FC.31.20170427.7 - Destroids Rise Again revamp

kaiserin · May 2017

Destroids Rise Again

Changed all mobs to use level scaling.
Increased initial open mission phase to rescuing 60 hostages.
Phases 2 and 3 have had their timers reduced to 5 minutes each.
The final phase has had its timer reduced to 20 minutes.
Success reset timer has been reduced to 1 hour. Failure reset timer has been reduced to 30 minutes.
The Hot Dog vendor in the park now sells hot dogs. These will restore health.

Mega Destroid Boss Fight

There are now 2 Mega Destroids to fight.
If they get within 100ft of one another, they gain a stacking damage and resistance bonus.
Increased the damage they deal. They are a little tougher than the standard event fight.
Currently their HP is set at 7 million each, this will likely be lowered a bit.
Added FX tells to attacks.
Gave them a generic ranged attack to use in addition to their Eye Beam attack.
New Attack: Destroy!. When their health dips below 10%, they will use this attack on a random location. Has a lengthy charge time and deals heavy particle damage in a cone.
New Attack: Sonic Blast. Deals damage in a area effect. If the player doesn't block depletes their energy.

Rewards

Added Destroid boots (male only currently), Armor Sleek Jaw and Plated Mohawk(male only currently) costumes to the debugger.
Added blot auras to the debugger.
Added Portable Robot Factory device to the debugger.
More will be added in a future patch.
Updated the open mission to drop SCR/UNTIL recog based on your level. This is separate from the other updated open missions.

Misc

A few pieces of geometry in Millennium City have been adjusted for performance reasons. While this should have no visible change to players, if you see anything odd please report it.
Optimized many attacks that the Destroid enemy group uses to help with memory consumption.
Destroids can now drop the Armored Jaw Sleek and Plated Mohawk costumes.

baelogventure · May 2017

avianos · May 2017

I assume the Globals resources drops from Mega Destroit has been removed with the revamp?

also I see the changes were made to reflect the trafic of MC popularity, not a bad thing

Unknown · May 2017

This content has been removed.

sterga · May 2017

"If they get within 100ft of one another, they gain a stacking damage and resistance bonus."

This is not a good idea.
1: Most people don't read the forums.
2: Icon on mobs are tiny and hard to see.
3: No one is going to read this in the flood of icons under the boss.
4: Screwing people over with info they will have to be told or read the forums to know about isn't exactly great mob design.

5: You do not want people's first experience with Mega D to be negative due to something stupid as not understanding what is going on with this resistance thing. People will figure out that keeping them separate is a good idea due to their AoEs. And if players find that they can have one person tank them both, just let them. I guarantee there are people that will find testing their ability to tank both to be fun.

kaiserin · May 2017

This will not be changed.

Recent large scale boss design goals have been to split up players so they aren't entirely focused on one thing. This is partially for mechanic reasons, but a major factor is for performance reasons. The game doesn't handle large numbers of players in one centralized area very well, and this is the best solution (outside of dropping zone limits even further).

Unknown · May 2017

This content has been removed.

theravenforce · May 2017

kaizerin said:
This will not be changed.

Recent large scale boss design goals have been to split up players so they aren't entirely focused on one thing. This is partially for mechanical reasons, but a major factor is for performance reasons. The game doesn't handle large portions of players in one centralized area very well, and this is the best solution (outside of dropping zone limits even further).

Okay, then the Mega D's will have to either really want to get into melee range of their target or they need to spawn in very different parts of Downtown (within the area of the Destroyer Museum.

If this is the open mission I am thinking of, then where the Mega D spawns leaves very little room to carry out a mechanic which forces them apart or keeps them apart.

Perhaps have one spawn in the usual location and another come out from behind the Museum?

If the timer is still the same for the boss fight, the stacking damage and resistance should probably cap out somewhere so not to make the experience obnoxious.

Hopefully something can be organized though, so we can test this thing and give better feedback.

kaiserin · May 2017

They spawn far apart from one another, you need to actively try to get them into range.

pantagruel01 · May 2017

Do the other hot dog vendors in MC also sell hot dogs? (where are they all? I can think of three others -- the starter purple gang mission, front door of champions HQ, and one on the high altitude walkway in downtown, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's others).

kaiserin · May 2017

Currently they do not. Over time they will be changed to sell hot dogs.

Unknown · May 2017

This content has been removed.

darkdiablo · May 2017

BUG: Blot Aura for Hands and Head aren't bound to character model correctly, so when you equip this and walk somewhere, the aura's stuck in place:

Asymmetry: I found an assymetry at the Harmon Labs stairs, I feel like it's not intended.

Probably undone: Armored Jaw Sleek isn't there. I haven't seen it in female nor male costume creators.

sterga · May 2017

kaizerin wrote: »

This will not be changed.

Recent large scale boss design goals have been to split up players so they aren't entirely focused on one thing. This is partially for mechanic reasons, but a major factor is for performance reasons. The game doesn't handle large numbers of players in one centralized area very well, and this is the best solution (outside of dropping zone limits even further).

We've had events where player dogpile bosses since the game launched, had the 100 person cap, and a much larger player population. I don't understand why this is so much of an issue now, especially since performance seems worse or just as bad with a lower zone cap and effects not showing on bosses. Does the Ghetto Engine handle player auras and newer textures / meshes that badly?

kamokami · May 2017

kaizerin said:
There are now 2 Mega Destroids to fight.

YAS$$$!!!

kaizerin said:
If they get within 100ft of one another, they gain a stacking damage and resistance bonus.

Oh cool so this will require a minimal level of coordination!

kaizerin said:
They spawn far apart from one another, you need to actively try to get them into range.

Oh ok so it won't require any coordination at all....just 2 tanks instead of 1.

kaiserin · May 2017

This has always been an issue.

Earlier 100 zone cap events ran very poorly. Entities have an effect cap. Like, they can only have so many buffs, debuffs, things happening to them at any given time. If they go over this limit, some things will just stop registering (like if you try to apply/refresh a debuff it won't happen, and attacks will occasionally fail to register). This can be difficult to catch without closely looking over your combatlogs, but the earlier events were notorious for not registering anything you did.

Example: when I was playing in the old anniversary event I parsed a 5 minute fights against the destroids and the game registered 8 total attacks from me. I was still animating, but nothing was actually being registered by the game. Since the changes to zone caps and other things, I have not experienced this.

A major example of this was the old Plasma Beam vehicle attack that could infinitely stack a debuff. This was quickly addressed by the old team but if enough stacks got on the Destroids damage alltogether stopped registering.

The game has a FX draw cap. When it hits that cap it will start removing fx based on priority/distance/randomly, and can cause important tells to no longer appear to players. It can also cause performance issues, crashes, and so on. We've made a lot of stride in optimizing powers so this is less of an issue, but there's still a ton of work to be done with that and no amount of optimization will make large amounts of players all using powers/auras/etc to play out smoothly.

The game has an entity cap. If it goes over this, players/pets/objects will start vanishing based on priority/distance/randomly. This can be seen when a large sum of players all run to the reward circle at the end of a boss fight.

When the Cosmic revamp initially rolled out it was common for Teleiosaurus to vanish. We wound up lowering the zone caps and changing the quest drops from the nearby mobs (since that was eating up the cap) to automatically get picked up by players to fix the issue.

While it may not be immediately apparent how much the changes have affected performance, what we've done in the past year+ has done quite a bit in helping large event stability.

kamokami · May 2017

kaizerin said:

The final phase has had its timer reduced to 20 minutes.
Currently their HP is set at 7 million each, this will likely be lowered a bit.

So each Destroid team, as a whole, would need to be capable of 6k DPS. (7,000,000 / 20 minutes = 5833 DPS...more if we account for time to get in position etc.)

Assuming, after the novelty effect wears off, the OM settles down to about 10 people running it - this would work fine. Each team of 5 could take a Destroid and the 3 DPS would need to do 2k DPS each, completely discounting the tank and healer.

If, over time, less people run it then the hp may need an adjustment down the line.

chaosdrgnz43 · May 2017

RIP Mega D G solo farming.

At least tanks have something more to do.

aiqa · May 2017

kamokami said:
Oh ok so it won't require any coordination at all....just 2 tanks instead of 1.

The fight does not require 2 tanks. The bosses are not grouped so you can fight one while the other walks about at the other side of the park. You just shouldn't intentionally pull them together to AoE them down.

kamokami said:
So each Destroid team, as a whole, would need to be capable of 6k DPS.

They have 120% resistance, so all in all I'd say you want 30k on training dummy dps.

The fight seems to be at a nice difficulty level at the moment. No where near a cosmic, but also not the wimpy fight it was before.

pantagruel01 · May 2017

The obvious response to two mega-destroids is that everyone attacks one mega-destroid, and when it goes down, everyone attacks the other mega-destroid. If necessary, a tanky build might kite the surplus mega-destroids, but it doesn't sound like that will even be needed.

If the goal is to get players to split up, you need to create a reason to damage both destroids simultaneously. Maybe a power transfer setup -- the mega-destroid at lower health is buffed, the mega-destroid at higher health is debuffed.

kamokami · May 2017

aiqa said:

The fight does not require 2 tanks. The bosses are not grouped so you can fight one while the other walks about at the other side of the park. You just shouldn't intentionally pull them together to AoE them down.

I am assuming that the intention is to split up and fight them at the same time and if that doesn't happen then the fight will be changed to enforce it. The 6k figure was a ballpark vs one Destroid, not other targets or both of them together.

To get to 6k DPS vs a target at 120% resistance, you'd need to do 13.2k unmitigated dps.

6k = x * 100 / (100+120 dmg res), where x is 13.2k

Unkillable Testing Dummies have 20% resistance. So, taking into account our unmitigated dps value, you'd need to do 11k DPS vs 1 Dummy per Team.

y = 13.2k * 100 / (100+20 dmg res), where y is 11k

If you have 2 Teams, one for each Destroid, then total Testing Dummy DPS would be at 22k.

kamokami · May 2017

pantagruel01 said:
If the goal is to get players to split up, you need to create a reason to damage both destroids simultaneously. Maybe a power transfer setup -- the mega-destroid at lower health is buffed, the mega-destroid at higher health is debuffed.

Or something like Fire and Ice...where they both need to die at around the same time.

kaiserin · May 2017

Good points made. Setting something up where you will want to defeat them roughly around the same time, and something to deter getting one down to low health, then moving all dps to the other to get it down to low health, then defeating them. The idea will be you want to split up roughly evenly.

nbkxs · May 2017

BUG: Upon rescuing 60 folks in the OM, the groups of phalanx commanders don't spawn, resulting in failure.

pantagruel01 · May 2017

kamokami said:
Or something like Fire and Ice...where they both need to die at around the same time.

On thematic thought:
Shared Power: both mega-destroids are powered from a single source, which splits power between them. Each Mega-Destroid starts with 2 stacks of Shared Power; at 2/3 and 1/3 health it gains one stack and the other Mega-Destroid loses 1 stack. When a Mega-Destroid is defeated, the other Mega-Destroid is immediately boosted to 5 stacks (which is max).

nbkxs · May 2017

pantagruel01 wrote: »

Or something like Fire and Ice...where they both need to die at around the same time.
On thematic thought:
Shared Power: both mega-destroids are powered from a single source, which splits power between them. Each Mega-Destroid starts with 2 stacks of Shared Power; at 2/3 and 1/3 health it gains one stack and the other Mega-Destroid loses 1 stack. When a Mega-Destroid is defeated, the other Mega-Destroid is immediately boosted to 5 stacks (which is max).

I like this! It's good!

kriss94 · May 2017

The destroid boots used to be available to all male characters when using the robot legs category, it's not right to make them a random loot drop after you removed them from the tailor to begin with, they should be added back into the tailor for everyone's use.

aesica · May 2017

kaizerin wrote: »

The Hot Dog vendor in the park now sells hot dogs. These will restore health.

What about the vegans?

kaizerin wrote: »

This will not be changed.

Recent large scale boss design goals have been to split up players so they aren't entirely focused on one thing. This is partially for mechanic reasons, but a major factor is for performance reasons. The game doesn't handle large numbers of players in one centralized area very well, and this is the best solution (outside of dropping zone limits even further).

I hope there's some way to make it extremely obvious to everyone involved that the two being within proximity of each other are generating a stacking buff that will likely result in a wipe. Some sort of on-screen message saying something like "The Mega Destroids are empowering each other. Move them further apart."

kamokami wrote: »

Or something like Fire and Ice...where they both need to die at around the same time.

Or a shared HP pool. No sense cloning an existing fight.

tigerofcachtice · May 2017

kaizerin said:

Misc
A few pieces of geometry in Millennium City have been adjusted for performance reasons. While this should have no visible change to players, if you see anything odd please report it.

Optimized many attacks that the Destroid enemy group uses to help with memory consumption.

Destroids can now drop the Armored Jaw Sleek and Plated Mohawk costumes.

Aw, sweet! Optimization, y'all! Great stuff.

Also, hot dog vendors. We love those NPCs.

tigerofcachtice · May 2017

aesica said:
What about the vegans?

It's ok, this is a MMORPG. You can roleplay they're vegetarian hot dogs, made from soy. Like tofurkey.

aiqa · May 2017

kamokami said:
*snip*

Nah, there will be more variables that affect dps on bosses. You need to block, and evade the fire all weapon thing, go afk for tea, and stuff like that. What you actually need we can't determine very precisely, but an estimate is interesting to try figure out how many players you actually need to complete things.

I still thing 30k is not a bad estimate. That would need somewhere between 5 and 10 dps players, then 2 tanks and 2 healers (maybe, depends a lot on the tanks). And since it's a very accessible open world fight, between 5 and 10 players that don't contribute anything (it's a rule). So somewhere between 15 and 25 players should be able to complete it. I think that might be a bit to steep a requirement for a lower level OM, so the plan of lowering their health a bit seems like a good idea.

pantagruel01 · May 2017

There's also the issue of whether the destroid's have an inherent level of 28 or 40. If they have an inherent level of 30 that would further reduce damage against them because of scary monster scaling.

sterga · May 2017

Frosty and Blaze get snuggly with each other at the end of Fire & Ice making it super easy to burst them down at the same time. The Mega Ds aren't supposed to get snuggly which by distance makes it a pain in the **** to kill them at the same time. Seeing Frosty and Blaze's HP bars at the same time is a non issue because even before the last phase, they are both fairly close together. Mega Ds are really freaking big, so seeing the HP bar of both of them is going to be almost impossible for melee. The chat box having a tenancy to disappear and people who hate zone is not going to make communication easy.

I would say something about a UI element, but I suspect that's not in the cards.

[stuff Kai said:]
I remember: I still have Mega Disco Ball footage. I entertained myself by zooming the camera in and out during old Clarence fights to watch my fps go into single digits. I suppose I just expected the performance improvements to have been more effective. Or something.

kamokami · May 2017

aiqa said:
Nah, there will be more variables that affect dps on bosses. You need to block, and evade the fire all weapon thing, go afk for tea, and stuff like that. What you actually need we can't determine very precisely, but an estimate is interesting to try figure out how many players you actually need to complete things.

I haven't played it, so yeah can't say very precisely but it's a good estimate.

aiqa said:
I still thing 30k is not a bad estimate. That would need somewhere between 5 and 10 dps players, then 2 tanks and 2 healers (maybe, depends a lot on the tanks).

6 is between 5 and 10. And yeah you will actually need 2 tanks.

aiqa said:
And since it's a very accessible open world fight, between 5 and 10 players that don't contribute anything (it's a rule). So somewhere between 15 and 25 players should be able to complete it. I think that might be a bit to steep a requirement for a lower level OM, so the plan of lowering their health a bit seems like a good idea.

I'd put the lower bound at 10 not 15. Players that don't contribute can be ignored for the purposes of the estimate of requirements to complete the OM, unless they scale the mission.

magpieuk2014 · May 2017

Will anyone complete it, though? The previous content was only really ever played because it was soloable, and are the rewards* interesting enough to drag 15-20 players away from whatever else they're doing?

* Perks and costume pieces?

PS Can we check that the level scaling enemies are an appropriate difficulty for the mission zone they're in, and any other Destroids in the area (i.e. the ones around Harmon) haven't been buffed as a result? The current Nightmare Invasion enemies are a pain for anyone levelling up around Westside, and Memorial Park is a high traffic area with lots of missions around and in the OM zone.

roughbearmattach · May 2017

magpieuk2014 said:
Will anyone complete it, though? The previous content was only really ever played because it was soloable, and are the rewards* interesting enough to drag 15-20 players away from whatever else they're doing?

* Perks and costume pieces?

Being in MC means that folks will complete it all the time. A message or two in zone, and folks will show up.

People still show up regularly to do the ACII Okaley and Reign of Frogs OMs.

morigosa · May 2017

My suggestion for making it optimal to engage both at once:

Make the mega-Ds start far apart, but chain aggro - if you put yourself in combat with one, the other will show up when it gets there. This forces the players to at least put a tank on each of them.

Give the mega-Ds a shared health pool, so you don't have situations where one goes down first and then everyone involved piles onto the other one.

Give the mega-Ds a "Systems Upgrade" move that uses the same "must do X damage in Y seconds to prevent buff" mechanic of the Teliosaurus' heal - except that instead of applying a heal, it applies a stacking damage buff.
Ideally, unlike the Teliosaur's version, this should put a visible shield on the mega-D so you can see how quickly you're making the check or how much you failed it by, and re-shuffle DPS players between the two mega-Ds as needed.
Make this scale with the number of players involved in the OM - but scale relatively weakly. This forces the players to split DPS between the two Mega-Ds - not necessarily evenly, but if the scaling's tuned right you shouldn't be able to get by with worse than maybe a 1/3 vs 2/3 split on players involved.

And, lastly, make the "buffing each other because they're too close" thing -really- obvious; something like the mega-Ds pulsing red and arcing lightning between them.

stratluver · May 2017

Is it possible to have the Destroids glow as indicators? So, if they're too close they'd glow red. And if they're out of sync (damage taken) the one that is being damaged too fast would glow yellow and the other blue. It would solve not being able to see both or even seeing one's buff icon because of the size of them.

aiqa · May 2017

They get a buff icon. And while debuff icons are a bit crowded, buff icons are on their own row, which is mostly empty for NPCs.

thepure0ne · May 2017

Less destroids, more Hot Dogs.

aesica · May 2017

aiqa wrote: »

They get a buff icon. And while debuff icons are a bit crowded, buff icons are on their own row, which is mostly empty for NPCs.

While a buff icon helps identify just what the effect is, audio/visual queues and effects on the models themselves are pretty important:

1) They serve as indicators that something bad (or good) just happened in a more immersive, attention-grabbing way. If you brought them both too close and suddenly, saw them linked by some electrical tether as they grew slightly in size and started to glow red, you'd right away know that bringing them too close to one another did something pretty bad. Even before the huge damage starts stacking up.

2) That extra bit of polish makes an encounter feel that much more alive.

magpieuk2014 · May 2017

BUG: The Respawn by the Mystic Foundry isn't working properly, so if you're defeated during the Destroids Rise Again Mission you respawn at the Superjet on the other side of Ren Cen.

BUG: The newly upgraded Destroids are much easier to Aggro than the ones that were previously there. There is a group of three Destroids standing so close to the Mystic Foundry respawn that any forward motion towards Ren Cen sets them off. Instadeath after a respawn is not funny.

BUG: This force of Destroids - three of them, with substantial debuffs and around x2 the HP of other equivalent level enemies in the area - are now placed in the route of other missions such as "Aces and Eights" (the mission where you have to escort Jay thingy back to Witchcraft, protecting him from DEMON attacks along the way) and are making this solo content no longer solo-able.

SUGGESTION: Move the above group of Destroids somewhere else. Make the Destroids that spawn during the first phase of Destroids Rise Again either standard difficulty (they're currently set to "Tough") or remove any Villain level spawns so that the first phase of the OM doesn't trample over people who aren't involved in it.

BUG: There's a really big crowd of citizens around the back of the construction site/fountain at the E of the OM area. It's not a bug per se, more a... "did you mean that?"

riverocean · May 2017

More of a comment then a suggestion ---

Please realize that low-level content exists at various points where the Destroids spawn. So someone trying to solo (like the previous "Aces and Eights" example) is going to run into difficulty. I appreciate and enjoy the idea of open mission revamps -- but don't forget this exists in a low level zone.. where people are leveling up. So removing mobs from being near re-spawn points and low level content should be something to think about.

roughbearmattach · May 2017

I would also like to give another vote for either moving the first round of spawns, or lowering their aggro, or something like that.

For the successive rounds (phalanxes, machines), I think the the tougher mobs are fine.

magpieuk2014 · May 2017

Agreed on the second/third round spawns being fine as Tough level. Those three first-wave Villain level Destroids in front of Alicia and Witchcraft do need to be moved, though - they're making access to that whole mission chain unnecessarily difficult (all the other placements around the missions I can think of, including Memorial Park Peacekeeping, are fine). Maybe put those by the fountain area or in the alley between the two main streets?

n8mcd · May 2017

After the first week or two, good luck getting enough people to show up to complete the event.

Permenantly changing the zone caps to 50 wouldn't be bad. THe only time you actually need a crowd is events and big boss fights, which have already forced zone pop limitations in other zones and during events.

avianos · May 2017

I'm actually embracing 50-people cap to become permanent for MC, I see an incredible performance improvement after nightmare invansion

that said

n8mcd wrote: »

After the first week or two, good luck getting enough people to show up to complete the event.
.

Yeah, it's bound to happen
The Hype with OMs Revamps die really fast

FC.31.20170427.7 - Destroids Rise Again revamp

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