I think that Alerts are a great addition to the game and i have been wanting a COX paper mission like feture for a long time. I think in the long run, i will get more mileage out of these than the comic series because they have a similar production quality. Don't get me wrong, i like longer story driven content, but i dont always have time for that. Best of all, Alerts will be a huge shot in the arm for teaming.
Game Play Feedback:
1. I would like to see slightly longer alerts in the future. like 15-20 mins.
2. There was a boss fight that had waves of minions swarming until the boss was defeated. This made the fight more intense and fun. I think all alert bosses should have waves of minions continuously come and support them.
3. On the subject of bosses, i think that they could use a slight difficulty bump. Many bosses could use some kind of self heal.
4. On the bank robbery mission and some others there are many minions outside the building and the boss is inside. Some times it seemed that you didn't have to defeat all the minions outside the building in order to go inside and defeat the boss. I think that you should have to defeat all the minions before you can inter the building that the boss is in.
5. the changes to PTS make you much stronger, and Free forms mature much faster with the new changes to power tiering. This means that you can have more bread and butter powers by the late teens or early 20s as apposed to the mid to late 20s on live. I hope you keep this in mind as you adjust difficulty of alerts (especially with the bosses) EDIT:
6. Voice over for the bosses would really add some polish to these things. Queue Feedback:
1. Some times the "join queue" button would appear and disappear before you can click it.
2. While i think that its a good thing that the alerts GUI is hard to miss next to the map. I think that all queue related GUI should be in one place. You can Queue for PVP and (Lairs?) and now alerts and all of this should be in one place.
3. As others have said, we need to be able to adjust the difficulty slider (especially with players getting more powerful). I support a voting system for difficulty.
4. I wish you would consider making alerts accessible with less than 5
We should actually have 'rampage' alerts, where a cosmic comes to town. You'd probably want to drop them down to Legendary strength, while the right five man team can drop any cosmic in the game, a PUG may find them unreasonable (they again, we could have alert grades, where it's indicated that the higher end alerts are supposed to be ridiculously tough). The obvious ones are:
We should actually have 'rampage' alerts, where a cosmic comes to town. You'd probably want to drop them down to Legendary strength, while the right five man team can drop any cosmic in the game, a PUG may find them unreasonable (they again, we could have alert grades, where it's indicated that the higher end alerts are supposed to be ridiculously tough). The obvious ones are:
Teleiosaurus at B17
Qwyjibo at B17
Mega-Destroid at Ren Cen or City Hall
Kigatilik at Steelhead
Grond at Greenskin
I'm thinking (And hoping) that these will all be Neighbourhood Events.
We should actually have 'rampage' alerts, where a cosmic comes to town.
^This. This is the sort of thing I'd want in a superhero game, a special kind of alert for cosmics and legendaries, perhaps in thier own mini instances or somesuch where the area's being destroyed or something. I'd much rather this over waiting 3-4 hours for a cosmic/legendary to spawn.
As Alert queues disappear, they briefly pop up asking you to join them. They disappear half a second later and you are dropped. That behaviour needs to change.
I'd like to see the queues be seperated by difficulty. If you are queuing for an alert, and you have the difficulty set to Elite, it should queue you with other players also on elite difficulty. and so on down the ratings.
I didn't know whether to post it here or on UI - but could the icons for Alerts not be so absolutely ginormous?.
In fact, couldn't we have them searchable and presented in-character via communicators by some sort akin to CoH's radio missions animation?.
I don't like the teleport system that takes me from anywhere I am at to the Alert. I would prefer the Alert to let me know where I need to go. Put a big blinking red icon on my map and direct me toward it. When I get to the alert location I enter the mission, and I queue up into a team inside the spawned location. Moving around the map is more immersive and will serve as a small time-sinc for players.
I have to agree, so its straight teleport to alerts when queued?, no element of in-character being 'on-duty' in an area and an alert communicator bleeping to alert you to a crime hotspot, clues or straight-up report of something going on in the city?.
Please restrict certain villains to their usual haunts (I take it the Black Fang Alert instance takes place in VB?) - should pop-up if on-duty and in VB then?, its doesn't make sense to place villains of a certain theme outside of their usual enviroments.
Forgive me, I have tinkered with Alerts albeit only briefly, so I hope I haven't got the wrong end of the stick here.
I'm fine with instances for small teams in small invisi-walled off replicas of a city-block you are near to and zone-to, perhaps they could trigger (click-accept/team) as you run/swing/fly-past the hotspot.
Apologies if I have jumped the gun and things are still being worked out, but I was so very keen on seeing Alerts portrayed similar to above said links in different alerts and that could of had differing and exciting game mechanics (see 'Mirage' example on above link).
A queue list, like STO - i click on it and have no idea what is the wait time or if other folks are particapating.
pretty large map- i am not sure if these maps are being shared together with other alerts but i got lost for about 5 minutes before i found the battle. now i understand it is still in testing and the map is pretty cleared of trash but it maybe beneficial to have the spawning area behind the Cops. so we can see where to head instead of guessing.
A limit - ok, so i can queue for multiple alerts, will that change? Will a limit on how many i can queue be limited? and if i leave an alert earlt will there be some sort of debuff that makes it where i can join another alert for 15 minutes.
Villians - ok, some of these SUPER villians, (minor villians dont count) that are coming in alerts, some folks may not have encountered them. Perhaps it would be nice to have folks not be able to queue against them until have encountred them in a quest line. Maybe this could be another Perk for just encountering these villians once.
While I agree with what you propose to be a more immersive experience, I think scripting all that would take longer than the proposed timeline for releasing this update.
Personally I'd prefer to just teleport into the alert, because I'd find "patrolling" around a zone in hopes of finding an alert that takes 5-10 minutes to complete an extremely annoying endeavor. It would take as long as, if not longer, to find the alert than to complete it.
Oh! Also that sounds more like what the "Neighborhood Events / World Events" are going to be, when those start getting made.
Not sure if this is part of the missing UI, but a list of alerts that you've queued up for would be very helpful. In the same spot as the PVP and Instances Queue section, for example.
Can we please get the oh, so lost and gone Tachyon back to game in these Alerts. Ok, a second favor...please let him be the old Tachyon, not the new one.
I don't like the fact that these alerts and grabs are only 5 people. Not everyone wants to waste the time getting groups together for these things. I was hoping they were more like open worlds. Not looking forward to anymore 5 man forced teams .
Dunno if they are only 5 man.. I duo'd a Foxbat alert with someone else and I think there were less enforcers around than usual. Just one per mob rather than 2 and another 3 bar villain.
As far as I can tell, Alerts are not scaling at all right now. There's no indication yet of how they're supposed to respect team-size and difficulty settings, but they do use Scary Monster Tech (which really threw me off at first, because the enemies were suddenly dangerous, even on Normal).
As far as I can tell, Alerts are not scaling at all right now. There's no indication yet of how they're supposed to respect team-size and difficulty settings, but they do use Scary Monster Tech (which really threw me off at first, because the enemies were suddenly dangerous, even on Normal).
I think that has more to do with the fact the mobs in alerts are tough enemies than the use of scary monster tech.
Can we please get the oh, so lost and gone Tachyon back to game in these Alerts. Ok, a second favor...please let him be the old Tachyon, not the new one.
I think that has more to do with the fact the mobs in alerts are tough enemies than the use of scary monster tech.
Oh snap, I didn't even notice that, since I don't use hard-targeting. That explains how I managed to get myself splattered. Also explains why enemies were seeing straight through Sleight of Mind (lame).
Dunno if they are only 5 man.. I duo'd a Foxbat alert with someone else and I think there were less enforcers around than usual. Just one per mob rather than 2 and another 3 bar villain.
Heh, were you the experiment character? Cause you were with me
Instead of Alerts popping for me, I got an offer to join the Alert, before that offer vanished in less than a second and I got a message saying I had been removed from it.
Once this happened to me twice in about 5 seconds, for two different Alerts.
someone mentioned this in one of the channels last night, i'd be nice if you guys used some other villains that appear in the pnp as opposed to the more common ones, specifically if you can't fully use all of their hat tricks, like Gemini.
Definitely prefer these to be "bite size" amounts of time; no longer than say 20 minutes is great. Personally, I play a lot of total hours but usually in short, interrupted bursts (e.g., play 30 minutes between conference calls, at lunch, between TV shows at night, whatever). I'm not against having longer ones available, but they need to be clearly marked in some way so that the amount of commitment is known before queuing up for it.
I prefer the idea that i could be anywhere - hanging in my penthouse, flying over Monster Island, standing at the auction hall in MC , whatever - and my "Super Hero League" device alerts me of an emergency and the hero on monitor duty in the SHL satellite (at 23,800 feet above the earth in geo-synchronous orbit) teleports me where I need to go. I get that some people would prefer something different, but any RP excuse to make things near instant is much more likely to get me to play these things. (The Unity transporter was a big deal to me in terms of doing my unity dailies.)
Definitely prefer these to be "bite size" amounts of time; no longer than say 20 minutes is great. Personally, I play a lot of total hours but usually in short, interrupted bursts (e.g., play 30 minutes between conference calls, at lunch, between TV shows at night, whatever). I'm not against having longer ones available, but they need to be clearly marked in some way so that the amount of commitment is known before queuing up for it.
I prefer the idea that i could be anywhere - hanging in my penthouse, flying over Monster Island, standing at the auction hall in MC , whatever - and my "Super Hero League" device alerts me of an emergency and the hero on monitor duty in the SHL satellite (at 23,800 feet above the earth in geo-synchronous orbit) teleports me where I need to go. I get that some people would prefer something different, but any RP excuse to make things near instant is much more likely to get me to play these things. (The Unity transporter was a big deal to me in terms of doing my unity dailies.)
Agreed. The near instant queing from anywhere reminds me of the teleportation system from Justice League Unlimited. And of COH's tips and newspaper/radio system. I prefer they keep it that way.
I finally ran a couple of Alerts with some friends, I did enjoy them, and as an RPer I look forward using them for RP missions. As a player I found them pretty easy, course we were a powerful group.
Things I liked
Time:Short and sweet, I liked that it didnt take an hour or more to fight the big bad guy at the end. Got to it quickly.
Villians: I love that we get to fight named villians in these Alerts. Really make you think your participating in a old comic book where the villian is confronted and beaten in one issue.
Things I didn't like
Difficulty: Would like to add a difficulty slider if possible. Seemed to easy to me.
Teams: I would love to see a team queue added, that way if we already have a full team we can jump straight into the ALert-back to diff, the team diff slider could then be used.
Those are my points as of right now. I look forward to doing more and thanks for the great work so far.
I finally ran a couple of Alerts with some friends, I did enjoy them, and as an RPer I look forward using them for RP missions. As a player I found them pretty easy, course we were a powerful group.
Things I liked
Time:Short and sweet, I liked that it didnt take an hour or more to fight the big bad guy at the end. Got to it quickly.
Villians: I love that we get to fight named villians in these Alerts. Really make you think your participating in a old comic book where the villian is confronted and beaten in one issue.
Things I didn't like
Difficulty: Would like to add a difficulty slider if possible. Seemed to easy to me.
Teams: I would love to see a team queue added, that way if we already have a full team we can jump straight into the ALert-back to diff, the team diff slider could then be used.
Those are my points as of right now. I look forward to doing more and thanks for the great work so far.
I agree with everything said here. Was just about to post that team queues should be an option... that or a lobby system. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE implement a Queue lobby system.. it just makes more sense.
I would really prefer to have a location to go to and enter for these queie pops. Unlike PvP these are in game content that is fun to RP.
For me 'zapping' into the zone was really immersion breaking. I think these (like nemesis missions) should at least give the OPTION of goin to a door.
I really think making it a zap in instance will make them LESS interesting in the long run. Much like PvP I wish there were a way to explain what goes on IN GAME. But there is no "Hero Games" building so I must break character just to ENTER match. Much less the reason we're competing (beside that as a hero some people in pvp can be jerks and make a perfect villain).
I truly think that making this element of the in-game and in-lore will take this game to a new level of fun. Otherwise its a shiny toy that gets old quickly without purpose.
OK, I want to chime in more on the Alerts here. Now the new styles with the rotating villains I can see you had ideas but seriously, just run in smash groups done. It makes for nice little one shots for level groups, but over all, I find the whole thing to be rather bland, and that's not taking into the fact that as it currently stands, they are ridiculously easy.
Honestly, if I were to make a suggestion I would say this; Take all the current Open Missions in the game, remove them from the open world and make them their own special alerts with their own special rewards in their own instances. The current problem with the open missions is they pretty much reward the cheesiest build combos. Some of the Open Missions would have to undoubtedly need to be reworked, but considering you are basically taking all the ideas and things implemented for STO. Certain ones would probably need timers, and definitely would need more lairs and such added. These can even be scaled for more larger groups.
Basically, look at your open missions, then design your Alerts like that in mind. As they currently stand they get bland real fast. You can even take and add special events that happen at certain time of the day Alerts like Grond attacking, or fighting off Qwyjibo or Teleiosaurus. This would go a long way to actually making the Alerts better. And I know people won't like that, but can people really say that the Open Missions are working any better being out in the open as they are?
Edit;
Things to consider adding. Optional mission objectives for bonus loot and rewards. Again, you are looking at implementing your tried and true methods in STO, might as well go all the way with these.
I would really prefer to have a location to go to and enter for these queie pops. Unlike PvP these are in game content that is fun to RP.
For me 'zapping' into the zone was really immersion breaking. I think these (like nemesis missions) should at least give the OPTION of goin to a door.
I'm totally not a Roleplayer. I agree with everything said above.
Abruptly being pulled someplace mid chat, mid click, mid banking, mid c-store, is awful.
I assume all that happens since mid chat and mid click do.
City hall is totally unused, new Kodiak Police station unused, Prison mostly just a stop over, that nightclub
in downtown gets no love, let the alerts be located somewhere.
Give people places to gather and team for missions.
Works like a charm at Kodiak and Chief Surhoff, at least for me.
We are talking thousands of manually teamed players at basically just two locations.
Crappy locations at that.
The extra UI element is intrusive and unecessary. Don't clutter the screen with ignorable icons.
People already don't use half the elements on the screen.
Only players with lifetime subs or long run golds know about the crime computer button on the map.
I team players everyday and they know nothing about those icons, N O T H I N G! Level 30 and they are clueless!
I really think making it a zap in instance will make them LESS interesting in the long run.
... its a shiny toy that gets old quickly without purpose.
Yep. Its really shallow. Just mash your buttons, spam your attack, collect your loot and leave.
I'd make an analogy but i can sense a horrible hammer over my head....
So whats going to happen?
Everyone who has gotten bored of these on their first day trying them, will never queue again and then anyone who wants to queue for the first time will have nobody to queue with.
Just like all the lost sheep who can't get help with Purple Reign because of the "I did that mission before' mentality, as if a mission done once is suddenly unclean and unworthy of doing again.
Another analogy I won't make.
Also, the cut scenes are absolutely devoid of any dramatic effect.They just interfere with gameplay.
The players might want to be typing something or using inventory or remote powerhousing.
But they get cut off with a loading screen, then as they are reading what the hell is going on, they get off again with cut scene.
Try this, when Robobo speaks, go "SSSSSH" real loud, every two words.
See how freaking mad he gets?
Thats whats going to happen to players by the hundreds, a day.
Someone said "they are only 15 seconds'. Try this:
Start reading the next post,
Now go to a different website for 15 seconds,
come back read one sentence
now go to an entirely different website for 15 seconds.
now come back for half a minute
read half the next post
then leave this website all together.
Ready for prescription of Ritalin? You will be.
Thats how alerts feel. Like an attention defecit disorder simulator.
The extra UI element is intrusive and unecessary. Don't clutter the screen with ignorable icons.
People already don't use half the elements on the screen.
Only players with lifetime subs or long run golds know about the crime computer button on the map.
I team players everyday and they know nothing about those icons, N O T H I N G! Level 30 and they are clueless!
Simplify everything. Not add dynamic new clutter.
Sounds like a problem on those players' end, if you aren't intelligent enough to Inspect and navigate around the UI in a game yourself without needing to be told to what does that say about you? I'd rather not have to make a long trip over to a laggy mess of froobs clustered around Kodiak to queue for alerts and farm them with my SG team. Thanks...
Yep. Its really shallow. Just mash your buttons, spam your attack, collect your loot and leave.
I'd make an analogy but i can sense a horrible hammer over my head....
So whats going to happen?
Everyone who has gotten bored of these on their first day trying them, will never queue again and then anyone who wants to queue for the first time will have nobody to queue with.
Old news, that's exactly what everything in the game at level 40 is and has been since forever. As a matter of fact, the ONLY content worth doing at all was serpent lantern elite boss farming until they revamped the PvP vendor gear. They're doing the "tokens for gear system", and whether you like it or not, you'll be farming these and any other repetitive missions to get tokens to buy a whole new set of gear once your current gear becomes worthless. Personally, i see this as the better choice over "grind one boss in serpent lantern for 4 hours and hope you get one piece of random algorithm loot that you needed."
So your predictions are surely inaccurate, there will be plenty of people queuing.
Possible Bug: Alert starts loading but then crashes out when Mission Log full. Did not happen to me when I freed up space for more missions.
Possible Bug: MOBs in Alerts all con grey.
Possible Bug: "You are not queued for this Alert" error message pops up when accepting entrance to an Alert queued by team leader. Despite the message, enter Alert with team and no additional problems.
Definite Misspelling: Cairngorm's name is spelled at least 3 different ways in the dockside Alert.
Overall Impression: A good start. Alerts definitely have that old-school comic feel of finding out that some villain is acting out, and needs to be slapped down RIGHT NOW.
Pros:
- Quick, direct, and to the point.
- Required tasks presented very clearly.
- Minimally adequate variety of villains and mission types.
Cons:
- Not much story...could be addressed by introducing a new type of longer Alert.
- Villains lack ways to express their individuality, making them seem much the same...could be addressed by giving them unique motivations, crimes, Alerts, and dialogue. For example, why would the leader of a multinational conspiracy (Draconis) be soiling his hands by personally bombing a train station?
- Minimally adequate variety of villains and mission types. The more the better!
Bug: Repeatedy entered the Bayou Queen grab mission and there were no villains in the instance.
Repeatable.
This happens when you enter someone's finished alert.
Sometimes you get to meet one or more heroes from the last alert, if they haven't left or came back in for some reason (queued again?)
Old news, that's exactly what everything in the game at level 40 is and has been since forever.
As a matter of fact, the ONLY content worth doing at all was serpent lantern elite boss farming until they revamped the PvP vendor gear.
PVP Vendor Gear is not something I care in the least about.
My daughter got a bunch of that stuff and then quit the game, so I actually have some.
Haven't touched it since October. Must not be necessary since I filled and leveled her 12 empty
character slots to over level 20 without dipping into the house bank to use them.
Maybe thats the game for you, a narrow tunnel in a search of dull objectives: get gear, get to 40, make another toon, repeat. Thats not my coffin.
They're doing the "tokens for gear system", and whether you like it or not, you'll be farming these and any other repetitive missions to get tokens to buy a whole new set of gear once your current gear becomes worthless.
I don't use the gear I get now. For three months I didn't even wear gear.
Seriously, I'll get to level 27 and decide the bank needs cleaning, may as well upgrade,
and Ill be wearing level 8 to 14 stuff I found in early Westside, stuff from before the upgraded Kodiak gifts.
I don't pay to grind a game for items or to reach max level, especially this game.
Personally, i see this as the better choice over "grind one boss in serpent lantern for 4 hours and hope you get one piece of random algorithm loot that you needed."
Apparently grinding for items is your thing. Have fun.
So your predictions are surely inaccurate, there will be plenty of people queuing.
Well of course they will be, vital changes are being made to make them more appetizing, instead of the
bloody raw and hairy chicken presented for lunch yesterday on which I was commenting.
The dinner entre was already seasoned and steamy with a dribble of minion sauce.
Smash is too simple, too quick. The way it stands now I see everyone min-maxing fool who wants their gear now queuing up for smash alerts and not touching grab, since that requires more work and time per item gained.
Smash also has you queuing up for 2 minutes for a few seconds of gameplay. I mean I understand what you are going for, a fast boss fight, but just cutting straight to the end without anything inbetween feels a bit empty.
Here's what I say: Make smash a timed beat'em-up with multiple waves. The final wave should be the boss fight. Each wave has its own timer, it's important the players maintain forward momentum and keep busting things up in order to prevent the time for expiring. Instead of timers some waves might have things like stop recruitment or whatever.
Non-timed misisons should have some sort of dynamic that lets the player possibly interfere with the advancement of the failure condition, perhaps creating a failure response quicker to make up for it thus forcing the player to balance combat and stopping failure.
Here's some example ideas:
Recruitment Waves: 3 Venue: Outside city hall Failure Condition: There is a bus, at regular intervals an enemy will spawn from one of serveral locations and run to a a random NPC bystander. The enemy, the recruiter, interacts with that NPC in the same fashion as the destroids do with the bystanders in the escort James harmon mission. If the meter gets full, the NPC runs off into the bus and is recruited. This happens N times, the players lose. Players can prevent recruitment by busting the enemy before it can shanghai bystanders. Each wave completed possibly causes 3-5 NPCs escaping the buss and reentering the unrecruited pool, giving the players more wiggle room. Opposition: Three waves of assault, for the first two waves the boss is at the sidelines, tossing one liners and ordering minions to attack. First wave of henchmen and villains. Second wave amps up to villains and master villains. The final wave the boss jumps out with their own entourage. Each wave is a stream of enemies, much like fighting off the raptors in the Monster Island crisis. Alert is over after third wave.
Death Ray Powerup Waves: 4 Venue: Same warehouse room as the Black Harlequinn showdown. Strip out all the christmas toys and stuff. Insert the death ray from the battle of Detroit museum. Insert random high tech framastans. Failure Condition: Timer runs out Opposition: Boss stands up in the same booth Harlequinn hides in and calls for minions to stop the heroes. After each wave is defeated, the timer has additional time added to it. First wave is a zerg rush of henchmen. Second wave mixes villains and master villains focusing more on strength then numbers. Third wave starts with explosions exposing several power conduits. A mix of the first two waves attack the players, but they are not the objective. To complete the third wave the players need to knock out the power conduits. The final wave the boss finally gets aggitated enough to exit on to the battle floor and throw down with the heroes.
Smash also has you queuing up for 2 minutes for a few seconds of gameplay. I mean I understand what you are going for, a fast boss fight, but just cutting straight to the end without anything inbetween feels a bit empty.
Going to point this part out. The time I don't think Cryptic can help much. When there are only like 10 people on the test server, total, and 8 of them are in the power house that leaves 2 people actually queuing up. From what I can tell it takes a minimum of four queued to start an instance. So, the lack of people playing on test is probably not helping that out at all.
Smash is too simple, too quick. The way it stands now I see everyone min-maxing fool who wants their gear now queuing up for smash alerts and not touching grab, since that requires more work and time per item gained.
I just want to say in addition to being too quick, the fights themselves aren't interesting or compelling in any meaningful way (which is the real issue). I'm seriously hoping that there was a lack of communication between the devs and the pts testers wherein all of the existing bosses are only placeholders for the actual bosses... and the real bosses will have interesting and modern gameplay mechanics (including real secondary objectives), a real opportunity to fail, and something sparkling and magical that non of us here have already asked for or mentioned.
My main concern right now is that these alerts will roll out as they are now (design-wise, but less bug free), similar to how KOTH was rolled out without acknowledging the plethora of constructive and intelligent player feedback that could have made that gamemode a success.
Going to point this part out. The time I don't think Cryptic can help much. When there are only like 10 people on the test server, total, and 8 of them are in the power house that leaves 2 people actually queuing up. From what I can tell it takes a minimum of four queued to start an instance. So, the lack of people playing on test is probably not helping that out at all.
This was based on me queuing up during the playtest. I'd hit to start an event. The popup would come semi-rapidly if not immediately IIRC it was a 40 second countdown. Then the countdown would start as the window appeared and you'd hope everyone would hit ok in a timely matter. Then someone waits until the last 10 seconds to hit OK. And then everyone had hit OK and the timer goes into a 10 second countdown to actually start the instance. I suppose I'm exaggerating a little with the initial time statement. So let's say all the above time takes 1 minute. Then we add in 15 seconds on either end of the instance for loading. Another 15-10 seconds for the players to get their bearings. Another 15-20 seconds to get the loot and get out. Another 10 seconds to requeue. It adds up to about as much time out of the instance as in it if not more. I mean we're looking at a 2 minute battle tops, often less if the team is on the ball and busts the villain in a prompt manner, 2 minutes was the maximum allowable time actually. I'm not holding all the false starts where I was dumped into an empty completed instance against them since they seemed to be aware of and working on that bug.
Curious, since loot hasn't been hooked up to Alerts yet, what is the incentive to run them. I mean right now it's 1 whateverofthenewcurrency. That's like pitiful. Are you goign to add costumes, perks, other rewards?
Comments
Game Play Feedback:
1. I would like to see slightly longer alerts in the future. like 15-20 mins.
2. There was a boss fight that had waves of minions swarming until the boss was defeated. This made the fight more intense and fun. I think all alert bosses should have waves of minions continuously come and support them.
3. On the subject of bosses, i think that they could use a slight difficulty bump. Many bosses could use some kind of self heal.
4. On the bank robbery mission and some others there are many minions outside the building and the boss is inside. Some times it seemed that you didn't have to defeat all the minions outside the building in order to go inside and defeat the boss. I think that you should have to defeat all the minions before you can inter the building that the boss is in.
5. the changes to PTS make you much stronger, and Free forms mature much faster with the new changes to power tiering. This means that you can have more bread and butter powers by the late teens or early 20s as apposed to the mid to late 20s on live. I hope you keep this in mind as you adjust difficulty of alerts (especially with the bosses)
EDIT:
6. Voice over for the bosses would really add some polish to these things.
Queue Feedback:
1. Some times the "join queue" button would appear and disappear before you can click it.
2. While i think that its a good thing that the alerts GUI is hard to miss next to the map. I think that all queue related GUI should be in one place. You can Queue for PVP and (Lairs?) and now alerts and all of this should be in one place.
3. As others have said, we need to be able to adjust the difficulty slider (especially with players getting more powerful). I support a voting system for difficulty.
4. I wish you would consider making alerts accessible with less than 5
In fact, couldn't we have them searchable and presented in-character via communicators by some sort akin to CoH's radio missions animation?.
I have to agree, so its straight teleport to alerts when queued?, no element of in-character being 'on-duty' in an area and an alert communicator bleeping to alert you to a crime hotspot, clues or straight-up report of something going on in the city?.
Please relook at the Champions-Online Police brutality trailer or the Destroids Attack! scenario Defender encounters in the FFA trailer. Is this not what supervillain Alerts were aiming to replicate?, only with a massively expanded repetoire of villains set across the city / zones?.
Please restrict certain villains to their usual haunts (I take it the Black Fang Alert instance takes place in VB?) - should pop-up if on-duty and in VB then?, its doesn't make sense to place villains of a certain theme outside of their usual enviroments.
Forgive me, I have tinkered with Alerts albeit only briefly, so I hope I haven't got the wrong end of the stick here.
I'm fine with instances for small teams in small invisi-walled off replicas of a city-block you are near to and zone-to, perhaps they could trigger (click-accept/team) as you run/swing/fly-past the hotspot.
I was kinda hoping for this kind of potential for an Alerts-system.
Apologies if I have jumped the gun and things are still being worked out, but I was so very keen on seeing Alerts portrayed similar to above said links in different alerts and that could of had differing and exciting game mechanics (see 'Mirage' example on above link).
Feedback and questions:
A queue list, like STO - i click on it and have no idea what is the wait time or if other folks are particapating.
pretty large map- i am not sure if these maps are being shared together with other alerts but i got lost for about 5 minutes before i found the battle. now i understand it is still in testing and the map is pretty cleared of trash but it maybe beneficial to have the spawning area behind the Cops. so we can see where to head instead of guessing.
A limit - ok, so i can queue for multiple alerts, will that change? Will a limit on how many i can queue be limited? and if i leave an alert earlt will there be some sort of debuff that makes it where i can join another alert for 15 minutes.
Villians - ok, some of these SUPER villians, (minor villians dont count) that are coming in alerts, some folks may not have encountered them. Perhaps it would be nice to have folks not be able to queue against them until have encountred them in a quest line. Maybe this could be another Perk for just encountering these villians once.
While I agree with what you propose to be a more immersive experience, I think scripting all that would take longer than the proposed timeline for releasing this update.
Personally I'd prefer to just teleport into the alert, because I'd find "patrolling" around a zone in hopes of finding an alert that takes 5-10 minutes to complete an extremely annoying endeavor. It would take as long as, if not longer, to find the alert than to complete it.
Oh! Also that sounds more like what the "Neighborhood Events / World Events" are going to be, when those start getting made.
Can we please get the oh, so lost and gone Tachyon back to game in these Alerts. Ok, a second favor...please let him be the old Tachyon, not the new one.
Thanks.
Seconded.
Free Tachyon! Lightspeed to evil!
Oh snap, I didn't even notice that, since I don't use hard-targeting. That explains how I managed to get myself splattered. Also explains why enemies were seeing straight through Sleight of Mind (lame).
Heh, were you the experiment character? Cause you were with me
Once this happened to me twice in about 5 seconds, for two different Alerts.
So far, I have never been able to get into one.
Agreed. The near instant queing from anywhere reminds me of the teleportation system from Justice League Unlimited. And of COH's tips and newspaper/radio system. I prefer they keep it that way.
Things I liked
Time:Short and sweet, I liked that it didnt take an hour or more to fight the big bad guy at the end. Got to it quickly.
Villians: I love that we get to fight named villians in these Alerts. Really make you think your participating in a old comic book where the villian is confronted and beaten in one issue.
Things I didn't like
Difficulty: Would like to add a difficulty slider if possible. Seemed to easy to me.
Teams: I would love to see a team queue added, that way if we already have a full team we can jump straight into the ALert-back to diff, the team diff slider could then be used.
Those are my points as of right now. I look forward to doing more and thanks for the great work so far.
I agree with everything said here. Was just about to post that team queues should be an option... that or a lobby system. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE implement a Queue lobby system.. it just makes more sense.
Ask and you shall receive...
http://www.champions-online.com/node/595669
I'm a Roleplayer.
I would really prefer to have a location to go to and enter for these queie pops. Unlike PvP these are in game content that is fun to RP.
For me 'zapping' into the zone was really immersion breaking. I think these (like nemesis missions) should at least give the OPTION of goin to a door.
I really think making it a zap in instance will make them LESS interesting in the long run. Much like PvP I wish there were a way to explain what goes on IN GAME. But there is no "Hero Games" building so I must break character just to ENTER match. Much less the reason we're competing (beside that as a hero some people in pvp can be jerks and make a perfect villain).
I truly think that making this element of the in-game and in-lore will take this game to a new level of fun. Otherwise its a shiny toy that gets old quickly without purpose.
Honestly, if I were to make a suggestion I would say this; Take all the current Open Missions in the game, remove them from the open world and make them their own special alerts with their own special rewards in their own instances. The current problem with the open missions is they pretty much reward the cheesiest build combos. Some of the Open Missions would have to undoubtedly need to be reworked, but considering you are basically taking all the ideas and things implemented for STO. Certain ones would probably need timers, and definitely would need more lairs and such added. These can even be scaled for more larger groups.
Basically, look at your open missions, then design your Alerts like that in mind. As they currently stand they get bland real fast. You can even take and add special events that happen at certain time of the day Alerts like Grond attacking, or fighting off Qwyjibo or Teleiosaurus. This would go a long way to actually making the Alerts better. And I know people won't like that, but can people really say that the Open Missions are working any better being out in the open as they are?
Edit;
Things to consider adding. Optional mission objectives for bonus loot and rewards. Again, you are looking at implementing your tried and true methods in STO, might as well go all the way with these.
Nope. We were really hoping for that mission, but that never cycled.
Or perhaps it was a level problem...the char was level 6. Was it not supposed to be able to enter?
I'm totally not a Roleplayer. I agree with everything said above.
Abruptly being pulled someplace mid chat, mid click, mid banking, mid c-store, is awful.
I assume all that happens since mid chat and mid click do.
City hall is totally unused, new Kodiak Police station unused, Prison mostly just a stop over, that nightclub
in downtown gets no love, let the alerts be located somewhere.
Give people places to gather and team for missions.
Works like a charm at Kodiak and Chief Surhoff, at least for me.
We are talking thousands of manually teamed players at basically just two locations.
Crappy locations at that.
The extra UI element is intrusive and unecessary. Don't clutter the screen with ignorable icons.
People already don't use half the elements on the screen.
Only players with lifetime subs or long run golds know about the crime computer button on the map.
I team players everyday and they know nothing about those icons, N O T H I N G! Level 30 and they are clueless!
Simplify everything. Not add dynamic new clutter.
Yep. Its really shallow. Just mash your buttons, spam your attack, collect your loot and leave.
I'd make an analogy but i can sense a horrible hammer over my head....
So whats going to happen?
Everyone who has gotten bored of these on their first day trying them, will never queue again and then anyone who wants to queue for the first time will have nobody to queue with.
Just like all the lost sheep who can't get help with Purple Reign because of the "I did that mission before' mentality, as if a mission done once is suddenly unclean and unworthy of doing again.
Another analogy I won't make.
Also, the cut scenes are absolutely devoid of any dramatic effect.They just interfere with gameplay.
The players might want to be typing something or using inventory or remote powerhousing.
But they get cut off with a loading screen, then as they are reading what the hell is going on, they get off again with cut scene.
Try this, when Robobo speaks, go "SSSSSH" real loud, every two words.
See how freaking mad he gets?
Thats whats going to happen to players by the hundreds, a day.
Someone said "they are only 15 seconds'. Try this:
Ready for prescription of Ritalin? You will be.
Thats how alerts feel. Like an attention defecit disorder simulator.
Sounds like a problem on those players' end, if you aren't intelligent enough to Inspect and navigate around the UI in a game yourself without needing to be told to what does that say about you? I'd rather not have to make a long trip over to a laggy mess of froobs clustered around Kodiak to queue for alerts and farm them with my SG team. Thanks...
Old news, that's exactly what everything in the game at level 40 is and has been since forever. As a matter of fact, the ONLY content worth doing at all was serpent lantern elite boss farming until they revamped the PvP vendor gear. They're doing the "tokens for gear system", and whether you like it or not, you'll be farming these and any other repetitive missions to get tokens to buy a whole new set of gear once your current gear becomes worthless. Personally, i see this as the better choice over "grind one boss in serpent lantern for 4 hours and hope you get one piece of random algorithm loot that you needed."
So your predictions are surely inaccurate, there will be plenty of people queuing.
Repeatable.
Possible Bug: MOBs in Alerts all con grey.
Possible Bug: "You are not queued for this Alert" error message pops up when accepting entrance to an Alert queued by team leader. Despite the message, enter Alert with team and no additional problems.
Definite Misspelling: Cairngorm's name is spelled at least 3 different ways in the dockside Alert.
Overall Impression: A good start. Alerts definitely have that old-school comic feel of finding out that some villain is acting out, and needs to be slapped down RIGHT NOW.
Pros:
- Quick, direct, and to the point.
- Required tasks presented very clearly.
- Minimally adequate variety of villains and mission types.
Cons:
- Not much story...could be addressed by introducing a new type of longer Alert.
- Villains lack ways to express their individuality, making them seem much the same...could be addressed by giving them unique motivations, crimes, Alerts, and dialogue. For example, why would the leader of a multinational conspiracy (Draconis) be soiling his hands by personally bombing a train station?
- Minimally adequate variety of villains and mission types. The more the better!
This happens when you enter someone's finished alert.
Sometimes you get to meet one or more heroes from the last alert, if they haven't left or came back in for some reason (queued again?)
PVP Vendor Gear is not something I care in the least about.
My daughter got a bunch of that stuff and then quit the game, so I actually have some.
Haven't touched it since October. Must not be necessary since I filled and leveled her 12 empty
character slots to over level 20 without dipping into the house bank to use them.
Maybe thats the game for you, a narrow tunnel in a search of dull objectives: get gear, get to 40, make another toon, repeat. Thats not my coffin.
I don't use the gear I get now. For three months I didn't even wear gear.
Seriously, I'll get to level 27 and decide the bank needs cleaning, may as well upgrade,
and Ill be wearing level 8 to 14 stuff I found in early Westside, stuff from before the upgraded Kodiak gifts.
I don't pay to grind a game for items or to reach max level, especially this game.
Apparently grinding for items is your thing. Have fun.
Well of course they will be, vital changes are being made to make them more appetizing, instead of the
bloody raw and hairy chicken presented for lunch yesterday on which I was commenting.
The dinner entre was already seasoned and steamy with a dribble of minion sauce.
Smash also has you queuing up for 2 minutes for a few seconds of gameplay. I mean I understand what you are going for, a fast boss fight, but just cutting straight to the end without anything inbetween feels a bit empty.
Here's what I say: Make smash a timed beat'em-up with multiple waves. The final wave should be the boss fight. Each wave has its own timer, it's important the players maintain forward momentum and keep busting things up in order to prevent the time for expiring. Instead of timers some waves might have things like stop recruitment or whatever.
Non-timed misisons should have some sort of dynamic that lets the player possibly interfere with the advancement of the failure condition, perhaps creating a failure response quicker to make up for it thus forcing the player to balance combat and stopping failure.
Here's some example ideas:
Recruitment
Waves: 3
Venue: Outside city hall
Failure Condition: There is a bus, at regular intervals an enemy will spawn from one of serveral locations and run to a a random NPC bystander. The enemy, the recruiter, interacts with that NPC in the same fashion as the destroids do with the bystanders in the escort James harmon mission. If the meter gets full, the NPC runs off into the bus and is recruited. This happens N times, the players lose. Players can prevent recruitment by busting the enemy before it can shanghai bystanders. Each wave completed possibly causes 3-5 NPCs escaping the buss and reentering the unrecruited pool, giving the players more wiggle room.
Opposition: Three waves of assault, for the first two waves the boss is at the sidelines, tossing one liners and ordering minions to attack. First wave of henchmen and villains. Second wave amps up to villains and master villains. The final wave the boss jumps out with their own entourage. Each wave is a stream of enemies, much like fighting off the raptors in the Monster Island crisis. Alert is over after third wave.
Death Ray Powerup
Waves: 4
Venue: Same warehouse room as the Black Harlequinn showdown. Strip out all the christmas toys and stuff. Insert the death ray from the battle of Detroit museum. Insert random high tech framastans.
Failure Condition: Timer runs out
Opposition: Boss stands up in the same booth Harlequinn hides in and calls for minions to stop the heroes. After each wave is defeated, the timer has additional time added to it. First wave is a zerg rush of henchmen. Second wave mixes villains and master villains focusing more on strength then numbers. Third wave starts with explosions exposing several power conduits. A mix of the first two waves attack the players, but they are not the objective. To complete the third wave the players need to knock out the power conduits. The final wave the boss finally gets aggitated enough to exit on to the battle floor and throw down with the heroes.
Going to point this part out. The time I don't think Cryptic can help much. When there are only like 10 people on the test server, total, and 8 of them are in the power house that leaves 2 people actually queuing up. From what I can tell it takes a minimum of four queued to start an instance. So, the lack of people playing on test is probably not helping that out at all.
I just want to say in addition to being too quick, the fights themselves aren't interesting or compelling in any meaningful way (which is the real issue). I'm seriously hoping that there was a lack of communication between the devs and the pts testers wherein all of the existing bosses are only placeholders for the actual bosses... and the real bosses will have interesting and modern gameplay mechanics (including real secondary objectives), a real opportunity to fail, and something sparkling and magical that non of us here have already asked for or mentioned.
My main concern right now is that these alerts will roll out as they are now (design-wise, but less bug free), similar to how KOTH was rolled out without acknowledging the plethora of constructive and intelligent player feedback that could have made that gamemode a success.
This was based on me queuing up during the playtest. I'd hit to start an event. The popup would come semi-rapidly if not immediately IIRC it was a 40 second countdown. Then the countdown would start as the window appeared and you'd hope everyone would hit ok in a timely matter. Then someone waits until the last 10 seconds to hit OK. And then everyone had hit OK and the timer goes into a 10 second countdown to actually start the instance. I suppose I'm exaggerating a little with the initial time statement. So let's say all the above time takes 1 minute. Then we add in 15 seconds on either end of the instance for loading. Another 15-10 seconds for the players to get their bearings. Another 15-20 seconds to get the loot and get out. Another 10 seconds to requeue. It adds up to about as much time out of the instance as in it if not more. I mean we're looking at a 2 minute battle tops, often less if the team is on the ball and busts the villain in a prompt manner, 2 minutes was the maximum allowable time actually. I'm not holding all the false starts where I was dumped into an empty completed instance against them since they seemed to be aware of and working on that bug.
So you aren't putting the rewards on pts? That still doesn't answer the question. I ran them. They are boring. What incentive is there to run them.