Drop his Health by 30% to 40%, and adjust the damage he needs to take to initiate the phases by a corresponding number.
The fight is too long, and definitely out of proportion with the other specials. It's dull enough that it's hard to recruit a team. Take the hint and nerf the timer.
Cybermind really isn't so bad, provided that you have the proper team of 5k+ dpsers. I think we got him in about 90 seconds? Twice in a row? But if you get a team with really poor dps, it does take forever, that's true.
Cybermind is ok, its just needs some serious bug fixing
Forum Malvanum on the other hand NEEDS TO BE NUKED
POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
I'll take a hundred cutscenes of Talkokles over five prolonged minutes of this fight.
But it's a fake dichotomy. The problems of one do not excuse the problems of another.
Although I also think the fight's a bit too long, I'm in the opposite camp: I'd rather fight cybermind for 5+ minutes than endure a bunch of jarring, gameplay-interrupting cutscenes every few seconds. Cutscenes which add little to no value to the content. If I could opt out of any one custom alert to complete the meta objective, I'd shitcan FM in a heartbeat.
But yeah, different problems in different alerts. Cybermind should have less hp and FM should have most of its pointless cutscenes removed.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
I've said in the past that I'd like most of the cutscenes in FM replaced with voice over. It's a separate issue, though.
And let me suggest again for storytelling purposes for FM:
Change all cutscenes to VOs except:
Intro (cut down if possible) Mid-battle (though it should be cut in half, and make the last bit VO) Ironclad/Duratok Firewing
That's still too much VO for most, but it preserves the story, while preserving players' levels in enraged, etc. in most circumstances.
More extensively, I'd:
1) add 10 seconds or so to Duratok/Ironclad. 2) add a trick to the Firewing fight. Maybe a suppression zone that works against fire powers, but you have to kite him there. Buff his damage outside the zone by about 25%, but reduce it by 25% if he fights in the suppression field. (If that seems arbitrary, add a couple of other tiny zones that work to debuff other power sets that players can use or avoid in other fights.)
Intro (cut down if possible)
Mid-battle (though it should be cut in half, and make the last bit VO)
Ironclad/Duratok
Firewing
Honestly, cutscenes in queued content should go away entirely. It's content players are doing over and over in many cases, so any "magic" or "depth" they supposedly add is lost after the initial run. Games like wow have minimal cutscenes in their queued content for this very reason, and all of the cutscenes are skippable. By minimal, I mean none in most of the dungeons.
I get that, in some cases, cutscenes are used to reposition players, but that's kind of the cheap way out. Why can't players move there themselves? Not only do you not interrupt gameplay that way, but you actually give players more to do in order to progress through the content.
Cutscenes are fine in solo content, but they should always be skippable rather than mandatory.
Also, the ABSOLUTE WORST part about CO's cutscenes is they often capture the mouse and lock it into the center position on the screen while they play for some reason. This means I can't even tab out to do something more useful while waiting out the longer ones.
Unskippable cutscenes are pretty much the mechanically separated meat of MMO design. After the first or second viewing, they cease to be interesting and offer little to no contribution toward immersion. Instead, they serve as nothing more than unhealthy filler.
- - -
That said, FM would have to work differently if it adopted a pure voiceover model. I'd suggest multiple spawn points (several "entrances") for various waves to spawn from so it doesn't end up as everybody on the team just camping at the one, slaughtering everything as it spawns in. Or, perhaps in between waves, each participating player would need to return to the center before the next round could begin. Something like that.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
I want to see Cutscenes complety removed from Forum Cutsecenium
not only they take 80% of the alert (which takes around 15-20 minutes averaged to finish) but they REPEAT THE SAME SCENE OVER AND OVER AGAIN
It's a huge waste of time, it interupts your gameplay flow and doesn't feel very heroic does it?
People had been complaining about this alert from the start and little to none effort was made to listen to the feedbacks
This is a horribly design for Colosseum in a videogame, have the skinny emperor talking in the background WITHOUT spamming us with unskippable cutscenes which eat up Ironclad+Duraclod timer (nice bugs)
Don't use the excuse that Cutscenes are being used to load things in the background? What things? its the same area over and over again with different mobs each round
at least Cybermind has only 4 Cutscenes
Forum Malvanum is yet another wasted opportunity in the game, it could be used for special challenges map (via Until/unity) for lvl 40 players teams to go through massives waves of enemies (50, 100, 200 based on the queue, each 10 rounds increasing the difficulty by adding a special boss and enviroment hazzards, NOT cutscenes)
and rewarding the players for completing the rounds
you know... like OTHER videogames are handling Colosseums
POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
This is a horribly design for Colosseum in a videogame, have the skinny emperor talking in the background WITHOUT spamming us with unskippable cutscenes which eat up Ironclad+Duraclod timer (nice bugs)
While I do agree that it'd be better without the cut scenes (or drastically reduced them), I would like to point out that the timer running during the cut scenes are not technically a bug as the timers were extended to account for the cut scenes.
the only real threat from firewing (assuming no one is stupid enough to stand in the tell cylinders) is that damned leaping flames DoT...it lasts WAY too long for the amount of damage it does AND the fact it can spread as well makes it severely overpowered
Forum Malvanum should just be scrapped and remade to something like Daresso's Dream (fighting pits) and / or The Grand Arena (but maybe shorter, less intense, and no Daresso type fight). Not a single cutscene and Daresso talks in voice overs that you can ignore. The Forum map is massive and 90% goes to waste as everyone just hangs out by the front gate. The only time anyone "travels" more than a few feet is when they get knocked all over the place or die / respawn.
I still believe there should never be any cutscenes ever. It's a waste of time to make them and 100% of the time people will just complain about them not being skippable / annoying / too damn long. Plus, they tend to not be that great.
I've never felt that Cybermind's fight is particularly long unless two or three people wipe and I almost always go PUG... Which probably isn't say much coming from me. So... *shrugs* Don't care one way or the other if the HP is reduced.
not extended enough, especially when BOTH duratok and ironclad have a defensive passive that renders them almost immune to damage
That fight is the absolute worst. They both use the same basic abilities and there's no special mechanics that require any measure of skill or anything like that. It's just a 100% tank and spank dps/gear check against a timer--one that fails most of the time unless you hand-pick your team or are lucky enough to get a full team of 40s without excess tanks or healers.
Totally lame.
(Hopefully) Useful CO Resources: HeroCreator (character planner), Cosmic Timers/Alert Checklist, Blood Moon Map, Anniversary Cat Map, and more (eventually, anyway).
Comments
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
I'll take a hundred cutscenes of Talkokles over five prolonged minutes of this fight.
But it's a fake dichotomy. The problems of one do not excuse the problems of another.
Forum Malvanum on the other hand NEEDS TO BE NUKED
But yeah, different problems in different alerts. Cybermind should have less hp and FM should have most of its pointless cutscenes removed.
And let me suggest again for storytelling purposes for FM:
Change all cutscenes to VOs except:
Intro (cut down if possible)
Mid-battle (though it should be cut in half, and make the last bit VO)
Ironclad/Duratok
Firewing
That's still too much VO for most, but it preserves the story, while preserving players' levels in enraged, etc. in most circumstances.
More extensively, I'd:
1) add 10 seconds or so to Duratok/Ironclad.
2) add a trick to the Firewing fight. Maybe a suppression zone that works against fire powers, but you have to kite him there. Buff his damage outside the zone by about 25%, but reduce it by 25% if he fights in the suppression field. (If that seems arbitrary, add a couple of other tiny zones that work to debuff other power sets that players can use or avoid in other fights.)
I get that, in some cases, cutscenes are used to reposition players, but that's kind of the cheap way out. Why can't players move there themselves? Not only do you not interrupt gameplay that way, but you actually give players more to do in order to progress through the content.
Cutscenes are fine in solo content, but they should always be skippable rather than mandatory.
Also, the ABSOLUTE WORST part about CO's cutscenes is they often capture the mouse and lock it into the center position on the screen while they play for some reason. This means I can't even tab out to do something more useful while waiting out the longer ones.
Unskippable cutscenes are pretty much the mechanically separated meat of MMO design. After the first or second viewing, they cease to be interesting and offer little to no contribution toward immersion. Instead, they serve as nothing more than unhealthy filler.
- - -
That said, FM would have to work differently if it adopted a pure voiceover model. I'd suggest multiple spawn points (several "entrances") for various waves to spawn from so it doesn't end up as everybody on the team just camping at the one, slaughtering everything as it spawns in. Or, perhaps in between waves, each participating player would need to return to the center before the next round could begin. Something like that.
not only they take 80% of the alert (which takes around 15-20 minutes averaged to finish) but they REPEAT THE SAME SCENE OVER AND OVER AGAIN
It's a huge waste of time, it interupts your gameplay flow and doesn't feel very heroic does it?
People had been complaining about this alert from the start and little to none effort was made to listen to the feedbacks
This is a horribly design for Colosseum in a videogame, have the skinny emperor talking in the background WITHOUT spamming us with unskippable cutscenes which eat up Ironclad+Duraclod timer (nice bugs)
Don't use the excuse that Cutscenes are being used to load things in the background? What things? its the same area over and over again with different mobs each round
at least Cybermind has only 4 Cutscenes
Forum Malvanum is yet another wasted opportunity in the game, it could be used for special challenges map (via Until/unity) for lvl 40 players teams to go through massives waves of enemies (50, 100, 200 based on the queue, each 10 rounds increasing the difficulty by adding a special boss and enviroment hazzards, NOT cutscenes)
and rewarding the players for completing the rounds
you know... like OTHER videogames are handling Colosseums
While I do agree that it'd be better without the cut scenes (or drastically reduced them), I would like to point out that the timer running during the cut scenes are not technically a bug as the timers were extended to account for the cut scenes.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
you would think that, considering his trash-talking, duratok would have an offensive passive so he would actually hit harder than a wet trout
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My characters
hell, i don't even know if it can be cleansed
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
I still believe there should never be any cutscenes ever. It's a waste of time to make them and 100% of the time people will just complain about them not being skippable / annoying / too damn long. Plus, they tend to not be that great.
I've never felt that Cybermind's fight is particularly long unless two or three people wipe and I almost always go PUG... Which probably isn't say much coming from me. So... *shrugs* Don't care one way or the other if the HP is reduced.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Totally lame.