While I fully recognize that the “bigger, better, crazier” philosophy behind the Back to Ubersreik levels meant they were going to be a bit harder intentionally, Engines of War, in particular the “Destroy the Doomwheels” section, is so much harder than all the other levels in the game that it has an odd effect on matchmaking.
Most often, people simply quit the level when they see it’s Engines on Legend, knowing that the group is going to wipe 20 minutes into the mission anyways. The effect will no doubt become even more pronounced when the next difficulty level comes out alongside Winds of Magic, though the release of a new difficulty level presents an opportune time to fine-tune the challenge of the levels as they are. (As a side note, it feels strange to have a random level be so much more challenging than the “final boss” level Skittergate.)
First of all, the V1 maps weren’t optimized for the amount of enemies V2 throws at you, so it wasn’t intentional difficulty raise, just a bad decision to port those maps.
Otherwise during the event, the steady supply of slaverats is the essence of the event. You occasionally get a monk, but those can be heard quite clear so they shouldn’t be a problem either.
What is then the problem here?
Problem is that how doomwheels event work, if you go fast and place fist barrel specials not gonna spawn till the end of event, A lot of ppl dont know that or get stuck doing first barrel and get wiped, its pretty ease if you have any character with invisibility or movement ability (battle mage shade etc)
As far as I know, the BtU maps were really made somewhat more difficult on purpose. Olesya even comments on it every now and then… It likely was (at least partially) a response to the higher-level players starting to complain about the ease of the game even on Legend.
I do agree that they may have gone a bit overboard in the Doomwheel event. Yes, it gets easier as you learn some tricks about the event, but I think a small delay (even if it’s only a second, maybe two) between at least some of the event spawns would give the breathing room for people to clear it more easily. In my experience, it’s exactly that constant stream of enemies (including monks) that doesn’t let up for a moment that spells doom (heh) for many players.
“Occasional” monk is a severe understatement. I understand the intended design of the event perfectly well, and I’m not suggesting that the essential nature of the section be changed; I’m only remarking that this particular section on Legend is consistently much, much more difficult than any other part of any other map, and the effects of this are that it’s nearly impossible to get a Quickplay group to A.) actually play the mission and B.) get through the map with even roughly the same level of consistency as the other maps.
How is it so hard for people to understand that this event becomes a cakewalk if everyone can just resist grabbing a barrel and going in different directions?
Sadly it’s not that simple. I’ve seen otherwise coordinated groups split up because the slave rats are coming from all direction, gas gets dropped in the middle, and the absolute necessity of dodging/kiting the plague rats forces you to move, which due to gas or an inconveniently placed slave swarm is very likely to split you away from your group.
A group that communicates and plans could easily pick a front liner and stick behind and cover them, which would trivialize the event, but that literally never happens in PUGs.
The ‘open field with walls’ design of that area just doesn’t work well. Maybe it was different in V1, I wasn’t there to say, but it’s easily one of the worst designed areas of any V2 map. IMO, this is why Quickplay needs an option to exclude unwanted maps.
In VT1 you had less problems because there were waves of enemies. Here they seem a stream or, if there are in waves, there’s too few downtime.
Moreover in VT1 you got only 3 kinds of rats (i.e. no berserkers which are a PitA to fight because very difficult to stagger during hordes) and the specials were a bit more manageable because they weren’t silent, weren’t instaspawning and had easier to handle mechanics (e.g. the ratling concentrated the fire on one person)
Most of the time it really is that simple though. Getting split up is only a consistent problem when people don’t try to regroup before continuing with the objectives. There’s two things that cause most of the losses I’ve had in this event, one is people who don’t make an effort to stay with the group (or worse, intentionally split off) and the other is people who let themselves get hit while carrying the barrel.