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High Noon at Snake Gulch Discussion Thread

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  • roughbearmattachroughbearmattach Posts: 4,784 Arc User
    lezard21 said:

    You should also bear in mind that, unlike the current tests we've had so far, when this event goes live we will have 50 people in zone. And unlike Nightmare Invasion or Bloodmoon, this will be 50 people concentrated in one single point. Unless there's some serious scaling going on, the mobs will go down very fast, like it happened with Tako during the last Bloodmoon where you could even ignore mechanics.

    That being said, phase 1 should perhaps be a bit longer, like twenty of those little beacons.

    Still, ignoring the mechanics here means swift death for those even trying to fight the Liberator. Having to break into three sorta coherent groups will make this different than the Takofanes fight, particularly because of the distances used.
    ___________________________________________________________

    Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
  • kyastralkyastral Posts: 342 Arc User

    lezard21 said:

    You should also bear in mind that, unlike the current tests we've had so far, when this event goes live we will have 50 people in zone. And unlike Nightmare Invasion or Bloodmoon, this will be 50 people concentrated in one single point. Unless there's some serious scaling going on, the mobs will go down very fast, like it happened with Tako during the last Bloodmoon where you could even ignore mechanics.

    That being said, phase 1 should perhaps be a bit longer, like twenty of those little beacons.

    Still, ignoring the mechanics here means swift death for those even trying to fight the Liberator. Having to break into three sorta coherent groups will make this different than the Takofanes fight, particularly because of the distances used.
    Even though this event is in one particular area, the group will be broken up and each group will be far apart from one another. That alone will require at least one player with healing abilities and auras for each group, since most auras only have a certain range/player affect radius. For example, if someone has an AOAC aura and that person is at the Liberator, that aura is not going to reach any of the tower groups because that player is too far away.


    I think the length of the phases are fine; perhaps more wandering Cowboy mobs should appear near the Liberator at different phases of his health, similar to how the mechanon robots appear during the Mechanon Event in MC. And I agree with how breaking up into groups should prevent the *bum rush, pew pew pew* game tactic.
  • roughbearmattachroughbearmattach Posts: 4,784 Arc User
    kyastral said:




    I think the length of the phases are fine; perhaps more wandering Cowboy mobs should appear near the Liberator at different phases of his health, similar to how the mechanon robots appear during the Mechanon Event in MC. And I agree with how breaking up into groups should prevent the *bum rush, pew pew pew* game tactic.

    I was thinking of the first phase, the "intro", where you just fight some mobs and click the beacons. That will be very, very fast.
    ___________________________________________________________

    Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
  • mithrosnomoremithrosnomore Posts: 521 Arc User
    edited February 2017
    Bug
    If you are standing at a tower spawn location, the tower will spawn right on top of you, effectively reproducing the old bug where you could get inside the towers.


    A single person could stand at each location and keep the towers shut down from the inside.

    This was not personally experienced, but was reported by someone during a player testing event.
    I will attempt to verify it later.

    Edit: When I tried, I waited for the event to time out and moved to where the tower would spawn.
    When the mission reset, though, I was kicked to the nearby spawn point in the parking lot.

    Not sure if there was a quick fix already or if maybe it's just one particular tower or what.

    It didn't work for the north tower, anyway.
    Post edited by mithrosnomore on
  • roughbearmattachroughbearmattach Posts: 4,784 Arc User
    The new visual for the Tower AoE works. It is a good cue to players that they have to beat robots before deactivating towers.
    Good show.
    ___________________________________________________________

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  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    All the bugs with the transmitters are still in there.

    Suggestion: would still love a sphere tell for the part of the MM attack where it's dealing damage, otherwise gonna be lots of people just mozying in there thinking it's safe and getting blown up.
  • lezard21lezard21 Posts: 1,510 Arc User
    edited February 2017
    The Anti Vehicle measures are a bit tame, dealing only 5k damage every 10 seconds or so. With 50 people in zone, a Tank just lures the mobs, while a healer keeps the vehicle alive and facerolls.

    I mean, I'd rather vehicles be completely usable in this fight, but I got the feeling that the Legendary priority Gravity Leash was to discourage the use of Vehicles during the last stage.

    Suggestion
    Increase the damage of Deadly Terrain to something around 20% at 10 stacks (Personally I would prefer 33% but oh well). Currently the other 2 effects are really punishing for letting it get to 10 stacks, but not Deadly Terrain, making it feasible to just straight ignore it. It SHOULD be punishing, because letting the debuff stack to 10 means you took your jolly good time screwing up tower duty.

    Alternatively (or complementary depending on the desired challenge level for this event)
    Add a small HoT component to Deadly Terrain. 10k per stack every second, up to 100k per second at 10 stacks on Liberated Preacher.


    Suggestion
    Add a "U dun guffed" AoE attack to Liberated Preacher that activates with priority upon all 3 Debuffs reaching 10 stacks, dealing huge unblockable damage in a huge sphere radius around him. This should be done to discourage people from headbashing against a wall and realise that they should probably organize and take down the Towers. Also to discourage the eventuality of High DPS players just zerg rushing the whole damn thing
  • lezard21lezard21 Posts: 1,510 Arc User
    edited February 2017
    lezard21 said:



    Suggestion
    Increase the damage of Deadly Terrain to something around 20% at 10 stacks (Personally I would prefer 33% but oh well). Currently the other 2 effects are really punishing for letting it get to 10 stacks, but not Deadly Terrain, making it feasible to just straight ignore it. It SHOULD be punishing, because letting the debuff stack to 10 means you took your jolly good time screwing up tower duty.

    Alternatively (or complementary depending on the desired challenge level for this event)
    Add a small HoT component to Deadly Terrain. 10k per stack every second, up to 100k per second at 10 stacks on Liberated Preacher.


    Suggestion
    Or alternatively, make Deadly Terrain give a 10k PFF Shield to Liberated Preacher. 100k Shield at max stacks. Refreshes every 3 seconds (20 players attacking Preacher with 2k DPS team average should do 120k in 3 seconds)
  • doktormarengodoktormarengo Posts: 52 Arc User

    Suggestion: Add a Snake bucks Vendor and Tailor to Belle's Saloon
    The Saloon is a very nice instance that now really doesn't have a use. So why not give "Bargaining Bill" a new job. Players could visit Bill and turn in their Snakebucks for goodies w/o having to hoof it back to Millennium City. It would also be nice to place Tailor in the Saloon as well -- that way players could whip up an old west style costume without having to travel very far.
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  • avianosavianos Posts: 6,021 Arc User
    Suggestion: Add a Snake bucks Vendor and Tailor to Belle's Saloon
    The Saloon is a very nice instance that now really doesn't have a use. So why not give "Bargaining Bill" a new job. Players could visit Bill and turn in their Snakebucks for goodies w/o having to hoof it back to Millennium City. It would also be nice to place Tailor in the Saloon as well -- that way players could whip up an old west style costume without having to travel very far.

    I second the motion​​
    POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
  • doktormarengodoktormarengo Posts: 52 Arc User
    lezard21 said:

    The Anti Vehicle measures are a bit tame, dealing only 5k damage every 10 seconds or so. With 50 people in zone, a Tank just lures the mobs, while a healer keeps the vehicle alive and facerolls.

    I mean, I'd rather vehicles be completely usable in this fight, but I got the feeling that the Legendary priority Gravity Leash was to discourage the use of Vehicles during the last stage.

    The Towers and the Liberator should occasionally release swarms of Mini-Mines in the surrounding air-space. That would give flyers and vehicles something to contend with - without making rendering them useless in the fight.

    This is RiverOcean's 2nd Account. Can't combine my STO and CO accounts for some weird reason.
  • lezard21lezard21 Posts: 1,510 Arc User
    edited March 2017
    Sooo, seeing as we are reaching the 1st week since this event, some post-Live thoughts:



    So with little more than 20 people, the event can all together be zerg rushed. No Red, Yellow or Blue tower.

    Sure the event has failed quite it's share, but it has nothing to do with casual players (to whom apparently the event is now directed to despite prior claims that this event was supposed to be harder than previous events). The reason why such fails happened at all radicated on 2 points:

    1) The tank. The whole fight rests on the tank. If the tank does not know how to use the Block function, following mechanics or not, the event will fail. This becomes extremely punishing to the casual players this event was directed to making the presence of a l33t covering the main tank position mandatory.

    Sure, healers are important, but there is a difference in the quality here. You require a Cosmic Experienced Tank for the boss, whereas casual healers can keep him and the DPS alive due to how little threatening the mechanics and attacks of the boss are in general towards the rest of the raid.

    2) DOING THE MECHANICS. YES! The thing that we are actually supposed to be doing is actually detrimental to the completition of the event. The Boss goes down way faster by just concentrating the 50 players against it, than by splitting up and defending the towers. At this point I redirect you to my other posts in this thread.

    SO, since this is a lost cause at this point, here are some new suggestions for future rotations of this event(while I strongly recommend reconsidering the previous ones):

    Suggestion
    Make one of the Debuffs significantly increase the Max Hp of Liberator Preacher

    Give Liberator access to new atacks upon reaching 10 stacks of a Debuff.
    - Give him an AoE energy Drain upon 10 stacks of Deadly Terrain
    - Give him an AoE attack that ignores half the characters damage reduction upon 10 stacks of the boss damage and damage reduction buff
    - Give him a single target attack that applies Break Through upon reaching 10 stacks of player debuff

    Reconsider the following:

    Suggestion
    Add a "U dun guffed" AoE attack to Liberated Preacher that activates with priority upon all 3 Debuffs reaching 10 stacks, dealing huge unblockable damage in a huge sphere radius around him. This should be done to discourage people from headbashing against a wall and realise that they should probably organize and take down the Towers. Also to discourage the eventuality of High DPS players just zerg rushing the whole damn thing

    Alternatively, upon reaching 10 stacks of the 3 debuffs, Liberated Preacher becomes invulnerable.

    Suggestion

    Do not attempt to fix this event by simply "Increases the damage/health/damage mitigation Liberator/adds does/has. It's a core mechanic problem, not a numerical one.


    All of this suggestions are with the following in consideration: If you are going to waste time and resources in programming mechanics for a boss fight, you have to make sure the mechanics are followed and benefitial for the player to do them. If the player will find more benefit in just straight ignoring said mechanics, then you might as well save yourself some time and just pop up a random Boss for next event, inflate it's Hp and Damage, add some WORTHWHILE rewards to the event store (something lacking this time around) and call it a day.

    Lezard out.
    Post edited by lezard21 on
  • akapitakapit Posts: 7 Arc User
    who knew blocking was such an expert tactic.
  • roughbearmattachroughbearmattach Posts: 4,784 Arc User
    I must admit, even though I haven't been on a 20 person run with success, I have been on many runs where two towers were ignored (though not three) and we won.

    I like Lezard's suggestion of some kind of energy drain. What if Deadly Terrain did damage AND drained energy? This would suddenly make everyone realize, "Oh Crap! Gotta deal with that tower!"

    As I contended in an earlier post, standard groups often find the Tower defense super punishing, and unsatisfying. After a tower is overrun, those players just join the fight against the Liberator. Eventually everyone might just end up fighting the Liberator and ignore the towers.

    If you try to retake a tower, you can't go alone, since the mobs (and miniboss particularly) simply shred you, blocking or not. To retake a tower requires that a group of heroes coordinate approaching and going back. This just doesn't happen with a a full zone PUG.


    I also suggest that once all heroes leave a Tower's line of sight, then mobs reset/disappear/something. Otherwise, there is an extreme disincentive to retaking an overrun tower.
    ___________________________________________________________

    Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
  • stergasterga Posts: 2,353 Arc User
    I don't know what LibBot fights you guys have been at, but the ones I've been at require a tank and a healer. And those "insignificant" tower buffs can do a ton of damage to a full stack defiant tank with some AoRP love on a ground punch. To the tune of 75% HP. And yeah, that tank knew what he was doing. It wasn't some new guy that didn't know the block button existed. Plus, the wire bubble tells can be hinky. I've had a person move their blue bubble well away from me and died to several 3k+ hits at once. I've also had a person move their bubble just out of range and not taken any damage which is how it's supposed to work.

    Tower buffs do show up in a fight even if the towers are manned. They are not insignificant. Maybe they don't do jack to fliers, but that sounds like a design flaw if anything.​​
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    lezard21 said:


    2) DOING THE MECHANICS. YES! The thing that we are actually supposed to be doing is actually detrimental to the completition of the event. The Boss goes down way faster by just concentrating the 50 players against it, than by splitting up and defending the towers.

    This doesn't actually require new mechanics, just adjusting numbers. If the debuff meant you did half damage and took double damage at 10 stacks (-10% damage strength, -10% damage resistance, per stack) it would be worth splitting a team off to keep that tower suppressed. Likewise, if the buff meant the boss did double damage and took half damage (+10% damage strength, +10% damage resistance, per stack) it is worth splitting a team off to keep that tower suppressed. If Deadly Ground damage actually scaled with number of stacks, again, worth a team if the max damage is high enough.
  • opalflameopalflame Posts: 207 Arc User
    To be fair, you need a decent healer to fight the boss without defending the towers. I have been on a few runs were there was either no healer, or all the healers that showed up just completely ignored the tank.
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  • carrionbaggagecarrionbaggage Posts: 721 Community Moderator
    edited March 2017
    I agree that the non-tank roles aren't that cut-and-dry. The healing debuff, Deadly Terrain, target caps, and shifting according to the AoEs makes healing the Liberator group a challenge when the towers are active. The Liberator drops its primary target when executing one of its randomized AoEs, and can also do so in the middle of its eye laser attack. This can make it difficult for a healer who is switching targets to retarget a tank quickly.

    As for making players engage the tower mechanics, I think Deadly Terrain, the damage buff, and the healing debuff are already enough of a challenge to player survivability. I would worry that further damage increases would risk the Liberator group wiping and the Liberator resetting. Extra obstacles can be interesting challenges that require communication and a change in tactics, but players do not have an opportunity to adjust if the fight suddenly resets, becoming a guaranteed failure.

    I'd prefer to see the tower effects cause a stalemate, so players need to shut them down in order to beat the clock instead of zerging. I like the idea of increasing the blue tower's player damage debuff, the red tower's Liberator damage resistance, and adding energy drain ticks to the yellow tower. But like others have suggested, I would recommend also having the tower spawns scale with OM player count. During low-population times, there typically aren't enough participants to break through the number of enemies guarding the towers. This turns the OM into a dead zone for a significant portion of the day.

    Seeing how the event has unfolded in the past week, I do not like the trigger condition for starting the open mission. What has been commonly happening is that people begin gathering, then one person who does not listen shuts down transmitters before others are ready. The group loses several minutes finishing their organization, and the mission times out because of it.

    Since the introduction of the "defeat 50 robots" mission, I frequently see people activating the OM with no intention of engaging it. This discourages player participation, as those interested in the OM likely aren't willing to wait up to 40 minutes to start a serious attempt.

    SUGGESTION:
    Make the Phase 2 trigger condition require teamwork, so a single player cannot waste everyone's time by prematurely shutting down all the transmitters. Something like having the towers be clickable during the initial phase, and requiring all 3 to be clicked by separate players within a few seconds of each other.
    Post edited by carrionbaggage on
  • roughbearmattachroughbearmattach Posts: 4,784 Arc User



    SUGGESTION:
    Make the Phase 2 trigger condition require teamwork, so a single player cannot waste everyone's time by prematurely shutting down all the transmitters. Something like having the towers be clickable during the initial phase, and requiring all 3 to be clicked by separate players within a few seconds of each other.

    I've said that since the testing phase. The event can be triggered and a run wrecked unintentionally, very easily.
    This suggestion would work, though I wouldn't worry about the "by separate players within a few seconds of each other" part.
    ___________________________________________________________

    Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
  • n8mcdn8mcd Posts: 332 Arc User
    Tower maintenance is the Junior Varsity event here, so tuning it for the Varsity Cosmic team is a problem.

    If the tower bosses and/or spawn were simply made slightly more manageable, so that casual players could focus on tower fights without getting critically overrun, the towers would be less likely to be abandoned in the final third of the fight. Perhaps having the black hats and the tower boss each replace a spawning group, so instead of 5 teams of trash plus 2 black-hat teams plus the boss; you would have only 2 teams of trash, 2 black hat teams, and the boss.
  • draogndraogn Posts: 1,269 Arc User
    I know this would change the dynamic of the event, but as it stands the dynamic is much to frustrating for any not geared/optimized with con as a ss, why not simply have teams destroy/disable the towers during phase two in order to get the final boss to spawn. This would give a soft cushion between shutting down transmitters (*and reduce the effect the trolls have on the event*) and getting to the final timer.

    It also makes more sense.
  • ordinaryplayer#2642 ordinaryplayer Posts: 51 Arc User
    edited March 2017
    Before we all move along, on the tower issue. By the end of the event looked like towers were doing their job. Taking them down and keeping them down made the event much smoother, loosing 1 didn't make it impossible (or 2 if near the end). Ignoring 1 tended to require some imbalance in distribution of players rolls and planning and made the event close or fail.

    Edit ... also .. should leave 1 random transmitter in desert, for people to click (or since April fools is coming 1 for the middle of ren cen)
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User

    Since the introduction of the "defeat 50 robots" mission, I frequently see people activating the OM with no intention of engaging it. This discourages player participation, as those interested in the OM likely aren't willing to wait up to 40 minutes to start a serious attempt.

    SUGGESTION:
    Make the Phase 2 trigger condition require teamwork, so a single player cannot waste everyone's time by prematurely shutting down all the transmitters. Something like having the towers be clickable during the initial phase, and requiring all 3 to be clicked by separate players within a few seconds of each other.

    You could also just change the defeat 50 robots mission so you only get credit for, say, the spawn groups that protect the transmitters, and then have those groups not spawn at all during phase 2. A significant part of why people activate the mission early is because you can finish the defeat 50 robots mission faster when phase 2 is active, because robots spawn faster.
  • tigerofcachticetigerofcachtice Posts: 551 Arc User
    Just want to say I look forward when this event returns. Good stuff.
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  • spinnytopspinnytop Posts: 16,450 Arc User
    Well if more people had showed up for the testing events then we could have tested it more better ~3~
  • darqaura2darqaura2 Posts: 932 Arc User
    spinnytop said:

    Well if more people had showed up for the testing events then we could have tested it more better ~3~

    Truth. Unfortunately none of the times worked for me at the time. *sadface*
This discussion has been closed.