Expanding that point: It’s not just people chilling between pulls, its that it deliberately punishes a more cautious, explorative playstyle. As the pulls get harder (you’d assume), players might want to be more cautious about their pulls or they might want to double back, recheck for things they may have missed or skipped, or look for routes they maybe didnt take.
Now, im not saying the torments are awful, to be clear, but its also possible to conceive of players who are more controlled, more cautious, and thus slower at clearing a floor. And if they happen to do that busy work, and are rewarded by a debuff… well, its going to feel like they’re wasting their time hunting down those extra tiny possible advantages and so rationally, they’ll feel pressured into running to the end as quick as possible (feeling like they maybe missed out on something that could have completely transformed their next few floors). And thats kinda sucky.
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If people want to play in that sort of boring way all the power to them 
Choice in how you play your character is a wonderful thing 
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Possibly, but if they can get through the floor and get the extra anima power or two they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten that will pay off for them on the next floor when the debuff resets. All that matters is you don’t wipe on the floor, even if you have to grit and bare the ramping mechanic.
IMO if I found the exit, but knew there was a path I hadn’t explored I’d go check it out because I’d want to check for extra powers. If I had 0-1 death I’d go until I hit 2 deaths and then get out to make sure I passed the floor. If I was at 2 deaths I probably would not risk it unless I was supremely confident the remaining mobs were a pushover, torments or not.
Like I was honestly looking forward to there finally being a solo challenging mode that could scale indefinitely like m+ does, it’s the only way for there to be replay value and for it to not turn into another form of dailies/chores.
This to me just sounds like 100% another thing I’m going to dread logging on to do since it’s going to be brainless and require very little effort.
The idea of it was awesome, but from what I’ve seen so far it’s just going to fail like islands did where you can smash your head on a keyboard and complete it when it could have been so much more
sure, but you can see that it might drag them into the crossfire while blizzard attempt to solve the ‘problem’ of players on super high floors waiting for heavy cooldowns (if they even are given the anima powers)?
Its just fun to explore things and find super secrets or extra little buffs on each floor. And if that’s how you want to clear your floor, and thats how you enjoy running torghast, it does seem a bit churlish to push them into a different playstyle when all the ladders are going to the exact same place: Up both physically and in general difficulty.
Also, if you are doing a bunch of busy work and looking to really complete each floor, shouldnt you also be rewarded for your time investment by having those little seemingly insignificant wins with a pot smash here or there accumulate into a slightly greater chance you might beat that one floor you’d have been stuck on if you just went route 1 and skipped most of the floor?
The islands wouldn’t have failed if you could stay in and explore/ farm more after the task was complete.
In fact if they patched the option to stay in before the expac end they would see a drastic up in numbers.
Some people are naturally on the skiddish side and prefer padding. Blizzard can actually formulate how many simply by looking at the percentage of people who have their corruptions negated by the cloak.
Ya but at the end of the day I highly doubt there’s anything to explore in torghast. From what I’ve seen each level besides maybe finding an animal power here and there has nothing for you to find?
The soft timer will still allow you to explore every inch of that level which is why I don’t get why people are so against it. It’s not like the soft timer is going to force you to speed run every floor
On alpha right now, you’re right. 1-18 runs offer very little challenge. By the time the content would get difficult, you are already a god from anima powers.
You have the option to instead do a 7-24 run. That makes it a fair bit harder - all the trash are now comparable with world elites in terms of difficulty, CC and careful pulls are required.
If you really want it to be punishing, you can do a 13-30 run. That is like trying to solo a normal dungeon at level in blues. Very difficult, you absolutely must be aware of your environment and have complete mastery of your character or you are going to fail in short order.
You can also try a 19-36 run if you want, which will chew you up and spit you out in the first room given the current templates.
That level of difficulty can be had without tacking on extremely irritating soft timer mechanics, especially when those mechanics don’t even achieve the stated goals of gently nudging you forward. Of the 6 options, 2 are a soft enrage that will eventually just kill you for taking too long (because an elite will oneshot you), 2 spawn constant adds any time you are out of combat (literally 2 to 4 seconds OOC and the add spawns - I literally couldn’t hardcast Aimed Shot to pull a new mob, or cast Revive Pet, without the add spawning on me), 1 is a constantly ticking DoT that either does nothing meaningful (if your class/spec has decent sustain, or if you have some Leech) or forces you to sit and eat at regular intervals regardless of how much damage you take in combat. Only 1 of the current torments actually makes it progressively harder at a gradual rate, the one that reduces your damage done and adds a stack every 2 minutes. That one is not effective at preventing cooldown abuse, because waiting for cooldowns will probably give you more damage than you lose to the torment in the same time period.
I get what they were going for and why they felt it was necessary. I disagree, but I can see their point. Whatever your thoughts on their objective and their reasoning, the currently implemented system does not achieve those goals.
It’s the beating of a heart under the floor boards, It’s the buzzing of flies, It’s the crack of the whip that does not need to exist to drive us forward.
We already have our own built in torments: The hangry torment, the Bio torment, The phone call torment, the sleep torment, the cat wants attention torment, The family want’s things torment, the “I can smell my own funk” torment…so on and so forth.
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I recognize that it can create issues, but personally I’m past the point of the idea that we can develop content that appeases everyone. Some content you’re going to like, some content you’re not.
However what I will say is that due to how Torghast is supposed to be the major feature of SL Blizzard really better tread lightly on what they do with designing Torghast. I rarely take GD comments as the sole indicator of how good or bad something is, but also a lot of the alpha testers aren’t being very receptive to them either.
I’m sure Blizzard is aware they better make sure they have their ducks in a row. I personally don’t have an issue with the concept of torments, but a strong argument can be made to scrap torments and let Torghast be Torghast than trying to perfect them and run the risk of it backfiring.
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Remember how people always argue during class balance:
Why are you nerfing me? Buff them! It’s total gestalt, but its also psychologically important i guess. People dont like negative effects. They like positive ones. Like, for example, getting that little extra bit of dps for the time you invest in clearing a floor. Or doubling back, finding a bunch of pots and getting that anima power you might have missed.
Or just finishing the floor super fast anyway by pulling everyone into a death ball and aoeing them down.
As i say, both are fun for different types of players. I hate AOE grinding. Its never been a playstyle i enjoyed. My favorite pull of all time was probably the one before Blackheart in Slabs. I just loved the entire group chipping away at each pull, using their class utility and cc, and then when things went to hell (as they usually did), adapting quickly to stop it ballooning out of control.
But it was that slow, chipping away piece by piece that for reasons that likely sound nuts nowadays, felt incredibly satisfying. That’s my playstyle. That’s the one I want.
I do get that the torments arent supposed to be insane. And i do get that the punishment isnt really that big of a deal. But, if thats the case, why bother with them at all? Why not just let people see how far they can go playing they way they enjoy?
ETA: Just saw your latest post. Couldnt agree more. They need to be careful. This is something so close to being genuine fun for almost all players. And it’s so easy they’ll do that blizzard thing and over-correct.
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We can put a timer on the top that does nothing but record the amount of time you took for that floor on a leaderboard.
You can also put a secrets counter that keeps tabs of how many secrets you found on that floor and also put’s that on another leader board.
That would motivate both types of play.
That logic is fine. Here are direct quotes from a Torghast panel,
- Floors built to encourage exploration
- Not a timed mode
- Always be climbing the tower …but maybe take your time to hunt for Anima
If you were a scientist and you wanted to experiment with rats exploring a new area do you think it would be logical to zap the rats increasingly harder every 60 seconds they remained in that area? The concept of torments directly conflict with their design goals of Torghast which the logical solution would be to use something instead of torments that doesn’t scale over time.
Testers are saying the same thing and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know timed elements will make players feel this way.
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Make exhaustion last a whole floor, there, no more waiting for heroism, and you can only use it once per floor.
if the torments are going to turn torghast like the visions, then Oh boy, pain and suffering, time to cry a river.
It just makes rats that scurry to the exit to make the annoyance stop. Annoying things can bring out a great deal of rage. For instance look at how many profanities you normally do on the road when people cut you off.
Many people have given that answer, I have even thought it would be a answer myself. Sadly some Anima builds increase the use of Hero cooldowns for Mages and Shammies. Sadly adding this in would effectively hurt them a great deal.
However I am sure we can make other things that can prevent this problem if we put our minds to it.
And you need to be able to do the runs to get a higher ranked cloak. If you don’t like/aren’t good at the visions, it’s not worth the trouble. Heck, I probably fail 50 percent, and at the cost of hours of grinding for vessels, it’s pretty horrible.
make exhaustion last a whole floor, UNLESS you have those powers then
Sadly that does not account for groups with shammies or mages.