever he actually was. Which we did have to start with the still overlay once because I am guessing he was not back yet.

Room 7 I hated the cgi here. It added nothing to the room. Though I don't know what could have been done but with the diceroller occupying the screen often maybe it being boring was okay. To be clear I am saying the cgi was boring but not the combat. I thought in concept it was interesting. Depending on the DM though it seemed it could be very sluggish combat.

Other overall comments. The noisebleed over between rooms was bad. It wasn't something I thought to mention any time, but did make hearing either the NPC or other players difficult at times. The diceroller worked a lot better than I feared. I know it makes combat a lot more effiencet for the DM's and I think that is good, I worry though what impact that might have on dungeon design. Time will tell if it does. I also think having it up over what can be great set design is a negative, but a minor one. I don't like that giving to the beggar was an all or nothing.....unless it has an effect in dungeon (which it did not seem to). Granted it might be harder for the DM to track who said yes and who said no, but I think it would be worth it for group cohesion. I don't know. I don't know if anyone else felt this way, but I didn't like that it had to be a split decision choice that party memebers could pressure other part members to get their way. This is a minor thing for me because I never felt pressured, but not certain if anyone else did. I did want to make sure I wasn't ever pressuring anyone. Lastly I felt the theme was solid but the story seemed missing in this one more than any other we have had. We were running through the city to fight pirates. Not much of a story. It didn't feel like a grand quest to retrieve something or save the dwarves or stop the Necro-Lich.

I did enjoy some of my other runs a lot. So saying it was the worst VTD doesn't mean it was bad (that one run was). It just was the worst in my opinion.

EDIT: Thought of 1 additional thing, I personally did not like the removal of the skill check for rogues. Even though if I play a rogue I often just crowbar the box, my group's rogue like the skill check and I can understand why). It makes the rogues unique. Just auto getting the clue/treasure takes away from them for some players. Again a minor thing for me, but something that I felt may have an impact on others positive or negative so should be looked at again.

Ignoring the impact of the dice roller:

Theme was solid.

Look was solid. I don't have a problem with animation, so I liked room 3 the best and can do without looping monsters waving weapons at the party. Room 5 was the weakest to me as there was a guy in a costume gesturing. Better death scenes better. Room 1 wasted a lot of putting someone in a costume.

The actual puzzles were fine. At no point was I "under" Plunder! Whoa, that rhymes. Plunder! - best rhyming title ever. Now, I'm totally lobbying for more Plunder! - Jeff, John, Dan, Lori, et al, can all be playing Plunder! in the backgrounds of actual puzzle rooms.

Combats elements were generally good. However, half the combats being spell-y is bad. If you want AC to matter, don't have multiple rooms that ignore it. Party Retribution is irrelevant when you don't get attacked. I'm not that interested in more of the room 1 type fights as I've now seen that a number of times. Room 3 would have interested me much more if I was more engaged in what was going on in combat on these runs and if it was far more difficult.

Combat difficulty was too easy. Rooms 1, 3, and 5 felt like inevitable wins. Room 7 was interesting, but it was an inevitable win on most of my runs, which other VTD bosses weren't even when you metagamed against them.

Room 1 shouldn't have bothered with the Elven bonus - just far too esoteric to matter. Having a second construct would have been way better. Normally, I would take offense at room 5's antimagic stuff, but, again, it was so inconsequential that I just didn't really care what we needed to do to win.

Sound bleed was annoying, of course.

With only one path and no ability to meta Elven, meaningfully Gremlin a run, or whatever, it just felt limited in what it was offering. Could be that combat wasn't more difficult and Plunder! existing that contributed to the feel that there wasn't a lot going on. Did people find Easter Eggs?

I liked the weekend. My interest in cutting back on runs is entirely dice roller related as opposed to having anything to do with the dungeon.

I played Sunday and had an overall positive time. I thought the mix of CG, video reel, and live NPCs on set were all great.

A lot has been said about Plunder that I don’t need to repeat, but I will add that I didn’t enjoy it. The smack talking NPC got me a little steamed up too!

The dice roller went ok, though I know our wizards had to bust out the calculators. Combat didn’t seem to go slower than other VTDs. The big loss for me is that I missed the interactivity of narrating my own turn. I just got to press a button, see a number, and we moved on. It did, however, free up my attention to take in the complex room 7 encounter. I thought it was bold to introduce that and the dice roller, but I appreciated the strategy needed. I hope that damage types and effects are clarified for future encounters though.

Thanks to Matt our DM, and Walton who was a good sport when I suggested he should ride the ballista.

macxdmg wrote: I also forgot to mention, in the last room, when the rolls were revealed one at a time it would have been very cool if the “reveal order” were not always alphabetical.

Our DM asked us on one of our runs if we wanted him to use a different order or stick with alpha (we just left it at alpha), so there appears to be some level of control there for them.

I'm with the others on Plunder! being my least favorite part of the run. We had a couple of fun moments when we won, but overall the addition of that much RNG to True Dungeon just feels off to me for what is basically a puzzle room. Unlike an earlier poster, I did enjoy the taunts/compliments, however.

On the subject of looping combat animations, I would make a suggestion to make the loop longer than they are so maybe they aren't quite as jarring.

I thought all of the puzzles were great. Challenging and logical (and shout out to the DM who pointed out that the ghost "bursts into bright green flame" on a later run). We did have some debate on whether the ghost was blue or green in our group on our first run, but we got it worked out.

I personally really enjoyed the room 7 fight and thought the CGI and sound design was amazing. One of my favorite final combats of the vTD series and one I think really played into the strengths of the virtual format (I can't even fathom trying to run combat on five 'monsters' with shifting shielding live).

I wish the final fight had different end voiceovers for success/failure. Even something like "you attempt to sneak aboard and are noticed by an alert sentry and captured one-by-one coming over the rail" would have felt better than the fait accompli that felt like we were surprised by a few scrub pirates. Nit picking here, since the end result of moving the story forward is the same, of course, it just felt like that particular result really removed player agency.

I did a run on Saturday with kolixela and his crew. I enjoyed it overall. I really liked the puzzles - definitely my favorite part of the run. The animation of the flame spirit was pretty great.

Plunder was okay. In our feedback we suggested that the dice should be rolled in a flat bottomed box so it wouldn't take as long and there would be fewer cocked dice. excellent idea to save time by rolling both together. I like that TD is trying something new and creative. I think the biggest challenge for this is time. Take risks and be ready to play again as quickly as possible if you die.

In combat room 7, it kind of felt like it was an anti-rogue and anti-wizard combat. It was a 360 degree seeing construct, so no sneak attacks, and NM/Epic wizards who save their big spells to triple-cast fireball or lightning storm got crushed by the retribution damage from all the sides. But I can't complain too much - every combat should be different. Different challenges, different advantages.

I really liked that our DM dealt with all the spell casters while the melee fighters got their dice rolling. As someone who usually plays wizard, alpha order sometimes means I don't get to participate!

bpsymington wrote:
I really liked that our DM dealt with all the spell casters while the melee fighters got their dice rolling. As someone who usually plays wizard, alpha order sometimes means I don't get to participate!

Brian's post made me realize something that bothered me about my last run on Sunday. We had a Cleric buffing and Druid caster with 2 Wizards. A lot of time went into all the spellcasters actions, then the dice part was very quick. It really started to feel unbalanced like the focus was all on the spellcasting. Overall, I adore the new dice roller. So it's not really a complaint, so much as a desire that spellcasting is able to be incorporated into the dice roller at least damage spells in the future. I think that would be an amazing improvement and make the game flow very nicely.

Good morning

I think it is critical to find unique advantages of VTD and to that I say room 7 crushed it. Yea, you could do all kinds of crazy things to reflect it in real life, but VTD lends itself to room 7

It does feel that the writing of the modules is build a scene, set some monsters and then work out how to make the battle go such that you change things to make certain things not work. It somewhat defeats the purpose of the entire class and the typical method of playing the class. However some would argue that the point of good story telling is to bring about adversity to the hero they need to be overcome…in this case Rogue’s SA, wizard AOE and everyone on retribution/damage reducers

In short, I loved the dungeon and even the mindless game of plunder was funny as it promotes the mindless boredom of guard games. I do wish Plunder had a different play on liars dice. It would have required an NPC, but I think the effect would have been quite entertaining (a la Tarley) and I personally could totally see Andrew crushing that role of playing Liars dice and damaging the group and being snarky all the way thru. Execution sometimes requires a play test…”is this fun”…

Now my concern: the roller. Love the tech; concerned of the side effects. Namely missing the narrative of individual hits is very noticeable to those who enjoy the role play. If we reduce the player to clicking a button, that is a real issue.

I just wanted to get a quick note on here to help balance positive/negative experiences. If I have a chance to elaborate on our group's experience, I will add to this at a later time.

We ran on Saturday afternoon. VTD7 was our favorite adventure so far. It felt to me like the level of polish and production value has taken a tremendous step forward with this adventure.

The pirate theme was excellent.

The puzzles were great.

The "give a treasure token" decision was fun.

The epilogue video setting up for VTD8 was a welcome addition (and smart marketing).

The fights were fun. We liked the R7 fight and appreciated the unique mechanics- it was not a simple "hit this monster for the number of hit points it has" type of fight. I sincerely hope more R7 bosses are created with a similar unique "mechanic" design then blends puzzle with combat.

Our group really enjoyed plunder.

Our GM was great! Epilogue Andrew was great!

I'll post in the dice roller thread as well, but we loved the addition and felt this, too, added to production value and the professional/polished feel of the experience. I'm excited to see spells added to the roller in the future. This feature sped combat up for us significantly.

The only negative that I can think of is that we did have some volume/noise overlap from other groups and this made it challenging to communicate in the 6 pillar puzzle room.

I understand all the feedback here is constructive with an intent to make Virtual True Dungeon be as positive an experience for everyone as possible - love the TD Community! I've just been surprised to read so many didn't have as positive of an impression and wanted to share our group's experience.

I really had a great time this past weekend with V7. I know some of that was because it felt like it had been SO LONG since V6 (I seriously don't know how people coped before there was VTD, it sounds terrible), but it was also just a really fun dungeon. I ran it three times and learned something new every run.

Some specific things:
- I liked that the alms had to be a group decision. I was never in a group that hesitated, there was always a clear and quick consensus, but there is a really interesting social element to that. It has the potential to encourage a little bit of RP, it makes everyone think about what they want to be in a group vs. what they want to be on their own, and I think it would have been a very different sort of encounter if it was an individual choice.

- The DMs really learned and grew over the course of the weekend. It's their first time with the dice roller too, and by Sunday afternoon it felt like they were hitting their stride. Yes, earlier in the weekend we had some trouble with buffs not happening fast enough and such, but by the end there was a pause for spells first, and then there was time for the DM to put some color on the rolls.

- I played a Cleric all three runs, so I know my perspective on fights is not the same as a rogue or a spell caster, but on our first run my 12 year old was playing the Elf Wizard, and he did absolutely nuke himself on rm 7. And it was great! Run in fireball blazing, sometimes bad stuff is going to happen! By my second run a different wizard had realized they could dial it way, way up and just make it a bomber run. AMAZING. I was wildly impressed.

- Did I tune out for Plunder! by the third run? Yes. I did. And I am completely fine with that. Other people were having fun with strategy and statistics, I got a snack. Everybody wins! I've done nearly the exact same thing in an in person dungeon too. Sometimes you let other people do a puzzle because it's fun for them, and you sit out of the way and rest your feet from being on them at a con all day.

- I enjoyed that this felt like the beginning of a new story. We started in the place we've been, we were guided through town to the docks, and by the end we're on our way somewhere completely unknown. The thread of the overall narrative is there, and we also have no idea what to expect next. You don't fight the most epic of epic bad guys in the first chapter!

This was one of my favorite dungeons in the V-series. Cannot wait to see what comes next!

I'll also point out that I quickly figured out how the R7 fight was going on my first run as Elf Wizard and I still used CoSS to double-cast Lightning Storm after Forking a Scorching Ray, just because I wanted to see how high I could get the retribution damage up to Going out in a full-on blaze of glory on the final fight is it's own kind of fun!