I will get straight my point, being unable to port to this gauntlet is annoying, inefficient, and more because:

1.) Health recovery / Selling stuff. Somewhere around the terracotta army, people decided to port to skull island to sell stuff or gain health. When they press "return to dungeon", they come to the first floor and have to climb 9 empty boring floors just to reach the current fight. Poor design and waste of time and effort. Even if you decide to keep things the way they are, at least ensure that return to dungeon sends players to the current floor of battle, not floor 1. Also, a health floor with health potions after the nefarious five battle would be great.

2.) Lazy pirates. Some pirates say yeah nah lets reach the top, but decide to call it quits after the nefarious five. This leaves me and another pirate alone, and then this other pirate leaves because they estimate the final fights are too risky to do without a full, or 3 person squad. I have many friends who are willing to do the final 2 floors, and it would be great if they could port.

3.) Disconnections. One time right before the N5 fight, I disconnected twice. When the internet restored itself properly, I could not join the fight because I left team up thanks to the disconnection. Utterly stupid. I put so much time to reach the five, and some restriction on porting destroys all that effort.

The issue extends to the dreadnaught as well. Some people can't enter it manually thanks to old computers creating lag. They never get the chance for that! However whenever an extra player is need, surely they could port?

In conclusion, remove restrictions on ports please!

anecorbie on May 26, 2017 wrote:

I am conflicted about this; I agree that you have very good reasons to request this. But The Tower is side content - it's not required for the quest line. Players are free to do it or ignore it. The same applies to every gauntlet currently in the game.
1. It's a gauntlet: this means its more challenging than the basic quest line.
2. Being a gauntlet means ( usually ) that you can't port out heal or revive a companion.
3. If gauntlets become portable what happens to the challenge?
What about Smuggler's Arena or the Pirate's Regatta?

I do agree with the logic of it being a challenge. Right after I posted this I read a thread by Willowydream, where Ratbeard clearly states that the return to dungeon button is not supposed to work!, (but alas it still does anyway so there is that), because gauntlets are a challenge. I could further post concerns about dread, but for now I will mainly focus on Moo.

Since I barely know anyone doing the regatta, I will briefly focus on Smugglers and compare it with Moo. Smuggler's Arena, imo, is a perfect implementation of a challenge. Teams only engage in the arena with the sole purpose of reaching the end- or die trying. Unlike Moo, you don't just hop off after a certain fight claiming its too hard to continue, you endure to the very end and do your very best. Only those who reach breaking point will claim a reward. This is not the same case for moo. For half the player base, the Nefarious 5 is the conclusion of the tower, and the other half who want to reach Moo himself disintegrate due to lack of players.

Honestly, I think the nefarious fight should exchange places with Moo Boss fight. It would be Moo's last resort. That way players don't just quit and the leave the rest of us hanging. So the final 3 fights in order would be:
1.) TC Army, followed by
2.) MM, and then
3.) N5 (+ resurrected MM? )
Then there are disconnections. They happen rarely, but they can be annoying. I think my case is unusually exceptional. A point I forgot to mention is that after my first disconnection, when the internet connected again and I restarted the game, I was back in the tower with the same team! However 30 seconds later when I disconnected again, I was outside the tower once the internet restored. P101 need to treat subsequent disconnections like the first case. This would also mean for these cases, no ports are necessary.

But your point is still valid. Moo is still supposed to be a challenge, a new player can just make it easy. We still need to find a solution in a sense.

Calamity Finch on May 29, 2017 wrote:

I wish this dungeon was portable too. When a dungeon takes so much time and people drop out or are bumped out if they have a connection issue, it wastes so much time for those who who are willing to do the whole thing. If you have a good team that wants to keep the challenge and stick together, nothing says you have to go out and port back in. I ran it more than once in the test realm, but still have it in my quest book, because people lost connection, or left right after the nefarious five. You know, RIGHT BEFORE the no fight needed four lock chest that, insult to injury, we had absolutely no way to open.

That is the only reason I'm conflicted about making this a portable dungeon. I know that players in a team-up are often unreliable; I think I've seen all kinds of players who aren't "team players" and make doing this gauntlet a miserable experience.
But that's the difference between a gauntlet and a dungeon.
I'd be very glad to help you get that quest off your list, just tell me day, time ( & zone ) and server. maybe some more players will join us?

anecorbie on May 29, 2017 wrote:

That is the only reason I'm conflicted about making this a portable dungeon. I know that players in a team-up are often unreliable; I think I've seen all kinds of players who aren't "team players" and make doing this gauntlet a miserable experience.
But that's the difference between a gauntlet and a dungeon.
I'd be very glad to help you get that quest off your list, just tell me day, time ( & zone ) and server. maybe some more players will join us?

I do respect p101 decision to make Moo an unportable and thus challenging gauntlet (but they still need to solve the issue of disconnections and treat players fairly, perhaps by doing what I said in the previous post), however I also believe that the p101 community as a whole is not cut up for this and the tower is destroying relationships.

As you said, the gauntlet has been a miserable experience. Don't get me wrong, with the right bunch of willing, good spirited and strategic players this dungeon is amazing in terms of a challenge (save for what I believe is an unnecessary length). In such a case the tower does indeed deliver. But finding such a team is as rare as getting the entire Imperial Moo Manchu set.

When I do get any random team to form (sometimes after a good 90 minutes), there is a high chance players get salty. In my most recent run, one foolish pirate charged the terracotta army when we clearly told him to wait. Chaos ensued and 2 of them got into a grudge match and challenged each other to a 1v1. If me and my friend had not maintained order the TC army would have slain us.

In my next post, I will address more reasons why I think the tower is socially chaotic, and thus explain my reasoning of why the tower should reform itself, perhaps into a dungeon (meaning ports allowed), or a semi-gauntlet.

4.) A spirit of quitting after N5. Pirates who don't often have the best gear, or best utilization of strategy, end at the N5. The N5 is a filter. There are teams that pass this and reach Moo, and there are teams that most of the time end here. Some pirates only want n5 gear as well. This leads to a conflict between those who want to continue, and those who leave. Those who want to continue suffer. I personally wanted to do the MM fight, not N5. I could solo the MM and TC fights, however I don't because I massively rely on spells and doubloons being in order (but they never are). I, like 95% of pirates, need a team for this. This is coming from someone who soloed Kane multiple times without losing companions.

5.) A spirit of quitting at the start. Sometimes pirates decline team up, or quit at first fight realising they dont have the energy and time to reach the higher levels. This annoys me and others, and after evaluating the situation we realise that if we want to reach the top we need more.

6.) Making a team itself. Sometimes its taken me a few hours to make a single team. 2 points:

• Making a full squad via group invites. Firstly the game does not accept a full group invite team up squad at times (glitch report), and sometimes we merge with a pirate on regular team up.... so annoying. Of course we could use Sigil entry, but some pirates don't have access to finish the quest for MM (due to no membership)
  
  
• Fifth pirate syndrome. Sometimes in a close group of friends, 5 people (or sometimes 6-7) want to do the tower. There is no one on team up or skull island or other willing friends. Despite sounding rare and odd, this situation is actually not as uncommon as you may think. Its happened a few times and is really awkward.
  

7.) Anger Point number 2- Impatience: is ever a dungeon where there is a conflict between slow combat and fast combat users, this is the one.

Golden Guardian on Jun 1, 2017 wrote:

In summary, I just don't think this dungeon is good for the P101 community. But what makes it differ from lets say Smugglers or Dreadnaught being a challenge??

1.) Smugglers,
From my experience, smugglers arena is a niche challenge only undertaken by strong maxed pirates (i.e at least 2 users with blood flames present, strong gear all round). In general, those who do it know they can finish it, and ultimately want to finish it. Strategy and planning and communication are all present here. High scrip rewards only come in the final fight as well. Moo on the other hand... well I think my N5 quitting point addresses it enough.

2.) Dreadnaught,
Only 1 fight. About as hard, if not considerably easier, than the Kane boss fight. Any team should be able to do it. TC Army, on the other hand is hell on earth for some pirates. Those terracotta soldiers can be savage with critical explosions and accuracy debuffs. Am I calling for a nerf? No way. But I am calling for backup to help me when I am deserted after N5.

Now to conclude. What should p101 do in my opinion?

Option 1: Make ports allowable. This will, unfortunately, remove the challenge elements of Moo, that have been sometimes enjoyable with a good team, but also provide support for those who want to continue after N5.

Option 2: I said it before. Make N5 come after Moo Boss, as a final bonus fight. Perhaps make his spirit split into these 5 pirates and change the story up a bit. It is after all side content. This will make pirates not just quit :P, and force them to rethink their plan against the TC army.

Option 3: A semi-gauntlet. I do not know how to explain this cause we have to seemingly paradoxical elements of porting and gauntlets available at the same time. If someone could suggest a system these 2 could co-exist, that would be nice.

Apologies for being incoherent. Its midnight for me and my points have gotten messed up.

Your points are cogent and well thought out. I have seen this anger/impatience myself on many occasions; part of this is caused by stress - finding a team that stays together, is willing to act as a team and can be forgiving of other's shortcomings ( whether in gear or strategy ).
Also, part of this stress is the fact that many players know that this instance is long - yes it can be shortened by Fast Combat, but some players computer's have trouble with this; or by using Old Scratch. And many players are young with parents who are limiting their playtime
But trying to go back and "rebuild" that Tower? I just don't see it happening.

anecorbie on Jun 1, 2017 wrote:

On option 2
I say move the N-5 fight ( along with the elixir ) to Moo's floor. Remove the TC from Moo's fight and just keep the TC floor as is.
Eighth floor becomes a healing floor.
But, like I said, I don't think that rebuilding the Tower is going to happen.
even if your ideas are great.

Yeah I do like that option very much. MM + N5 as a boss fight would be a very fun battle (though if this does happen I think pirates should have 2 companions instead of just 1).

The only major modification I have seen in this game is Avery's court being renovated. I have completely forgot how the old court looks like. Gonna derail a bit here, but I think in Halloween all of skull island should have a dark blue sky, with a full moon and twinkling stars, some black clouds, and hollow pumpkins dectoraions scattered with a fire inside the pumpkin making them look evil, alongside some ghost npcs floating around. I guess it just reminds of club penguin being modified for each festival. Also maybe a ghost pirate annual quests would be nice.
Ok back to Moo. I do think the tower can be modified for the better. Implementing all you said in your paragraph should be doable, as they have modified things like the court, and even the storyline with new quests (like Xol Akmul). But I agree with you, the game is in stasis, and it feels like nothing is going to come or change. I feel like the entire section of the shipyards is useless at the moment. Posts here are dreams that will soon be archived and forgotten.