Edit: Behold sloppy cut and paste because stuff happened and I need a place to put it
If I'm going to spend a few minutes waiting for a queue I want the content in question to atleast be several times that length in terms of playing. This isn't Disneyland where waiting in line for an hour to get 2 minutes of ride is fun.
Further there is also other reasons to make them longer and harder, I want to get to learn my teammates. I'm queueing because I WANT to team because teamming allows more build options, its social, and darn its fun to see peoples concepts and builds. As is I barely even see my teammates long enough to figure out 3 powers the use and their name / costume and even then my brain is still 'learning' it and hasn't quite clicked in by the time its over then poof never to be seen again.
Compair to some of Star Treks queues which take 1-5 minutes on average to get in and dump you with either a full team of 5 or even multiple teams of 5 and last anywhere from 10 minutes at utterly best but on average 20, to a full hour. I get to learn what my teammates can do, have to work on the fly strategy as tactics hit the fan, and I don't always win but I come out of it with a good time and a story. Hell their queue system is also not so screen blockingly huge and on their end game even features 'easy' and 'hard' versions. THATS what I want from some pug queue system.
I'd also like it if it were possible to stay with the team you just queued with when mission ends, just a simple check box at end of mission saying 'stay with team?' and have it auto-queue those who checked it also into the other alerts currently available. Aka I team with Akinos, Ame, Robobo, and Gentleman Crush, and we beat the mission, having found them good friendly teammates I click the 'Continue with Team' button as does Ame and Akinos but Gentleman Crush doesn't like the team and Robobo has to go back to work. Thus Ame, Akinos, and I get auto-team queued into the current batch of available alerts while Robobo and Gentleman Crush are removed from team.
If I had that feature then the short little missions would be much more bearable as I'd get to play with the same group of people with a player or two rotating in and out letting me really get to have some fun both fighting and socializing.
I'd also really like to see a 'Normal' and a "Elite' queue option as well as ALL mobs getting gimmicks and tricks to them and bosses even more so. Mobs that just do damage and have sacks of hp are boring as hell, Give me that FREEM icon and tell me to get the hell out of the way as that boss is goign to fire a giant beam laser of instant death, or maybe make it so he tries to drain health from someone but doing so leave him vulnerable to mez, or hell just add in general mez to certain mob types so we atleast have some one to aim or perhaps avoid shooting at until last as he starts strong then loses power. SOMETHING instead of just hitting the nearest guy. Hell i'd also give flavor to various villain groups instead of just 'oh those are the magic guys and those are fire' and instead it'd be like 'oh those magic guys have all sorts of nasty mez effects but atleast they are squishy, bt those fire guys will do so much damage if you let them debuff you'
As for rewards, as long as they give decent exp and loot so the grind to max level using them would be comparable to the old 'grab 20 quests in an area, knock em out, turn em in' grind then I'm happy, its a way for team players to get up in level with less stress about find people and working out who has what quest and frankly that's boring as hell for 5 guys to jump 3. That said I've only tested with max levels so I have no idea how good or bad the exp is on Alerts although considering its an instance and kill exp in this game is terrible and quest completes give the best, my expectation is there isn't much exp but I haven't tested to actually know.
And sorta went off on a tangent there... oh well theres my feedback for alerts and villains in general I guess.
Played the new alerts. They are the same as the other ones. Making the boss legendary doesn't make it any more exciting. Neat in concept, boring in execution.
Deleting feedback without a trace , won't make this go away.
As has been said:
The new Burst alerts are just as boring as the previous ones. Now instead of going straight into the Tank and Spank Boss fight, you now lead into that fight with some trash mob fights and cut scenes.
You still end up Queuing for these missions longer than you play them. The fights are repetative, boring and skill-less tank and spank endevors. Its nice you inrcreased the bosses to legendary status but all that does is make it take slightly longer to crush them.
It doesn't make the fights more interesting. It doesn't make them more fun.
These are just some of the simpler things your competitors are doing:
Minion Supremacy: Tie the Bosses HP and Regen to his minions, keep the mnions spawning.
Buff devices: Guarded by minions These X devices buff the boss making him impossible to kill.
Buff Bot: There is an NPC that buffs the boss!, Move him away and disable him while you fight the boss.
Rings of death: Boss puts down rings of instagib. MOVE!
Periods of inviciblity/High damage: Boss goes to 2/3rds HP, he flies up and lays down area supremacy attacfks. hold your line!
I am not the only one saying this content isn't up to snuff.
The basic problem with the blast and burst alerts is that a solo critter intended to fight a team needs interesting mechanics, and the villains for these alerts haven't been given any new mechanics; they're just vanilla SVs, writ large. Even the ones who are normally legendaries are missing the extra mechanics present in their primary fights that make those fights more interesting.
The only solo critters in the game who are really interesting enough to make for a decent team five man fight, without extra mechanics, are Mega-Destroid, Teleiosaurus, and Qwyjibo, and that's mostly because they're cosmics and PBAoE-happy.
The Burst events actually have the core of a decent idea, just badly implemented, because it very naturally leads to split objectives: part of the team has to stall the powered-up villain (and no, the team doesn't get to be powered up, just the villain), while the rest deals with whatever is causing him to be powered up, and perhaps a third part deals with henchmen. In general, though, a remotely interesting team mission needs to have at least two or three distinct objectives that have to be done simultaneously. That can even be a simple fight -- against, say, three supervillains. Fighting Viper-X, Freon, and Draconis simultaneously would be a challenge.
I'd be curious what people think is the best boss fight in the game. I'd probably go with Dr Demogaard in Viper's Nest.
My favorite boss fights are in TT. The Baron, to be specific. Draconis in SL can also be interesting since he can KB you into the generators. I was hoping Alerts would be more a case of you having to be on the move and pay attention like in that fight
I'm probably in the minority, but I kinda like the fight with jack fool. He's got the one block which requires you to pay attention and then he summons duplicates. Same thing with Gemini.
I thought Jack was alright as a miniboss. You did have to pay attention for him after all. As long as you are actually engaged in the battle and have to watch out or fail, I'll be happy. To get back to the Baron example, my regular team never wipes with him because we learned how to fight him, but that doesn't mean we aren't enjoying the fight. We are aware that one mistake like someone stepping in the green skull circle and exploding near us would spell our end. That's miles better than just exchanging blows with something until one of you breaks.
I dunno, add brickbusters with the regular mobs at least... At least I'll have to prioritize my targets then.
Boring and immersion-breaking, since we suddenly need a team to defeat villains we previously defeated solo.
Player Characters in an MMO are supposed to get stronger as the game progresses, not weaker.
I suppose that only applies to PCs then. Truth is a lot of "weak" villains we get to fight at early levels or regularly solo are made that way simply to give us something to do and have achievable goals in missions, not necessarily because abstract game conventions such as "hit points" and "levels" have any clear correlation with reality.
On topic, I have to agree with what a lot of people here have been saying about alters. They're too short for the amount of time we're likely to remain queued to join them, and they lack variety and interesting side objectives leading up to the final fight.
In general, though, a remotely interesting team mission needs to have at least two or three distinct objectives that have to be done simultaneously.
Exactly. What's the point of teaming to do stuff you could do alone? An example of something like this would be having to interact with X amount of objects in the map in a limited space of time to achieve a goal, such as pulling a certain amount of levers to open or close a gate, or perhaps set off some sort of trap so we can trap the villain and finally get to fight them.
My favorite boss fights are in TT. The Baron, to be specific. Draconis in SL can also be interesting since he can KB you into the generators. I was hoping Alerts would be more a case of you having to be on the move and pay attention like in that fight
Yes, another thing lacking is environmental obstacles that may keep us from our goals. For example, if there was a flaming pit in one side of the map we may have to work to stay clear off it in case the villain could KB us into it then have to craw out while taking damage. If such a flaming pit would also turn off our travel powers it would make it even more pressing, particularly since there's a timer on the mission for how long we can take to defeat the villain.
i still think in addition to changing up the mechanics of the fights to make them have more punch, only certain bosses should be in each of the different type of alerts.
You've got the same dozen or so in all three types and with the alerts all being basically the same, there is no reason to run the different kinds. Unless the rewards are outstanding.
Break the bosses up into certain alerts and have it make sense. Psimon is robbing a bank. Why on earth would he do that...it's so beneath him.
I like that Grab is robbing the the boat and that Green Dragon is attacking the dojo. But the others are so random.
In all honesty, these need to be more unique with each individual encounter and the boss encounter itself.
You guys have hundreds of tights villains out there that draw from that would be more appropriate to rob banks or take hostages and yet you draw on nothing. This is a fantastic opportunity to introduce new characters that we have not seen before.
i still think in addition to changing up the mechanics of the fights to make them have more punch, only certain bosses should be in each of the different type of alerts.
You've got the same dozen or so in all three types and with the alerts all being basically the same, there is no reason to run the different kinds. Unless the rewards are outstanding.
Break the bosses up into certain alerts and have it make sense. Psimon is robbing a bank. Why on earth would he do that...it's so beneath him.
I like that Grab is robbing the the boat and that Green Dragon is attacking the dojo. But the others are so random.
In all honesty, these need to be more unique with each individual encounter and the boss encounter itself.
You guys have hundreds of tights villains out there that draw from that would be more appropriate to rob banks or take hostages and yet you draw on nothing. This is a fantastic opportunity to introduce new characters that we have not seen before.
There's also something that has been bugging me from the beginning.
MAKE THEM RANDOM
The whole idea that you know who you are fighting kinda blows. Make one GRAB always be active, one SMASH and one BLAST and don't give us Icons of who we are fightng. Make it internally random what ques up.
Please, some dev inform us as to whether or not Alert bosses are rolling out onto live as they currently are on the PTS (boss mechanic-wise). At the very least you can help your testers focus on the things you want... if you're not interested in our feedback concerning the lack of boss mechanics or overall fun and you are primarily interested in bug hunting feedback, make it be known.
I haven't managed to have a queue pop for the other two alert types yet, but I have to say that i'm not impressed with Burst missions at all so far.
They seem very sub-par for modern day content, to be brutally honest. The idea of a "super-powered super brawl" is entertaining, but if all it means is that numbers are bigger all around, then there's really not much of a point to it. There needs to be entertaining mechanics, or just an entertaining set-piece to make it engaging doing it for the first time, nevermind repeat instances of it.
Just did the MC Burst mission, and it was incredibly boring. Reasoning as to why is below:
Bigger numbers != Fun. I'd much rather prefer that interesting and innovative content be put in place instead of just seeing thousands of damage pop over peoples heads. Seems more like a way to artificially increase the time it takes to complete the content instead as it is now. Especially since you'd get the same effect with lower stats.
I'd much rather prefer more innovating and entertaining scenarios. Instead of just boosting our stats to insane levels with a buff, which pads things out, why not have a situation where we're Godzilla or giant sized, and have to fight in the city to stop a villain? Stuff like that.
Burst, when it was announced, sounded like a scenario where the gameplay had changed drastically. Which is intriguing as a feature, since you could do quite a bit with that. As it is it's really not seeming that way now. You could get the same results from doing these things with lower HP, only with less of a buffer until death for everyone.
Also, some powers didn't seem to scale well with the increased numbers, though maybe that was because i'm not entirely familiar with this new system yet. Regeneration, and my block did not compare to the DPS being outputted at all, to the point where I had might as well not have even had the former, in fact.
Please, some dev inform us as to whether or not Alert bosses are rolling out onto live as they currently are on the PTS (boss mechanic-wise). At the very least you can help your testers focus on the things you want... if you're not interested in our feedback concerning the lack of boss mechanics or overall fun and you are primarily interested in bug hunting feedback, make it be known.
Toss us some communication here, please.
You are getting communitication.
I think its pretty clear that its just bug feedback they are looking for.
You are getting communitication.
I think its pretty clear that its just bug feedback they are looking for.
Pantagruel's quoted section is what has me confused about the dev's aim with respect to our feedback. The way communication is going out, it's implying all they want is bug feedback, but their explicit instructions call for more than just that.
Pretty please, anyone with a dev tag, help us help you by clarifying what you're looking for from us.
I'm not sure if this has been brought up, but the way the queue line is set up right now..It could be abused and used as a griefing tool.
Think about it. The game only starts when there's 5 people who click join after the readybar comes up. Someone can just queue and not hit anything at all, wasting the time of others.
That's how I see it though. Sure he's wasting his own time doing it, but still.
I have not bugged this because I don't know if it is a bug. However
I tried my first alert today. It was burst mission with Jack fool. Me and a few people
got massively powered up then went down like glass cannons.
From what I gathered my passive (invulnerable) did not scale with the power up.
I could not mitigate any damage from all the crap was thrown at me.
Did any one see this as well.
Now I know my upgrades are not up to part with the new itemization
but I just checked my level 40 who was rewored a few weeks ago on
test does not take that much damage from enemies that fast.
I have not bugged this because I don't know if it is a bug. However
I tried my first alert today. It was burst mission with Jack fool. Me and a few people
got massively powered up then went down like glass cannons.
From what I gathered my passive (invulnerable) did not scale with the power up.
I could not mitigate any damage from all the crap was thrown at me.
Did any one see this as well.
Now I know my upgrades are not up to part with the new itemization
but I just checked my level 40 who was rewored a few weeks ago on
test does not take that much damage from enemies that fast.
Alerts are on Hard Difficulty by default, no to mention there are constantly 5 man team ammounts of enemies regardless of how many people are in the alert. Enemies hit alot harder and crit alot more often.
There are also new, stronger enemies called "Enforcers" which are near as powerful as the bosses themselves.
Alerts are on Hard Difficulty by default, no to mention there are constantly 5 man team ammounts of enemies regardless of how many people are in the alert. Enemies hit alot harder and crit alot more often.
There are also new, stronger enemies called "Enforcers" which are near as powerful as the bosses themselves.
ooooohhhhh?
For all types of Alerts?
If so, that's a massive step in the right direction from what they were in stage 1. ^_^
Super buffed up Nocturne almost requires the use of Skarn's Bane or a *lot* of heal debuff stacking. She heals 2.6% of her ~2.2 million hp every 3 seconds meaning a team needs a combined dps of 19067 just to break even. I've heard that Draconis's PFF also has amazing regenerative qualities that should probably get looked at.
Alerts will be fun to run as "time sinks" but have thus far been impossible to roleplay any reason why I am transported from one city to the next AND back.. while being forced to take a jet everywhere else. Small gripe about story continuity and trying to sell them on location based HUBs for roleplayers that don't kill story immersion.
I personally wish they weren't queueable instances and instead worked like the Bank Robberies, etc of Millineum City.. where my hero must seek the emergency. Our heroes have crime computers.. why not post the locations as missions on there with waypoints.. the "now my character can teleport.. and now they can't" thing is very laughable seeing as to how i must still run to the jet to get everywhere else.
Comments
Total agree. It doesn't matter what rewards are hooked up to alerts as long as they are boring.
Player Characters in an MMO are supposed to get stronger as the game progresses, not weaker.
If I'm going to spend a few minutes waiting for a queue I want the content in question to atleast be several times that length in terms of playing. This isn't Disneyland where waiting in line for an hour to get 2 minutes of ride is fun.
Further there is also other reasons to make them longer and harder, I want to get to learn my teammates. I'm queueing because I WANT to team because teamming allows more build options, its social, and darn its fun to see peoples concepts and builds. As is I barely even see my teammates long enough to figure out 3 powers the use and their name / costume and even then my brain is still 'learning' it and hasn't quite clicked in by the time its over then poof never to be seen again.
Compair to some of Star Treks queues which take 1-5 minutes on average to get in and dump you with either a full team of 5 or even multiple teams of 5 and last anywhere from 10 minutes at utterly best but on average 20, to a full hour. I get to learn what my teammates can do, have to work on the fly strategy as tactics hit the fan, and I don't always win but I come out of it with a good time and a story. Hell their queue system is also not so screen blockingly huge and on their end game even features 'easy' and 'hard' versions. THATS what I want from some pug queue system.
I'd also like it if it were possible to stay with the team you just queued with when mission ends, just a simple check box at end of mission saying 'stay with team?' and have it auto-queue those who checked it also into the other alerts currently available. Aka I team with Akinos, Ame, Robobo, and Gentleman Crush, and we beat the mission, having found them good friendly teammates I click the 'Continue with Team' button as does Ame and Akinos but Gentleman Crush doesn't like the team and Robobo has to go back to work. Thus Ame, Akinos, and I get auto-team queued into the current batch of available alerts while Robobo and Gentleman Crush are removed from team.
If I had that feature then the short little missions would be much more bearable as I'd get to play with the same group of people with a player or two rotating in and out letting me really get to have some fun both fighting and socializing.
I'd also really like to see a 'Normal' and a "Elite' queue option as well as ALL mobs getting gimmicks and tricks to them and bosses even more so. Mobs that just do damage and have sacks of hp are boring as hell, Give me that FREEM icon and tell me to get the hell out of the way as that boss is goign to fire a giant beam laser of instant death, or maybe make it so he tries to drain health from someone but doing so leave him vulnerable to mez, or hell just add in general mez to certain mob types so we atleast have some one to aim or perhaps avoid shooting at until last as he starts strong then loses power. SOMETHING instead of just hitting the nearest guy. Hell i'd also give flavor to various villain groups instead of just 'oh those are the magic guys and those are fire' and instead it'd be like 'oh those magic guys have all sorts of nasty mez effects but atleast they are squishy, bt those fire guys will do so much damage if you let them debuff you'
As for rewards, as long as they give decent exp and loot so the grind to max level using them would be comparable to the old 'grab 20 quests in an area, knock em out, turn em in' grind then I'm happy, its a way for team players to get up in level with less stress about find people and working out who has what quest and frankly that's boring as hell for 5 guys to jump 3. That said I've only tested with max levels so I have no idea how good or bad the exp is on Alerts although considering its an instance and kill exp in this game is terrible and quest completes give the best, my expectation is there isn't much exp but I haven't tested to actually know.
And sorta went off on a tangent there... oh well theres my feedback for alerts and villains in general I guess.
As has been said:
The new Burst alerts are just as boring as the previous ones. Now instead of going straight into the Tank and Spank Boss fight, you now lead into that fight with some trash mob fights and cut scenes.
You still end up Queuing for these missions longer than you play them. The fights are repetative, boring and skill-less tank and spank endevors. Its nice you inrcreased the bosses to legendary status but all that does is make it take slightly longer to crush them.
It doesn't make the fights more interesting. It doesn't make them more fun.
These are just some of the simpler things your competitors are doing:
Minion Supremacy: Tie the Bosses HP and Regen to his minions, keep the mnions spawning.
Buff devices: Guarded by minions These X devices buff the boss making him impossible to kill.
Buff Bot: There is an NPC that buffs the boss!, Move him away and disable him while you fight the boss.
Rings of death: Boss puts down rings of instagib. MOVE!
Periods of inviciblity/High damage: Boss goes to 2/3rds HP, he flies up and lays down area supremacy attacfks. hold your line!
I am not the only one saying this content isn't up to snuff.
The only solo critters in the game who are really interesting enough to make for a decent team five man fight, without extra mechanics, are Mega-Destroid, Teleiosaurus, and Qwyjibo, and that's mostly because they're cosmics and PBAoE-happy.
The Burst events actually have the core of a decent idea, just badly implemented, because it very naturally leads to split objectives: part of the team has to stall the powered-up villain (and no, the team doesn't get to be powered up, just the villain), while the rest deals with whatever is causing him to be powered up, and perhaps a third part deals with henchmen. In general, though, a remotely interesting team mission needs to have at least two or three distinct objectives that have to be done simultaneously. That can even be a simple fight -- against, say, three supervillains. Fighting Viper-X, Freon, and Draconis simultaneously would be a challenge.
I'd be curious what people think is the best boss fight in the game. I'd probably go with Dr Demogaard in Viper's Nest.
I dunno, add brickbusters with the regular mobs at least... At least I'll have to prioritize my targets then.
I suppose that only applies to PCs then. Truth is a lot of "weak" villains we get to fight at early levels or regularly solo are made that way simply to give us something to do and have achievable goals in missions, not necessarily because abstract game conventions such as "hit points" and "levels" have any clear correlation with reality.
On topic, I have to agree with what a lot of people here have been saying about alters. They're too short for the amount of time we're likely to remain queued to join them, and they lack variety and interesting side objectives leading up to the final fight.
Exactly. What's the point of teaming to do stuff you could do alone? An example of something like this would be having to interact with X amount of objects in the map in a limited space of time to achieve a goal, such as pulling a certain amount of levers to open or close a gate, or perhaps set off some sort of trap so we can trap the villain and finally get to fight them.
Yes, another thing lacking is environmental obstacles that may keep us from our goals. For example, if there was a flaming pit in one side of the map we may have to work to stay clear off it in case the villain could KB us into it then have to craw out while taking damage. If such a flaming pit would also turn off our travel powers it would make it even more pressing, particularly since there's a timer on the mission for how long we can take to defeat the villain.
You've got the same dozen or so in all three types and with the alerts all being basically the same, there is no reason to run the different kinds. Unless the rewards are outstanding.
Break the bosses up into certain alerts and have it make sense. Psimon is robbing a bank. Why on earth would he do that...it's so beneath him.
I like that Grab is robbing the the boat and that Green Dragon is attacking the dojo. But the others are so random.
In all honesty, these need to be more unique with each individual encounter and the boss encounter itself.
You guys have hundreds of tights villains out there that draw from that would be more appropriate to rob banks or take hostages and yet you draw on nothing. This is a fantastic opportunity to introduce new characters that we have not seen before.
There's also something that has been bugging me from the beginning.
MAKE THEM RANDOM
The whole idea that you know who you are fighting kinda blows. Make one GRAB always be active, one SMASH and one BLAST and don't give us Icons of who we are fightng. Make it internally random what ques up.
Toss us some communication here, please.
They seem very sub-par for modern day content, to be brutally honest. The idea of a "super-powered super brawl" is entertaining, but if all it means is that numbers are bigger all around, then there's really not much of a point to it. There needs to be entertaining mechanics, or just an entertaining set-piece to make it engaging doing it for the first time, nevermind repeat instances of it.
Just did the MC Burst mission, and it was incredibly boring. Reasoning as to why is below:
Bigger numbers != Fun. I'd much rather prefer that interesting and innovative content be put in place instead of just seeing thousands of damage pop over peoples heads. Seems more like a way to artificially increase the time it takes to complete the content instead as it is now. Especially since you'd get the same effect with lower stats.
I'd much rather prefer more innovating and entertaining scenarios. Instead of just boosting our stats to insane levels with a buff, which pads things out, why not have a situation where we're Godzilla or giant sized, and have to fight in the city to stop a villain? Stuff like that.
Burst, when it was announced, sounded like a scenario where the gameplay had changed drastically. Which is intriguing as a feature, since you could do quite a bit with that. As it is it's really not seeming that way now. You could get the same results from doing these things with lower HP, only with less of a buffer until death for everyone.
Also, some powers didn't seem to scale well with the increased numbers, though maybe that was because i'm not entirely familiar with this new system yet. Regeneration, and my block did not compare to the DPS being outputted at all, to the point where I had might as well not have even had the former, in fact.
You are getting communitication.
I think its pretty clear that its just bug feedback they are looking for.
Pantagruel's quoted section is what has me confused about the dev's aim with respect to our feedback. The way communication is going out, it's implying all they want is bug feedback, but their explicit instructions call for more than just that.
Pretty please, anyone with a dev tag, help us help you by clarifying what you're looking for from us.
Think about it. The game only starts when there's 5 people who click join after the readybar comes up. Someone can just queue and not hit anything at all, wasting the time of others.
That's how I see it though. Sure he's wasting his own time doing it, but still.
I tried my first alert today. It was burst mission with Jack fool. Me and a few people
got massively powered up then went down like glass cannons.
From what I gathered my passive (invulnerable) did not scale with the power up.
I could not mitigate any damage from all the crap was thrown at me.
Did any one see this as well.
Now I know my upgrades are not up to part with the new itemization
but I just checked my level 40 who was rewored a few weeks ago on
test does not take that much damage from enemies that fast.
Alerts are on Hard Difficulty by default, no to mention there are constantly 5 man team ammounts of enemies regardless of how many people are in the alert. Enemies hit alot harder and crit alot more often.
There are also new, stronger enemies called "Enforcers" which are near as powerful as the bosses themselves.
ooooohhhhh?
For all types of Alerts?
If so, that's a massive step in the right direction from what they were in stage 1. ^_^
But not every faction has had them. I think for VIPER they were added for the mobs in VB.
Yeah .. this would also be interesting, and maybe next people are asking here for DPS-Meters and Gear-Score finally
I personally wish they weren't queueable instances and instead worked like the Bank Robberies, etc of Millineum City.. where my hero must seek the emergency. Our heroes have crime computers.. why not post the locations as missions on there with waypoints.. the "now my character can teleport.. and now they can't" thing is very laughable seeing as to how i must still run to the jet to get everywhere else.