There is a Phenomenon I noticed in Champions Online with the recent revamp of Lairs
PEOPLE ARE NOT MOTIVATED TO RUN THOSE LAIRS BECAUSE THE REWARDS ARE NO THAT BRIGHT
First weeks will be get attention, but once the honeymoon is over people will forget the lairs even exist
When players are NOT Motivated to run lairs after DEVs have spend effort and time to update and revamp them it's a very worrying, especially with a game with so many unique locations but limited resources! You have to keep your players motivated and busy with the updated stuff
Let's the recent revamps what added to the rewards
- Nemcon doesn't help that it requires a pre-made team and nobody can queue for it with a PUG like other alerts. Sure Nemcon is pure EASY because it hasn't its difficulty hasn't been updated in the slightest! But you require the perk to defeat shadow destroyer 50 times in order to get access to the Old Gladiator costumes parts in Nemesis vendor! Something for new players!
I would like to see Nemcon pre-made team COMPLETELY REMOVED but the game's spaghetti code has other plans
- Vikorin got updated with a Unique Device and recently discovered he has material required to upgrade Magic Imbued Gloves!
- Destroyer's Lair has a very unique Travel Power utility mod that increase flight speed
This is similar suggestion with the one i made in 2016 (JESUS CHRIST) with a hope we will get more epic lairs
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1206898/lair-raider-special-daily-for-completing-all-future-epic-lairs
But since we haven't got any Epic lair since then, I will change my focus on the Normal Lairs which got updated recently
YES! I'm suggesting more busy work dailies!
Some of the updated revamped lairs (Andrith Ruins and Destroyer's Factory) got their own dailies I know, but this special daily will function like APB and Vigilance
Daily Lair RaidersHas 3-2 days Cooldown depending on the format (to balance the time needed to complete them and their rewards)
Only accesible for lvl 40
Complete the following lairs to acquire additional rewards
- Destroyer's Factory
- Andrith Ruins
- Mandragalore
- Nemesis Confrontation
- Therakiel's Temple
It's like the Stolen Kisses Perk requirement, except you dont have to wait once per year to find people to run all those lairs back-to-back
To make things even more interesting and preventing fatigue from running the same number of lairs over and over, every day the daily change to require 2 different Lairs with Nemcon being always the requirement in all
but of course this may overflow the mission list even more! But if it's possible I will accept it
Daily Rewards
- 20 Silver Champion Recognition, without including the SCR you get from the lairs (consider this like Nightwatch and the long war dailies in Qliphothic Warzone)
- 15.000 Unrefined Questionite Ore
- One random mod which is part of the lairs
So with this we get more people forming teams, even more sources for SCR & Q which take a respectful amount of time to earn and reving the interest of players to run those lairs
I'm not including all lairs (btw here is the list of them
http://www.championswiki.com/index.php?title=Lairs)
- Teleios' Epic lair is not included because it's entire different difficulty and endgame
- Gold Champions Recognition is not included as rewards because those lairs difficulty do not meet the endgame's standards
Also making Monster Island and Lemurian Crisis into alerts that are no longer solo-que and require people was a mistake
Comments
Problem is devs made good on their promise of having multiple sources of SCR... too good, and now most of them get ignored. SCR rewards won't make people run anything anymore unless they're huge amounts/day, and then the problem is they'll just replace other sources.
The other problem is that these lairs have terrible PR. I don't even remember the unique things that most lairs drop, and I bet there's a huge part of the population that doesn't know either. To solve this, each lair should have its own vendor.
"What!? Another currency?!?!? I mean sure another currency is one way to go, but an alternative to that is giving each lair a series of #TimesCompleted perks, and have those unlock the rewards from the vendor - for something like the Flight mods, you have the vendor reward you a certain rank version of it, while the lair itself still drops it from the boss randomly.
The vendor is mainly there to solve the lair's PR problem; when people see the Andrith Vendor, they see the rewards they can get from running the lair right there on the vendor and they know why they would want to run it. Kind of how they have that one Lockbox vendor that just shows off lockbox rewards. The vendor can have some flavor text where they're like "all this stuff drops rando in the lair too so go run it nerd".
Then also do your thing with the SCR and Questionite rewards but instead of the thing you said have it be a rotating Lair daily that picks a different Lair every day and you have to run it 5 times and then it awards X000 Refined Questionite. Mmmmmmm refined questionite just shove it right in my mouth. Delicious.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Actually you are right, you aren't wrong with the SCR overflow and I agree with your additions
and I don't mind another new currency AS LONG AS IT MAKES LAIRS POPULAR and keep them going
I didn't mentioned REFINED Questionite because it's propably too good to happen outside Vigilance
Consider me a fan of this addition! New currency, New Vendor, New Stuff! Everything to motivate people to RUN THOSE DARN THINGS
In general DEVs NEED to make those things more popular, WHY EVEN SPENDING TIME AND RERSOURCES UPDATING THEM?
The only part I dont agree, making you run the same lair 5 times, it's overkill if you ask me!
The reason I suggested a daily with 3-5 different lairs was to promote diversity, doing the same lair 5 times in the row would be draining
But again... the lairs are easy to speedrun with the right team
Those with a bit more time might farm the QWZ for scr, and that takes ca. half an hour once you have it down.
At some times of the day people will do Rampages, cuz gotta have those tokens.
If there is an event going on, people will likely be farming that.
That could well suck up all the time someone has for a day. It's even hard to get people to show up for Mega Destroids and that gives a decent reward for the time invested.
To me it's not surprising that the lairs get less attention from players. It takes more time to set up a raid for one of those. Someone has to try to round up players and make sure roles are filled (like Fire and Ice). If the rewards aren't competitive with Cosmics for the time invested they will not be run as much.
I think some sort of queue system that doesn't just put people together randomly would help. I.e. something that would make sure that there is a tank and a healer in each group. Not sure how to implement that though.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Better idea, just create new powers because after years at this point the majority of players have already unlocked the OSV powers
Noticed that GCR/SCR vendor havent got any new power in ages?
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
THE REWARDS ARE BETTER
Also it doesn't help that we are on Event Auto-Pilot and Players will prioritize farming the events along with Endgame
There was an Attempt from the DEVs in the 10th Anniversary to motivate players to do the lairs with the TOP 10 missions, but since there were more faster options of course players would ignore the lairs
Lairs are pretty much Doomed by current popularity and design 🤔
At least Vikorin's Lair still gets a decent action since people are farming Crystals for the Gloves upgrades
Then there is the problem of no rewards to look forward to. This was the blatant fault of the item revamp that occurred when On Alert happened. All unique items were trashed for this pigeon holing towards modding and single stat builds. Diversity died, and looking for a unique piece of gear with unique properties died with it. There was some truly interesting pieces out there that offered tertiary effects that just don't appear anymore because these unique items are now gone from the game, and thus any interest in these lairs are gone with them.
Any unique item is tied to the SCR and GCR store now or buying it from a lockbox, so that craps all over any reason to run these lairs over and over again. The drop chance for an item of interest is so abysmally low in cases it feels like you have a better chance of winning the lottery than anything good from these places.
Honestly, CO needs to do several things that just isn't in the budget or cards to do to make lairs more interesting. SCR is an ad-hoc thing to add and just a stop gap to force people to run lairs more frequently. If there was more interesting things in said lairs they wouldn't need that but having very few items of interest drop from the lairs makes repeat visits uninteresting and thus people pick specific easier lairs or on lockdown ones to avoid grinding more than is needed.
First and foremost there needs to be more lairs. Players should be introduced to lairs/dungeons as early as level 9 in this game. Honestly, the Purple Gang hideout fighting Kevin Poe should have been a five man lair/dungeon and it baffles me to this day why it never happened. It was in the early beta builds. The same with Stronghold, VIPER Nest in Canada, and multiple other locations. At one point there was also unique loot for each lair, some of which were locked behind skill checks to (Stronghold was actually going to have the first gear set that was suppose to be good for mentalists but was dropped when set bonuses couldn't be worked out in early game, though one of the pieces was left in for the longest time).
Another thing that needs to be done is just add loot with more frequency to the loot table that would be interesting. Even if you make it a temporary use item. Mods, ok you already made it pay to win to just take a rank 3 and make it rnak 9 now so there is little incentive to do that for a lot of people that would be interested in said mods, and the mods that have value can again just be bought for SCR and later dates. If you have nothing to look forward to getting that is interesting people have no reason to really run the content. Especially if the chance is so abysmally low it kills the incentive.
Finally, and this is going to be the most controversial, the stat system and itemization needs a complete overhaul. Build diversity is pretty much dead in Champions at this point. If your tune isn't molesting a single stat to the point of obscene levels you are usually not even considered for teams. This has created some of the most bafflingly confusing mess for new players and vet players. Designs and concepts just won't work for people because if you aren't rocking the core stats of doom, you aren't playing the game right for many in this meta. Have a concept that might revolve around making Con, End, or Rec, and for non tanks Str your primary, well too bad cause if you do that you are actually gimping yourself in this game. If you dare to want to be different that concept is relegated to personal use only and any serious use will result in you having to retcon the power. And forget pets entirely because pets just die to most AoE attacks without even a chance, and many bosses now use AoEs so frequently that the pet master would have to literally spend every moment between AoEs re-summoning pets only to watch them die a couple of seconds later.
So how would I solve the stat problem? I would make the primary stats a tertiary thing, all itemization would not revolve around them. Instead players will use their points to buy up their stats to a max of 100, and have so many over time but the actual benefits from those stats are on diminishing returns. The new focus would be on Offense and Defense stats as well as a few others. Recovery and Endurance would be turned more into their appropriate characteristics from the game instead of this ad-hoc extra two that make little sense, making energy endurance now, and these special traits you find on gear to increase them or through special perks you pick up, just like in the table top game. I would also rename dodge to something else like deflect or something since people see dodge and believe that means total damage immunity like past games. I would also introduce stats like speed and such, as well as critical resistance stats since holy hell why is this stat still not a thing in this game?
The original statting system of CO was good on paper and in theory but the execution has been an abject mess. And for new players to the game, it is just confusing because it hurts any sense of autonomy when the character you build has to be forced into Ego, Pre, or Str for a primary with either Con or Dex as your primary focus stat. And Int if you are a cosmic DPS.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Um... yeah no. Not everyone is obsessed with min/maxing. In fact, it seems that the majority of people aren't. What you said only really applies to min/maxers, and as far as content is concerned, really only applies to dino - and there not even as much as you're claiming. Not everyone is chasing the top of the scoreboard. I have toons that use End and Rec forms, toons that don't just stack one stat, and they're all boss beasts. The whole "You have to stack only one stat" is more of a preference than a requirement.
Also pets are great. As far as resummoning them... is it suddenly bad to have to use your powers? I thought we all literally do that all the time. Charging Haymaker 5000 times in a row is fine, but recasting Summon Shadows now and then is a terrible chore? .-.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
You seem to fundamentally ignore the simple fact you have to focus one single stat regardless of what you pick and saying only min/maxing is a minority of players, I would have to say where is your evidence to back this up? Most people that play MMOs in my experience are out to maximize their character builds to the fullest extent the build can offer. Why many chase down gear and mods specific to the build. Especially when people are pursuing endgame/dungeon content which seems to be the point of this thread. So, this argument falls flatter than pancake in a pan at that point.
And as for your argument against pets, really, are you really trying to compare a power like haymaker to pets? Really? A power you control and can let loose whenever on tap or charge versus a power that is not only requiring a full charge to use, but is 100% reliant on CPU tick cycles before it does any action or reaction, that you are suppose to be controlling to do things and commanding hence the point of pets to begin with? You can put the same amount of time and devotion into a pet build like a melee haymaker build, and get less results out of it as a result because the pet build has more hamstrings going for it. And unlike that melee haymaker build, you aren't at the mercy of CPU tick cycles where you lose EVERYTHING when the AoE happens and are stuck resummoning again only to watch your pets get destroyed again to yet another mass AoE attack. This argument would have weight if it was actually even remotely similar comparisons.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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To my mind lairs would see more action if there was a better queuing system for them. I.e. a queue where you could see the players/roles already in the queue and then be better able to decide what to bring. I know this would encourage me to do them.
Better/more useful rewards would also be nice. E.g. if one is not interested in upgrading gauntlets by farming crystals then Vikorin is less appealing. Having a choice of reward options would be nice. Maybe also a system that would give something like a small amount of GCR after completing 5 distinct lairs (kind of like The Long War or Vigilance but applied to lairs).
Yeah, that's why Dino never fails and doesn't rely on a specific portion of the population, using specific characters, being there for it to succeed. Eido too. We all just usin' min/max'd dps \o/
No. You said that pets suck because you have to recast them due to them getting blown up. I pointed out how silly that is because the idea that a power sucks because you have to use it is silly, because there are other powers that you have to use quite a lot more. Hence the comparison of "I hate this, I have to push this button every now and then" vs "I love this, I have to push this button constantly!".
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
If your other powers do 3,000 dps, a pet has to last 60s to not be a net dps loss, and twice that to be worth a power slot. An optimized pet build can manage more like 300 dps at 1.83s cast time, but also should be compared to optimized dps builds doing 6k dps, so you still want 40s or so, and 80s to be worth a power slot.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Not sure why you quoted me for this response. I'm not the one saying having to recast them is the issue.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I have recently maxed a half dozen characters and never once did Destroyer's lair when it popped up because that would have involved tracking down a bunch of other people who I don't know to run content I was unfamiliar with and they would probably want to rush to the end while I was looking through the windows and sure I could have found my own team of lookie-loos but that would have taken even longer and an hour later I'd have outlevelled everything anyway so why bother even though it's too bad and I did want to see it all.