Evaporative Cooling of Cosmics

kamokami · June 2016

This is what I would propose is going on with the Cosmics at the moment:

The Evaporative Cooling Effect is a term I learned from an excellent essay by Eliezer Yudowsky that describes a particular phenomena of group dynamics. It occurs when the most high value contributors to a community realize that the community is no longer serving their needs any more and so therefore, leave. When that happens, it drops the general quality of the community down such that the next most high value contributors now find the community underwhelming. Each layer of disappearances slowly reduces the average quality of the group until such a point that you reach the people who are so unskilled-and-unaware of it that they’re unable to tell that they’re part of a mediocre group.

It's a well documented effect that occurs in just about every community. (LINK HERE)

As one of the people who put in the work to figure out the mechanics and more efficient ways of fighting the Cosmics, repeatedly organized the fights, and wrote out detailed guides (see signature) on how the fights work......I expect that effort to pay off by people following directions, learning the fights, and ultimately completing the content. If that's not happening then the effort stops too.

The content is doable. The guides are there. Organize the fights and form the teams you need and get it done. No one is stopping you...you can do it....because you already have done it. Figure it out!

And when you need help, there are people who will help.....but when they do they expect to be listened to.

spinnytop · June 2016

jaazaniah1 · July 2016

Does the evaporation continue until no one is left?

pantagruel01 · July 2016

jaazaniah1 said:
Does the evaporation continue until no one is left?

Unless something is done to solve the causes, probably. I would, however, note a significant encounter design issue that is involved here. If you advertise on a public channel, you're inevitably going to get low skill casuals, and what this does is highly dependent on the effects of adding those casuals.

If adding those casuals is helpful, you're incentivized to pull in as many of those casuals as possible. Back when Teleiosaurus and Qwyjibo had no player count scaling, this was the case.
If adding those casuals is neutral and the reward system favors the high contribution people, there is very little incentive to keep them away.
If adding those casuals is neutral and the reward system is equal for everyone, there's an incentive to keep things private to maintain exclusivity of rewards, but it's not very strong.
If adding those casuals is actively harmful, you want to drive them away. That is the current state of all three Cosmics.

kamokami · July 2016

jaazaniah1 said:
Does the evaporation continue until no one is left?

If membership in the overall community outpaces the growth of the number of high contributors then yes it does. The typical ways of slowing down this effect fall into:

1. Slowing down growth of the overall community by gating entry: the private "elite" etc..
2. Speeding up the growth of the number of high contributing members by incentivizing them to stay, typically via recognition (aka scoreboard), and by providing others information on how to contribute more (aka guides). When people have both incentive and information to act then most of the time they do so.

Ideally method 1 is not done. Because the worry is that, over time, there won't be enough people to play this content.

Method 2 relies on the quality of the incentives, the information, and people wanting to increase their contribution....in most cases this has to do with how good the incentive is.

If we're to stay in the world where, as @pantagruel01 puts it, adding more casuals is actively harmful....then method 2 is really the only sustainable way to keep the quality of the community high. But the majority of the membership of that community has to feel the desire to improve or it won't work.

Nobody calls on heroes to join in the fight because they pity those heroes. They call on heroes because they want their help. If their help is not wanted then the calls won't come.

nepht · July 2016

Y'all over thinking this.

kamokami · July 2016

nepht said:
Y'all over thinking this.

I really hope so haha

avianos · July 2016

Very informative article for this Phenomenon and really relevant for the Cosmic Update

jaazaniah1 · July 2016

Hmm, so the devs are designing content to discourage only the really most dedicated and skilled people from playing endgame? Disturbing thought.

pantagruel01 said:

If adding those casuals is actively harmful, you want to drive them away. That is the current state of all three Cosmics.

chaelk · July 2016

yes, and when you are only able to be on some times or you're in a different timezone to the majority. I can only get on, on the weekends for US day time.

my Unleashed in Mercenery gear with R6/7 mods and normal purples, in my first attempt at Kiga (out of about 5 attempts total of other characters) with a Melee character.
Yes I died about 6 times, so did a load of other people.
WE had problems attacking ice cages to start with but that got sorted.

Someone had a CC(crippling challenge) problem and got called to remove that power for the fight, they were dps.So they did.

One of the dogs refused to attack the Tank baiting it and instead decided that Cercie , the support person who was standing to the right of the melee group, was a bigger threat. The tank was smacking it in the face right next to us and it was ignoring him. I think he must have eventually kicked it in the balls to get it's attention .

Then Cercie moved to the back of the melee , everyone got free heals and the dying stopped, well except for a few blocking acidents..

I had to learn the fight and also what I had to do as melee.
Attack,
block as soon as snow storm starts.
aoe attack as soon as it finishes, in case of ice nearby
repeat
I got fourth highest damage, that was a surprise. I was just spamming full charge dragons wrath because it's easy to stop suddenly.The combo power isn't for some reason.
(and for some reason my Paint has decided that all screenshots should be about 1/8th of a page now.So sorry for the small picture. I had to fiddle it a lot to get rid of the excess white.)
san%20limits_zpsemwy6av0.png

The ape attempt directly after, we simply didn't have enough DPS to take out the hearts fast. I was counting and it was 2 yellow circles then the hearts would respawn.
The tanks had him in a good position and where keeping him steady but we just couldn't kill the hearts fast enough. the two at the front of him were causing targeting problems too.

spinnytop · July 2016

jaazaniah1 said:
Hmm, so the devs are designing content to discourage only the really most dedicated and skilled people from playing endgame? Disturbing thought.

Yes, Cosmics are meant to discourage the elite from participating.

kamokami · July 2016

Just to clarify a bit. I don't think the intent is to discourage anyone. The intent is to encourage cooperation and triumph over challenge via teamwork.

Personally, I have made quite a few more friends playing this content than any other. I think it's great. The best way for it to not fizzle out would be for people to actively work to improve themselves and their gameplay.

cptmassive1 · July 2016

First, I thanked all those who figured out the content first, both here and in game. I still mean what I said although I think the thread is gone.

Secondly, with all due respect to everyone, lets say all the elites leave. The game is going to continue and others will figure out the content just fine. First does not mean only.

The elites won't leave, of course, because even though some will not admit it (and some have) they get a benefit from being the ones to succeed first and help others succeed. Whether it is for that reason or just for the attention, mutual benefit exists. If they leave they have no one to admire them.

There will be people figuring out the content as long as the game exists and no one is irreplaceable when it comes to players of a video game. There will always be people who help. There will also always be people who don't or even go out of their way to hurt others' efforts. There will always be people who need help and always people who don't.

If some people rarely succeed at the cosmics, attendance will eventually be limited to those willing to make the effort, which, I believe might be how they were intended to function. NBD. It is a game.

spinnytop · July 2016

I think when kamokami talks about the "elites" leaving, she means "leaving the community", i.e. the public Cosmic channel, and forming their own community, i.e. the private Cosmic channel. This has already happened, i.e. the channel exists and secret runs have taken place - it happened with TA too. As it turns out the "elites" aren't so concerned with being admired - in fact from what I know of the people that you folks consider "the elite" most of them couldn't care less about being admired and a small minority of them are pretty vocal about their desire for the "non-elites" to go away. After all, if they wanted to be admired for their efforts they wouldn't be making stealth runs where they actively try to avoid having anyone know that they're doing anything.

As far as "if they leave, people will figure the things out anyway", this should be the case, and I encourage people to do this often. However, the response to that mentality isn't particularly promising...neither in the responses that people give, nor the attitudes they display when trying to put it into action. For some reason there are a lot of players here who have convinced themselves that "elite" is this unattainable state of being, and they use it as an excuse, i.e., "This content was made for the elite, and I am not elite, hence I cannot do this content.". It's quite silly. If you say to people "Well.. just be elite yourselves", people will happily throw everything from not having the best gear to having a job and even theme characters at you as reasons for why they just can't ever do that - all of which are hurdles that "elite" players have overcome many times.

This is community content, which means the community needs to change if they want to reliably tackle it. Unfortunately, when some people hear this sentiment, what they hear is "the elite community needs to change", which simply isn't the case - as has been demonstrated the "elite" community is doing just fine and is raking in rewards, and has demonstrated a willingness to help people and to be a part of the public effort. One thing that absolutely needs to change is that people need to stop being so stubborn about the idea that they themselves cannot be good at this game and stop pushing this idea that there is a class of player that they can never be a part of. After all, the "elites" didn't name themselves that - credit for that naming goes to those who stalwartly demand that they themselves are not a part of "that group of people".

cptmassive1 said:
If some people rarely succeed at the cosmics, attendance will eventually be limited to those willing to make the effort, which, I believe might be how they were intended to function. NBD. It is a game.

Yes. Some people are trying to speed up this process, but the people who feel entitled to the rewards just for wanting them don't seem to like that.

championshewolf · July 2016

The intent of the cosmics is that they are fun but challenging. Honestly I think they've swung too far into the challenging side, as the community as a whole doesn't want to get involved because it's not really fun to constantly die and have to reset these bosses because of one person screwing up. There has to be a middle ground for this, the fact it requires a sheer number of people to do successfully. To me it's not an entitlement issue it's a fact these events were intended for large scale of people but the shifting keeps removing the fact that the everyone part is becoming more of a hindrance and liability and that just ruins these events.

roughbearmattach · July 2016

This content is meant to be tough, not autowin, like alerts, for instance. For long time players, remember failing at a run in Viper Nest lair? Or actually being defeated by tough mobs unexpectedly? There used to be parts of the regular game that had this level of difficulty, but changes to the game made them easier, even soloable. Heck, my jack-of-all-trades main, who uses Eldritch Blast as a regular attack, can solo Mandragalore, which used to be "hard".

I remember, back in the olden times, when it was worth asking around for help from veteran or skilled players to do certain types of content. They could help with the hard parts, and they could also explain how it's done. This is how multiplayer online games work.

P.S. Kaiserin mentioned that the baby dino's behavior is not working as intended, and it really does make Teleiosaurus harder than expected.

hasukurobi · July 2016

spinnytop said:

As far as "if they leave, people will figure the things out anyway", this should be the case, and I encourage people to do this often. However, the response to that mentality isn't particularly promising...neither in the responses that people give, nor the attitudes they display when trying to put it into action. For some reason there are a lot of players here who have convinced themselves that "elite" is this unattainable state of being, and they use it as an excuse, i.e., "This content was made for the elite, and I am not elite, hence I cannot do this content.". It's quite silly. If you say to people "Well.. just be elite yourselves", people will happily throw everything from not having the best gear to having a job and even theme characters at you as reasons for why they just can't ever do that - all of which are hurdles that "elite" players have overcome many times.

This is community content, which means the community needs to change if they want to reliably tackle it. Unfortunately, when some people hear this sentiment, what they hear is "the elite community needs to change", which simply isn't the case - as has been demonstrated the "elite" community is doing just fine and is raking in rewards, and has demonstrated a willingness to help people and to be a part of the public effort. One thing that absolutely needs to change is that people need to stop being so stubborn about the idea that they themselves cannot be good at this game and stop pushing this idea that there is a class of player that they can never be a part of. After all, the "elites" didn't name themselves that - credit for that naming goes to those who stalwartly demand that they themselves are not a part of "that group of people".

There are many reasons why some people do not do various content.

Some literally do not have the time to be able to pull together a group and do it when they have a rare opportunity. There is nothing that can be done for that group it is what it is.

Some do not have the time to grind or money to simply buy the elite gear they would need to be a worthwhile addition to the party for these sorts of events. This problem CAN eventually solve itself over long time periods but it has the issue that often by the time it does no one cares to do the content they finally got geared for or they have since lost interest themselves. (I fit into this category often. Mostly because being an Altaholic tends to make it hard to gear up lol.)

Some simply are not good at working in groups. Not much can be done there unless it is a trait they can learn to overcome but not everyone can.

Some have connections or computers that make participating in big battles where they need good timing pretty much impossible. This is another thing that cannot really be fixed by the community.

Some are very afraid of being the one who ruins things for others and if they feel they do not have what it takes then they will not join in. The only real way to get them to join in is usually to assure them that their part in it will be minor and that you have it covered and just need a little help.

Some just do not really care. Too much grind for the effort. They would rather do other things in the game and leave this sort of thing for people who apparently enjoy it.

Personally, I will participate in a lot of the content including big open battles and OV a bit but I do not really bother with TA or the Cosmics at this time. I pretty much gave up OV as well because the grind is not worth my time. As for these other events I really hate going through a hard fight just to have something screw everything up. Maybe the team just can't pull it together. Maybe some folks bail on us. Maybe the server kicks me at the most inopportune moment (Looking at YOU CYBER MIND!). Whatever the reason it boils my biscuits something fierce to waste a lot of time and effort for nothing and while there are things I would like from TA etc. I do not really think they are worth the amount of that content I would have to play to get them. Really if these missions are supposed to be so epic then why not make them pay out BIG and be something you only do rarely. I guess that is why I like the event versions better because they are a limited thing (shorter and better payout ftw) that feels like something is going down that you are taking part in not just some endless time loop you are stuck in.

TLDR: People have valid reasons for not being able to play this content and not all of them can just "git gud" and suddenly be all "1337" just because you can/did or want them to.

spinnytop · July 2016

hasukurobi said:
TLDR: People have valid reasons for not being able to play this content and not all of them can just "git gud" and suddenly be all "1337" just because you can/did or want them to.

You have grossly misunderstood what I typed. Shame on you.

EDIT: However you did give a great example of what I was talking about with people throwing out all sorts of ridiculous excuses when confronted with the idea of themselves simply becoming whatever elite is, so thank you for that at least.

xacchaeus · July 2016

because you never do anything like that do you spiny?

baelogventure · July 2016

TL;DR

People need to git gud.

kyastral · July 2016

spinnytop said:
I think when kamokami talks about the "elites" leaving, she means "leaving the community", i.e. the public Cosmic channel, and forming their own community, i.e. the private Cosmic channel. This has already happened, i.e. the channel exists and secret runs have taken place - it happened with TA too. As it turns out the "elites" aren't so concerned with being admired - in fact from what I know of the people that you folks consider "the elite" most of them couldn't care less about being admired and a small minority of them are pretty vocal about their desire for the "non-elites" to go away. After all, if they wanted to be admired for their efforts they wouldn't be making stealth runs where they actively try to avoid having anyone know that they're doing anything.

^^^^ This is exactly why the Cosmic Monsters should have been made an instance as well as an open event. Why bother doing Cosmic Monsters when half of the people drop away to do the runs in private? (as I have often seen these days). If players have a *certain* group of people they like to play with because they know the mission will get done, then they should be able to have that choice. It should not be that hard to create an instance where the team limit is 25 (since the zone limit is 50) and then someone can recruit who they want to play with. You may think it will alienate players, but that is happening already and I dont see this trend slowing down any time soon.

darqaura2 · July 2016

I've personally stopped caring about the cosmics because of how much time it takes for the damn things to form. By the time I get on late at night till the time running it gets going its time for bed. Honestly would have been better if it was instanced content that could be run anything a group of 25-50 chose to. Them being in the open world really doesn't impress me. Other games do that sort of thing much better (and with less constant bugs.)

EDIT: Thanks to those who put in the effort to show the community how to get them done. But if all it takes is one person to troll the event for it to be screwed up (or take significantly longer than it should), that was yet another nail in the coffin in caring about this content for me. Instance technology was created partially to deal with such silliness.

chalupaoffury · July 2016

Yeah, I'm done with em. I'm all about learning the fight, reading stuff, but on my first day of playing it as not just another dpser, because people specifically asked for more heals? A few of the people in this thread decided to b**ch up down left and right in zone about how the healers sucked, because we were having pathing issues from (in my example) having never played the content before, switching from that new "pull em so the dps stands on the road" tactic, back to the classic "Stand on the hill" one for literally my first run that way. Never mind that we almost beat it anyway, or that a plan was discussed for 15 minutes before being enacted (and then complained about when it didn't work), just... Yeah. Over the cosmics, all this taught me is that we're finally getting the bulls**t every other MMO that uses trinity brings to the table.

This kinda behavior is why we have like 40 players in the entire game, and I've seen it both times I've tried to run a cosmic. Either b***hing about the healers following a plan they were told to do, or literally talking to the entire zone like a pack of 2 year olds. I'm over it, between that and the BoP status of the new event auras, literally none of the new content feels worth it. It's honestly pretty disappointing, I just came back a few days ago, and it's to this.

Like I said in another thread, guess it's back to Fallout 4. See y'all in a few months. Hopefully this gets ironed out, because as it is the content is kinda not really rewarding to anyone right now, and it's actively causing fights. F that, that's not why I game.

spinnytop · July 2016

xacchaeus said:
because you never do anything like that do you spiny?

Well no. I didn't give excuses, I just got better and got on with it.

darqaura2 said:
Honestly would have been better if it was instanced content

There is instanced content that gives GCR, it's called TA!

chaelk · July 2016

don't forget the " we're not winning fast enough, so I'm leaving" group.
<tactless comment removed>

Last public TA call I heard was several weeks ago. I still have not done a run, closest I got was Gradii remembering I wanted to try it and asking, then finding out others in their group had also asked extras.

spinnytop · July 2016

I don't know what times you play, but I've been asking for people to run TA in the Cosmic_HQ channel as recently as earlier today. I avoid asking in there whenever there's any cosmic activity going on because I don't want to divert people form a potential Cosmic attempt, but otherwise that's one of the more common places I recruit for TA now.

chaelk · July 2016

well there's why, yet another Cosmic channel.
I'm on server +12hrs.
Usually I'm on in the evening about 6pm -8pm my time, so not long enough or on weekends between shopping and cleaning. yesterday I was on most of the day. Currently it's 9.27am here.
forgot, I'm also on my silver acct which is not listed on my signature

darqaura2 · July 2016

spinnytop said:

xacchaeus said:
because you never do anything like that do you spiny?
Well no. I didn't give excuses, I just got better and got on with it.

darqaura2 said:
Honestly would have been better if it was instanced content
There is instanced content that gives GCR, it's called TA!

Maybe I can try TA then, cause the s^&* show that Cosmics quickly became isn't worth the time or the investment. I was someone who was willing to give it a chance. I did. I'm done.

kamokami · July 2016

spinnytop said:
I think when kamokami talks about the "elites" leaving, she means "leaving the community", i.e. the public Cosmic channel, and forming their own community, i.e. the private Cosmic channel.

This. Nobody's leaving the game. The runs will just end up being done with fewer people.

cptmassive1 said:
Secondly, with all due respect to everyone, lets say all the elites leave. The game is going to continue and others will figure out the content just fine. First does not mean only.

I sure hope so. Have seen it happen a few times lately but have also seen people give up before even trying. One of the key approaches to the content that's helped the "elites" is to come at it without the expectation of success. "Let's just try random stuff and some of it might work and we'll probably fail" has been a great expectation to set. I have not seen as much of that lately - hence the worry.

Most people show up expecting to bulldoze through it which only sets them up for disappointment.

spinnytop · July 2016

chaelk said:
well there's why, yet another Cosmic channel.

There's another one?? The only public one I knew about was Cosmic_HQ. What's the other one that you're talking about?

darqaura2 said:
Maybe I can try TA then, cause the s^&* show that Cosmics quickly became isn't worth the time or the investment. I was someone who was willing to give it a chance. I did. I'm done.

Yeah, I give cosmics like 1 hour of failing before I leave - the people who spend 13 hours bashing their head against the same cosmic mystify me. Of course, the funny part is that the day after that grueling 13 hour slog, we took down that same cosmic in like 40 minutes... twice - without any sort of secrecy about it.

I am generally available for TA good times if you'll have me owo

magpieuk2014 · July 2016

Have seen it happen a few times lately but have also seen people give up before even trying

If I wanted technical combat challenges, I'd be playing another game. "Boom! You're Dead" - which is the CO version - is not, to me, involving or fun. Now Cosmics and TA are great for people who want that type of content and I hope they enjoy it. But I think a lot of people don't find the content is compelling enough - and the rewards too far away - to play it. Participation levels, ultimately, don't lie.

This is community content, which means the community needs to change if they want to reliably tackle it.

Arf. Good luck with that.

The "evaporative cooling" idea is interesting but the writer's mistaken in thinking it only happens at the top. It happens at all levels. If people think "the game's not going in the direction I like and the community sucks" then they'll go and play something else. They can't be coerced or pushed into playing new stuff beyond its entertainment value.

Ultimately the best contribution Cosmics/TA can make to the community is by taking high-end players out of lower-end content. 50 players in Canada or MI taking on a Cosmic means fewer steamrollered Alerts and perhaps a little bit more thought and care being taken by other players. Unfortunately it looks as if the Cosmic content is now so difficult that people are dropping out - not a good thing. Keep those players occupied and in time there might be more able players developing their skills, looking to run Lairs and then move up TA, etc. Those players need to be encouraged - because they're the only ones who keep the game running.

spinnytop · July 2016

I mean... making the content less difficult wouldn't really encourage people. It would only placate them, and then the next time some challenging content comes around they would just wait for it to get nerfed before participating - I'm glad that's a cycle we broke out of because it's a cycle that doesn't encourage people to try harder or make improvements.

Current participation levels make a pretty positive statement about the cosmic content - it's a daily activity for a good number of players now, and something they're willing to bash their heads against for a while to try for success. That's a far cry from the general "not for me" sentiment that some people think is the norm. It's not a problem if everyone isn't doing Cosmic content - far from it, since the stated intent here is to create diversity in content so different people can be doing different things. As a nice side effect, some people who became interested in gold-level content through cosmics for the first time have also now become interested in TA, so the participation level of gold-level content in general is still growing. The fact that some players are losing interest in Cosmics is simply a side effect of the fact that all sorts of people came running to check out the new shiny, and eventually some of them are realizing the new shiny wasn't made for them and are going back to the content that was. An interesting side effect of that process is that as those people lose interest and stop showing up, some more of the people for whom the content was made are getting more interested in doing it.

jaazaniah1 · July 2016

I very much appreciate having the more experienced players on hand for the cosmics. I've learned quite a bit from them. Gotten a lot better at timing blocks for the ape, but that dino still suckers me sometimes.

theravenforce · July 2016

championshewolf said:
The intent of the cosmics is that they are fun but challenging. Honestly I think they've swung too far into the challenging side, as the community as a whole doesn't want to get involved because it's not really fun to constantly die and have to reset these bosses because of one person screwing up. There has to be a middle ground for this, the fact it requires a sheer number of people to do successfully. To me it's not an entitlement issue it's a fact these events were intended for large scale of people but the shifting keeps removing the fact that the everyone part is becoming more of a hindrance and liability and that just ruins these events.

This post pretty much sums up what has happened with the whole Cosmic scene.

However, you have a regular group of...40 players (maybe a bit more?) who do cosmics anyway and the number seems to hit that or lower for cosmics consistently.

If CO's community really is only 40 people then that's bad...and obviously it is not only 40 people.

I do feel like some of the mechanics for one or two (okay just one boss) could be relaxed a little or at least more precise information could be disseminated so that more people understand how it all works.

magpieuk2014 · July 2016

It's nice that you've got your own little corner of the game, enjoy. Two points to make in relation to the game, though:

a) Are the Cosmics a bit harsh on newcomers to encourage people to join?
b) When does everyone else get their new endgame stuff?

theravenforce · July 2016

magpieuk2014 said:
It's nice that you've got your own little corner of the game, enjoy. Two points to make in relation to the game, though:

a) Are the Cosmics a bit harsh on newcomers to encourage people to join?
b) When does everyone else get their new endgame stuff?

a) Yes. If someone messes up (healer/tank/variable person/troll), then the whole event will come crashing down around everyone. If a newcomer makes him or herself known then they are given the basics and told when to block and what to do. If they follow this advice generally speaking everyone is happy.

b) When they decide to participate in endgame content and farm for stuff like everyone else who is currently participating. It is not as if people who farm for gear/endgame rewards are getting it for free. They have to work towards it too. The way this question was phrased reminds me of someone who said that they were "tired of paying cash for food" and it's like...well what do you think everyone else buys food with? Notebook paper?

In a similar sense, if you want endgame rewards, you have to participate in endgame content. There are many players out there who are fine with helping others to get through or to learn endgame content.

Note: Whilst I am not fond of the amount of grinding required to get certain things but it is a way to keep people interested and doing the content as they have a long term goal.

Instant gratification can be found via alerts or short duration missions which give (in most cases) appropriate rewards. But I have found that there's more fun when I've worked for something and I can go up to the vendor and purchase it.

So whilst it may not be super fun to do, if I want it, I've got to go out and get it.

baelogventure · July 2016

magpieuk2014 said:
b) When does everyone else get their new endgame stuff?

There was a tailor update very recently, and more costumes are being released all the time.

Feel free to make better waifus to parade around in Caprice for "your corner of the game."

magpieuk2014 · July 2016

No, baelog, I'd rather come here and make fun of self-consciously tough gamers. And no, before you ask, I do not want to see the size of your DPS spike.

but it is a way to keep people interested and doing the content as they have a long term goal.

Kinda sort of. It gets a bit level 40 after a while - "I need three more runs to get the (name of thing)", followed by collapsing in a heap having played for two days straight, and realising there's nothing much to do with (thing). Content needs to be enjoyable, more than it needs to be hardcore headbanging grindcore challenge, or people either get bored halfway through, or burn out completely.

I have loads of level 40 alts and builds that I'd like to play in some team content, quick and easy to set up, without meeting up with a) self-consciously tough difficulty or b) having to build according to a particular arcane recipe/character type. I hope the next piece of End Game content they release fits the bill, that's all.

spinnytop · July 2016

magpieuk2014 said:

b) When does everyone else get their new endgame stuff?

Please elaborate. What does your endgame stuff look like?

baelogventure · July 2016

magpieuk2014 said:
I have loads of level 40 alts and builds that I'd like to play in some team content, quick and easy to set up, without meeting up with a) self-consciously tough difficulty or b) having to build according to a particular arcane recipe/character type. I hope the next piece of End Game content they release fits the bill, that's all.

Smash, Grab, Burst, Rampage, and Special Alerts. 5 different missions that are all team content, quick and easy to set up without meeting up, and none of them are "self-consciously tough" or require "arcane recipes" to build for.

I'm sure even a mediocre team could drag your waifu through more than half of that content.

chaelk · July 2016

come on,all of you, keep it out of personal insults, either directly or indirectly.

spinnytop · July 2016

You're asking baelogventure to keep it civil? It's official, this thread has jumped the shark.

mithrosnomore · July 2016

kyastral said:

^^^^ This is exactly why the Cosmic Monsters should have been made an instance as well as an open event. Why bother doing Cosmic Monsters when half of the people drop away to do the runs in private? (as I have often seen these days). If players have a *certain* group of people they like to play with because they know the mission will get done, then they should be able to have that choice. It should not be that hard to create an instance where the team limit is 25 (since the zone limit is 50) and then someone can recruit who they want to play with. You may think it will alienate players, but that is happening already and I dont see this trend slowing down any time soon.

They could, but if they make it an instanced thing then the folks on the outside will have a much lower chance of getting anything done.

I mean, the "elite" will look at each other for their groups first. There may be some not-so-elite friends of these folks that make it in, but the rest of the players?

Now the burden isn't to show up with your character, follow instructions (or know the fight and give them, even), and just do your job, it's finding enough of what's left to be able to put together your own team and get things done.

This is no different than the OPs point.

I run these cosmics. I spend a lot of time fighting these cosmics. I know the fights, I do my job, and I am more than willing to explain things to anyone that wants to know why we do "X" or why we do not do "Y".
I may not be able to carry as much dead weight as others, but I certainly carry my own.

But if there is a private cosmic channel I have not been invited.
So what does that leave for me to try and organize? Just who is out there that will help me get the job done?

They put them in instanced areas then they solve trolling issues, but they take the content away from a whole lot of people.

Not because you don't know what to do. Not because you can not do your part.

But because the people that you had to rely on to help you didn't care enough to try.

And if the devs see that the people that are getting it done are maybe having too easy a time then they may tweak it up.
That makes it ever less likely that anyone else will ever be getting it done because it becomes harder and harder to find "free agents" willing to try that can pass the various tests the cosmic fights require.

=============

All that said, Qwyjibo is ridiculous right now.
I am seeing more failures than successes.

Might be the same with Dinomom, but I haven't actually been a part of any attempts to take her down for a few days now.

Kiga seems to be the "easy" mark now, so people are just hitting him for a few GCR and forgetting about the daily.

mithrosnomore · July 2016

magpieuk2014 said:
No, baelog, I'd rather come here and make fun of self-consciously tough gamers. And no, before you ask, I do not want to see the size of your DPS spike.

but it is a way to keep people interested and doing the content as they have a long term goal.

Kinda sort of. It gets a bit level 40 after a while - "I need three more runs to get the (name of thing)", followed by collapsing in a heap having played for two days straight, and realising there's nothing much to do with (thing). Content needs to be enjoyable, more than it needs to be hardcore headbanging grindcore challenge, or people either get bored halfway through, or burn out completely.

I have loads of level 40 alts and builds that I'd like to play in some team content, quick and easy to set up, without meeting up with a) self-consciously tough difficulty or b) having to build according to a particular arcane recipe/character type. I hope the next piece of End Game content they release fits the bill, that's all.

If it's not tough then what, exactly, is an appropriate reward?

What sets it apart from the rampages or the the alerts?

Because if they make a "bring whatever, do whatever" lair-based mission that awards GCR then that is what people are going to do to get their GCR.

"Let's see.... Do I spend an hour or more finding the proper mix of heroes and hope they have enough power to take out the cosmic baddie, or do I grab a few random people and blow through that lair for the same reward?".

People will always find the path of least resistance for their reward of choice. Some may not take it, or may use it in addition to other paths, but if you want to cut down on the number of people showing up for cosmic fights, you add an "easy mode" way to get GCR.

spinnytop · July 2016

Well, not all endgame content has to give GCR - though I know that some people will be very grumpy about accepting something as "endgame" from now on if it doesn't. SCR content is also endgame content, and I'm sure that once they fill out the GCR endgame content tier out a bit more there will be some more relaxed new SCR content.

Of course, we all know that what some people are still asking for is a way to get GCR without facing GCR-appropriate challenges - those people will continue to be disappointed, though they might get lucky again and get to snag some free GCR in the period following a new release of GCR content when it's being tuned up and down and might see some periods where it's too easy.

Personally I like the open world nature of the Cosmics and I'm glad they added it to the game as such and didn't make it instanced. For people who want instanced content where you don't have to herd cats and you can control who participates, we have TA. However Cosmics being open world has served several useful functions, the primary of which is being currently the more accessible way for people to "dip their toes" into the GCR content water - there's much less pressure involved in showing up for a cosmic than there is for TA. If you goof up in TA it's a bigger deal since you're 20% of the team and there's a high amount of visibility and you can't be sure how the rest of the group will react to that - in Cosmics you're a much smaller percentage, you can hide in the crowd for the most part, and if you feel overwhelmed you can quietly slip away. This laissez-faire method of participation has been very successful at letting people slide into this tier of endgame content and gain interest in it which in quite a few cases has then made people interested in giving TA a shot - end result, more people engaging the content tier than there would be if the cosmics were instanced.

kyastral · July 2016

mithrosnomore said:

kyastral said:

^^^^ This is exactly why the Cosmic Monsters should have been made an instance as well as an open event. Why bother doing Cosmic Monsters when half of the people drop away to do the runs in private? (as I have often seen these days). If players have a *certain* group of people they like to play with because they know the mission will get done, then they should be able to have that choice. It should not be that hard to create an instance where the team limit is 25 (since the zone limit is 50) and then someone can recruit who they want to play with. You may think it will alienate players, but that is happening already and I dont see this trend slowing down any time soon.

They could, but if they make it an instanced thing then the folks on the outside will have a much lower chance of getting anything done.

I mean, the "elite" will look at each other for their groups first. There may be some not-so-elite friends of these folks that make it in, but the rest of the players?

Now the burden isn't to show up with your character, follow instructions (or know the fight and give them, even), and just do your job, it's finding enough of what's left to be able to put together your own team and get things done.

This is no different than the OPs point.

I run these cosmics. I spend a lot of time fighting these cosmics. I know the fights, I do my job, and I am more than willing to explain things to anyone that wants to know why we do "X" or why we do not do "Y".
I may not be able to carry as much dead weight as others, but I certainly carry my own.

But if there is a private cosmic channel I have not been invited.
So what does that leave for me to try and organize? Just who is out there that will help me get the job done?

They put them in instanced areas then they solve trolling issues, but they take the content away from a whole lot of people.

Not because you don't know what to do. Not because you can not do your part.

But because the people that you had to rely on to help you didn't care enough to try.

And if the devs see that the people that are getting it done are maybe having too easy a time then they may tweak it up.
That makes it ever less likely that anyone else will ever be getting it done because it becomes harder and harder to find "free agents" willing to try that can pass the various tests the cosmic fights require.

=============

All that said, Qwyjibo is ridiculous right now.
I am seeing more failures than successes.

Might be the same with Dinomom, but I haven't actually been a part of any attempts to take her down for a few days now.

Kiga seems to be the "easy" mark now, so people are just hitting him for a few GCR and forgetting about the daily.

Hmm... interesting points. However, there ARE private channels that people use to discuss, set up, and do secret Cosmic runs. That is no different than having it instanced and inviting players you specifically want to play with. Either way, it leaves less people that are willing to jump in and give it a shot. Why should players feel they have to do these runs in secret just to get them done? It is very discouraging when people drop away suddenly from a Cosmic that is just about to be started/reset and those *drop aways* end up in another zone/Cosmic and get the Cosmic fight done. Oh yeah, that makes a player feel better and encouraged about teamwork!(sarcasm). *Shrugs* Perhaps I am wrong...

The mechanics are not hard to perform; however, they are hard to learn when different people are giving different directions across zone/local chat. Having the Cosmics instanced would allow experienced players to help inexperienced ones in a more controlled environment; the experienced team could invite a few players who are having a hard time and teach them, instead of trying to help half a zone.

Qwijibo and Teliosaurus are difficult due to their environment and pathing.
Dino Mom sometimes does the moonwalk on the forest side of the path. When she gets aggroed like that she usually ends up in a bad position and will sometimes blink in and out of visibility, causing the DPS to lose LoS (Line of Sight). The baby can do the same thing and the fight can go bad very fast.

Qwijibo's environment is very unforgiving with the amount and unpredictability of falling lava rocks, faster spawning hearts and larger lava pools; he has become the most difficult Cosmic to beat now.

I agree with you about Kigatilik; he has become the easiest one to defeat.

cptmassive1 · July 2016

Making these instanced with smaller teams might seem like a good idea but we already have enough messages flying around for cosmics plus the rampages, PQ or no. That, and the level of assistance from "gud" to novice will decrease in instanced play. If you had a private sandbox with your group and could knock out your daily in an hour every day vs. 3-4 hours why would most people help anyone? Some will, most won't. The current environment encourages collaboration.

And really, what are we talking about here? The "elites" can't velvet rope a zone and do these whenever they like. They have to wait for times when us schlubs *aren't* doing them lest some of their GCR trickle down to the lowly masses. If no one is out there doing cosmics they can have all the private time they want, until someone wanders by of course. The power here is still in the hands of the community.

Just like all new content the formula for success is out there now and people won't have much trouble adjusting to the criteria. Only the trolls of course, but they are contrary anyway. The cosmics are no longer that difficult to do for anyone that has bothered to hang around long enough and adjust accordingly via build or tactics.

The cosmics aren't about brawn or gear. They are specific puzzles with specific solutions that almost any player can do, given time and effort.

I say the elites have a very good reason to return once the zones calm down. They will have less time to wait for noobs bogging down the zones. The faster the cosmics are completed, the more cosmics there will be. For those who routinely only play one or two alts that isn't an issue but some can't be locked into one character all the time and this would benefit them.

What I am curious about but will likely never accurately be determined is how many of this now-phantom group actually want to go private and how many of them were convinced to do so. I wonder if the latter number is larger than the former.

rebornmonster79 · July 2016

I've always felt the problem is the game seems only cater to the select few vocal minority. The average causal among others gets left behind. To me this is quite poor leadership from both the community and company.And when someone on fringe outside does comment, contribute or offer different perspectives they are then shot down by the vocal minority that has driven this game's development for years. Until this is fixed there is no hope for solutions to many issues. But I'm just a realist labelled a troll what do I know.

P.S.
Hello guys how goes the heroic thing?

beezeeze · July 2016

I have been having fun with the cosmic things lately, sure sometimes it can feel like I'm banging my head against the wall and we never actually get anywhere...but the more I do it and the more I learn from each fight the more I find myself having fun. My advice to anyone is stick with it and try not to get too upset when things go badly, stay calm and pay attention to what the people in chat are saying, following instructions makes things much smoother and if you have a question about what it is you need to be doing then go ahead and ask in zone/local/cosmic HQ channel. Always be nice to tanks and healers because we need them( especially if you're like me and have zero interest in making a tank or a healer) Don't get discouraged and give up too quickly, patience will pay off. Try not to single anyone out and start pointing fingers at people to blame unless that person is pretty obviously griefing the group and making things more difficult on purpose...

if any or all of that seems like too much work and not worth the effort, than maybe this content is not for you and that is ok, there are still plenty of other things you can do.

Evaporative Cooling of Cosmics

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