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Fatal Error: Cybermind *ALERT* Responses
crypticbuxom
Posts: 4,621 Arc User
I figured I'd start a new thread as the previous one was more about the announcement then discussion. This thread is about what you thought about the new Custom Alert, your experiences with teaming, and what suggestions you would like to make if any.
I personally feel that his HP is too high for a 5 man team. But the biggest issue was having to start completely over when the team dies. Unlike most bosses he doesn't have any checkpoints. Just a lot of things in this alert that feels like padding to make farming it take forever for the horribly small drop chances.
As for the mission daily, wouldn't it feel more appropriate that its moved to the Alerts Coordinator as its a generic reward? Just to keep all of the same kind of missions in the same spot for convenience.
What did you all think about this and how it could be improved for the live audience?
I personally feel that his HP is too high for a 5 man team. But the biggest issue was having to start completely over when the team dies. Unlike most bosses he doesn't have any checkpoints. Just a lot of things in this alert that feels like padding to make farming it take forever for the horribly small drop chances.
As for the mission daily, wouldn't it feel more appropriate that its moved to the Alerts Coordinator as its a generic reward? Just to keep all of the same kind of missions in the same spot for convenience.
What did you all think about this and how it could be improved for the live audience?
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Plus, you get to retry after you wipe. Warlord doesn't let you do that. It's very annoying when you have to go through that knockback hell again and again because your team of 10's and below are having a rough time and you get firepatched.
Deliciously nutritious!
But hey, atleast your defeated teammates can go and grab a beer or two in a nearest pub. And maybe go for a pizza or kebab after the 5/6 pints. And bring you some pizza leftovers.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
remainder spent 15 minutes grinding Cybermind to 2/3 health.
Meanwhile both times players had to log out of the game to leave the alert.
One girl from the first team was still in the alert 45 minutes after we started, thank you healer lady whoever you were.
The bit with the firewalls was cool but too long to, maybe it will grow on me.
I'm glad the map isn't red hell everywhere.
Was there music? Didn't notice.
Voice overs are ok, is there text on screen for them?
I don't think so, and there should be, isn't there some American's with Disabilities act
that states you have build ramps for wheelchairs and put text on screen for the hearing/cognitively impaired?
I see no ramps or text in this alert.
Then I quickly realize, nope, I haven't figured out a gosh darn thing.
Yeah, I'm just coming back from a Pencil & Paper game, a little tired, and hungry.
I'm running down to the 7-11, buying some microwave dim sum, then trying this again.
And again. And again. And again.
---
Hi, just replayed this. In the spirit of being helpful to both the COmmunity and Cryptic, I'm listing my findings.
1. Firewall Segment: no energy building
During the Firewall segment, where we had to attack the walls as they changed to red, I found that the Energy Builder did not build energy. That was irrelevant to my Unleashed, who makes his own energy, but a hurdle for my Behemoth, who needed energy.
2. Cybermind Segment: obstruction in Cybermind's square
I understood the colour Simon Says game in theory, but in practice, this happened:
It was difficult to actually see the square. This mainly affects melee characters; they have to be close to Cybermind, and the crowding around him, with the different colour effects basically obscure the telltale colours.
3. Cybermind Segment: lag when the coloured tile should appear
I need to take a video to prove this, if it comes up again, but there seems to be lag when the colour appears. I was playing very careful of any colour changes. I was doing well and knew one was coming. Then suddenly, I see others moving off the square and I actually thought to myself "did they guess what the colour change will be?" Then I saw the colour change and I believe I saw it a second after they did.
Lag is lag, but since melee characters have to move the furthest back and forth, that slight lag has a substantial effect on gameplay, considering this portion also removes Travel Powers. I know it sounds weird, but having seen this 1st hand, I believe there was some lag between when others saw the colours and I did.
---
This is all said in a positive mindset, not nitpicking, but things I think should be considered.
More action at Champions Online Comics @ http://co-comics.webs.com
Comes from the Variety pack, so not -every- soul has it, but a huge majority.
Works, I guess. If I get one I throw it at my silver buddies, easy.
Deliciously nutritious!
by the way, to anyone complaining that you cant do it. don't worry, its really simple: match the colors
EDIT: oh great, i tried to force verify in the launcher right.... so the launcher crashed. now whenever I open the launcher it crashes right away. game over
Oh fatal error
I get it! funny! haha!
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
If I had any suggestion it would be to make this one shot charged + blockable (there should never be a one shot ability that cannot be blocked in a lockout style combat) OR to leave enough time to get your buff + move to a square before using it.
And lower his HP by maybe 30%. I was getting bored in combat, that shouldn't happen.
The color code section could really use another 5-10 seconds to get to the fields and back to a panel, it's very easy to get caught out of position and utterly screwed because of the random nature of which panels and what colors light up.
Stop making stupid new alerts and make some actual game content. I'm sick of doing the same missions over and over again on the way to 40th level. And why the heck is everything new for the game made for high level? We need tons of new low level content. Who isn't sick of doing the West Side missions and having no alternatives to reach the mid levels?
The problem with the PTS its that usually min-max builds test out the content.... and sadly thats not representative of the PUGs you have to deal on live =(
Personally I am frustrated with this alert... I always end up killing this guy with just another guy, and the other 3 just sit down locked out after they died.... hopefully this will get better as more people understand the fight.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Click up there if you want to find more about the costumes behind my heroines.
One of my favourite alerts, easily.
Deliciously nutritious!
Points of interest
I felt really bad trying to tank him and spank him all by myself, coz it takes ages and I felt bad like maybe I should have wiped and we coulda all gone in again.
I couldn't find any way to quit the instance so I logged off
We got zone chat from people who were not on our team - wierd huh?
For ****s sake level gate this or get more people in there he's a gorram cosmic not a crummy lil legendary. 2.6 million or whatever it is health lowbies are not gonna be much use.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The one who can't shut up formerly known as 4rksakes
About the @handle - it's a long story.
Profound quote.. "I'm not a complete idiot - several parts are missing."
Also everything that I had to do in the fight was very clear to me and I was never confused about what I had to do, except for that last phase where he shuts off socrates but I figured that out very quickly anyway.
Also this fight does not require any particular type of build. You might want to pick up some stim packs if you dont have self heals in your build or are an archetype but thats it.
This was well done guys, dont change anything, and keep making them like this!
By the way guys, if youre the last one alive, be nice and just die and start over, nobody wants to watch you sit there and pound on the poor nerd for thirty minutes :P
Remember guys this fight is new and its the first time in a long time that we had to pay attention to anything so of course its gonna be rough the first day
but if they nerf it, then after we all learn how to do the fight its gonna be so easy that we all start complaining again
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Gimmicky mechanic that is more or less ruined by the usual lag. Admittedly it's not quite as bad because the squares aren't MOVING AROUND, however it's really nice when you can stand in the pillar of colored light for a solid second and not get the buff.
Strips your travel powers away, rather than designing the stage around them.
One shotting. I don't think I need to say more.
Gigantic bag of HP that's designed around the idea that everyone's going to be running the kinds of DPS people on the PTS can output. Y'know, completely forgetting that someone might want to run a character that's using powers currently behind the curve.
Apparently lets sub level 40s in? I didn't notice this, but holy crap if that's the case...
After a couple wipes, the room locked up completely and no one could get in.
Oh, and as usual, the mission itself is a drastic bump up in difficulty from the missions leading up to it, presenting a brick wall difficulty ramp up so vertical you can be impaled on it if you're not already expecting it.
Cryptic, when will you learn.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
If the boss is beaten while you are defeated, if you recover after you don't get a reward since it will respawn you in the system and not in the lab.
For example: Cybermind is standing on a red block and there are two yellow squares showing. I go stand in the red pillar I die instantly from the attacks, I go to the yellow pillar almost the same result (though I was blocking at the time), I stand in the yellow square I die almost instantly.
We had 3 people on our team at the end, the other two either lagged out or just abandoned us, and so I doubt it would have been possible to beat Cybermind, but I'd love to have been able to at least figure out the colour coding thing.
Player rushes off to the colored column to get the right color buff (if u wanna stand on a blue panel go to the blue column)
Player legs it back to the panel he/she/it wishes to stand on
Players with lunges may have an advantage but ofc they have father to go usually
P.S.
After you get the first health bar down, a coupla things happen.
1. Cybermind becomes immune to damage
2. A buncha (team size?) spheres appear
After finally noticing that my attacks did only 1 pt of damage I also noticed that...
Gosh those spheres are the same colors as the colored columns!
Wow do you think if I go to the column I'll be able to attack the spheres more effectively?
During this phase I took damage at a faster rate than the previous one - the spheres do some kinda bubble explode attack and Cybermind shoots at you
Sigh sharp as a brick as usual
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The one who can't shut up formerly known as 4rksakes
About the @handle - it's a long story.
Profound quote.. "I'm not a complete idiot - several parts are missing."
I enjoy this Alert. It's fun, it has actual mechanics, it isn't just a tank and spank and he has identifiable phases.
However... the fact that level 6s can get in here... is just inexcusable.
The leave instance button breaks after the Cybermind fight is initiated. It's not a good idea to have it break because people get frustrated and leave, lockout trolls, etc. etc.
Drop rate is too low for the effort invested.
Go to a color pillar, then stand in the same color square. i.e. if you go to red pillar, then stand in red square. what is killing you is the purple rain, but if you do what I said it protects you from the purple rain.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Log out, log back in again (Within...Three minutes I think is for drops.). It'll stick you in the lab with the reward.
Deliciously nutritious!
Example of Comet Flight: Here.
Ao'Qepthoth is semi-broken, yes. He's got a scaled Darkness passive that didn't get modified for NPC use, like Madame Nocturnes and whatnot.
Gravitar is fine though, dunno what you mean by stupid and pointless.
Deliciously nutritious!
Agreed, but at least you can sometimes carry against Ao. This is more in league with Gravitar, gimmicky and broken, a pain in the **** no matter what you're playing. I really want to like it. I really, really do. Cyberspace awesomeness and all that. But man does Cryptic make it hard to like anything they do.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Yeah. I died and didn't know about logging back so I've been off too long to get the reward, and it's honestly not worth it to do it again.
The lockout mechanism should be removed, IMO as you can spend a lot of the mission locked out from doing anything.
I love the data rain who pass the block like it's not here.
Anyway, call it Rebirth Alert, that sounds better.
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@Moustic in game.
Gold since 2009. Lifetime since May 2012.
I play with freeforms AND archetypes.
Interesting alert, nice to see fight mechanics. Too bad cryptic fails at it though. Will try this with a full premade this weekend, but otherwise, I won't waste my time. There is such a small room for error, I would expect a fight like this in high end WoW raiding, not in a 5 man alert open to PUGs.
My Characters on PRIMUS
Toons and costumes thread
@Benevon
Leader of Super Serious Brooding Vigilantes
Full defensive penetration, as without it, tanks could simply ignore one of the main mechanics of the alert.
It does about 3.9k damage a tick. Yes, squishies will get pasted in two hits. Dodge and avoid and whatnot won't save you, so keep on your toes.
Deliciously nutritious!
There are two parts that are a bit ridiculous though:
1) 3 million health... this is tedious! Was the health based around well-geared level 40 freeforms using 2GM? It takes ages to grind Cybermind down, especially since a chunk of the team is sitting around locked out of the fight.
2) High-powered knockback during rain phases. Unless you happen to have built around being KB immune, you're likely to get knocked into the rain even if you've done the colour-square mechanic properly, taking at least one tick of the massive rain DOT while you get back into your square. If he's also targeting you with his attacks you'll probably go down.
The knockback during his rain thing is just obnoxious and isn't fun... the point of massive area damage that can only be avoided by properly using the fight mechanic... is to make it avoidable. Its not more fun to be pushed out into it anyway.
As some folks have said... stop using the PTS as a balancing tool when the only people who can get on the PTS are those with access to freeform characters. You'll end up with content that wipes the floor with f2p pugs.... and being creamed by content doesn't encourage them to go Gold, it encourages them to leave. Content should always be reasonably possible even for fragile ATs of the lowest level you allow into that content.
Why is there so much use of the lockout mechanics? It makes sense in high-reward raiding in other MMOs, but it mostly just makes fights in THIS game boring for anyone who ever makes a mistake. I actually feel bad sitting there for the 20 minutes it takes to grind cybermind down with only 2 people (neither of which is some finely tuned level 4 dps machine) while 3 people sit there twiddling their thumbs.
Also... it'd be swell if you did something to let pets function during the fight, rather than making the fight mechanics completely invalidate an entire swath of power choices. Maybe give them whatever buff their controller has and/or only make them take rain damage when their controller does?
Having rez powers and self-rez powers helps immensely. That is true in Gravitar fight, too.
It is a challenging alert for level 40 toons. It SHOULD NOT be autowin. Too many players are used to always beating content easily, on the first try.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Go go gadget horrible game design!
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
How is challenge horrible game design?
This is worse then the firepatches from Warlord that, not only eat your face, but make you unrevivable?
Deliciously nutritious!
Or am I doing it wrong by trying to react to the animations? I thought the point of making these things graphical was to give us something to react to and look at rather than making us glue our eyes on the buff bars and ignore the animations.
Did I say Warlord is any better? He's only better in the sense a strong enough build can solo him in a reasonable amount of time (Ergo: You can carry against him when you inevitably get a group that can't seem to understand the fight, which is practically a requirement for anyone who doesn't constantly premade), and he's not quite as insta-kill. Otherwise they're BOTH examples of bad design.
I don't think people around here seem to comprehend that by large and far people don't prefer failure to success.
Let me put this in perspective: People are quitting out of this alert. This alert disables the exit map feature. Yes, that means people are either swapping characters, or FLAT OUT EXITING THE GAME IN FRUSTRATION. When 1-2 people are quitting out of the alert on a regular basis, that's 1-2/5ths of your players that are being frustrated by your game. This? Is not a good thing.
Which is totally why it's level locked to level 40s only- ohwait.
I died... Three times that I can remember during my first playthrough in Metroid Prime. Once against Thardus, for being an idiot and not realizing you could do certain things to make the fight easier, once against Meta Ridley before I got his patterns down, and once against the actual Metroid Prime. And you know what? It's still one of my favorite Metroid games in the series. You know what one I haven't bothered playing again? The original Metroid. Also, the hardest game in the series. Difficulty does not equal a good game, and in fact most people prefer less to more.
Masochists are the minority not the majority. It's been like this since... Forever, even in the NES days the games that were easier were generally more popular. Even if we accept that there's enough people who want things in an MMO like champs to be difficult to make it worthwhile, having death handed to them on a silver platter for one mistake is something that's likely to piss off more players than not. This is just a no-win situation, and an excellent example of Cryptic shooting themselves in the foot again.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
My only real gripe, again, is the knockback. It seems like a little much when you are already locked out of your TPs.
My Characters on PRIMUS
Toons and costumes thread
@Benevon
Leader of Super Serious Brooding Vigilantes
Heck, three runs, and I only saw it used twice. Both times, thankfully, right when the rain effect stopped.
Deliciously nutritious!
There's also people that prefer a challenge to a cakewalk. If you want guaranteed success, you can go do Dockside Dustup: Black Fang a hundred times. If content is too easy, people will do it a few times, get all the loot the first day, then never play it again.
If you don't prefer failure to success, you should form a team of people who know what they're doing. Teaming is an option.
My money would be on people using the Teleport To Renaissance Center device...
First week that Alerts were live, people were saying that Smashes were impossible to beat. It's just a learning curve. This happens with every new custom alert. And again, try teaming up instead of PUGing. It'll do wonders to your success rate.
There is a place between a cakewalk and a challenge, I know it's hard for the Uber-players to comprehend but, there you go.
It's there..
This is not it.
Neither is Gravatar
Being one shot-ed while playing the alert as designed [i.e. move to the color and crap]
I know right!!
We can't PUG things in this game! How dare anyone who does....
Waiiiiit...
Yep that's how I got out of my first run of it, and maybe my last.
I'll probably try it once or twice with my SG but never more than that, just like Forum DPSumn
I know right?
This is soooo much better than a mission instance where you can play alone or with a team [and hopefully it scales to your team].
We all love content that's accessible to all and bundles you with random people by default but punishes you for doing that.
So lets play it like it was a Lair but it's a lot shorter and much more annoying.
Glob I love the new 'vision'
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
Not with Cryptic's loot tables.
People are broken. - Lum the Mad
Both views in the matter of difficulty have solid points. The issue, in my opinion, comes down to the disparity in build performance in CO. You do not have to even try to min/max or anything of the sort to end up with a build that performs head and shoulders above what many other builds can manage. This has always been a factor in balancing CO's content. The addition of ATs with F2P increased the performance gap and On Alert amplified the effect by orders of magnitude.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Ironically, that's another reason I often don't bother with a lot of alerts/repeatable events
It's nice to get a drop but I have a -life- so I can;t grind it all day long to maybe get one drop in the day.
If it feels like I'm not likely at all to get a drop, the loot table is irrelevant.
I only repeated the Fatal Error ones at all for the Perk titles and all that, I didn't expect to get any drops and haven't.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
Yes, it's probably going to be a big pain. The columns of light don't change position or color but I think the squares you have to step in do.
Good luck
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
If you can't see yellow, red, blue or...I think green, you're pretty much
not playing this unless your team can do the color watch for you.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Deliciously nutritious!
Bad answers all around.
Basically, your first solution is accept NO challenge whatsoever, AND miss out on new content? For starters, there's a lot of room between cakewalk and one-shot-the-player. You don't even have to kill the player to challenge them, and there's different types of challenge. Even within the deadly type making people feel like they there's potential for death is usually more than enough. This is all, once again, ignoring that difficulty is practically optional as a quality.
Secondly, you do realize that teddybear hugs and goodwill don't keep a game like this alive, and it needs actual players to throw money at it? Run a parser sometime, you'll see that by large and far the majority of random players, even freeforms, aren't running optimized builds. If you watch them, it's seldom you see anyone playing in the most optimal way, even for their build. If I did that, I'd never get to use grapple gun pull, ever. Ok, maybe occasionally to knock nem bosses out of their attacks, but I digress: My point is for the majority of players, this isn't even "difficult," it's brick wall unfair. We need these players to stick around to populate our game and maybe spend some dosh, not get frustrated and leave. They're the ones balance needs to be focused around.
Also, have you ever considered that most of the people I actually enjoyed playing the game with quit a long time ago because of this sort of stuff we're discussing right now? I don't even bother trying to invite new people anymore, they just quit after a month or two anyway. Not to mention, just forming ANY premade wont help you with this, since the bar is based on above average players now.
So that's slightly better, but it doesn't change the point that people get one shot and are basically like "I'm getting out of this pile of crap." People are going out of their way just to be somewhere else than new content. Yeah, this is not good.
People were right, actually, as in a random group- Y'know that thing that alerts were ADVERTISED TO BE FOR TO BEGIN WITH? Things like Draconis at the time WERE impossible. Everything was balanced around new gear hardly anyone had, EVERYTHING had changed overnight and you had these ridiculously regenerating PFF bosses that required high DPS to take down. When people talked about them being impossible, that's what they were talking about. Groups on the PTS with the actual gear often had trouble downing them.
And FYI, premading isn't an answer, ever. Forgetting that alerts were advertised and are set up to just be queue up and go, there's a grander reason for this outside of even our game: Once again, soloers make up the majority of your players in any given game, and changing this is practically impossible because reality dictates that's the way it should be. Most players when faced with the requirement of premading with other players who aren't doing so already, take the option to quit instead. This is made worse if the requirements state that the premade has to actually be above average to get anywhere. It can get steep enough that players who ARE premading begin quitting.
SMNC was a game where people opted to quit. SMNC was a MOBA style third person shooter that benefited strongly from a large amount of coordinated teamwork. Despite this, if memory serves me correctly, they released that the soloer population actually made up roughly 80% of the active players at any given time. It went from 5000 concurrent players at launch, to less than 500 at a time. All the meanwhile, people who were entering the queue in 5 mans, were telling everyone else to do the same. People kept saying this, over and over, as the player count continued to plummet, and by the time the devs actually wised up and did anything about it the pool was already small enough that I was seeing the same people every single game. This DID slow the bleeding down, but it was too late. Even I eventually quit, despite being a well above average player.
Do you really want to take up that stance? I'm not entirely sure it's not too late, but there's no reason things couldn't be made even worse.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Just so you know, I'm not one of these "uber-players" you talk about. My main doesn't have what I or anyone would call an "optimal" build. And I like the Gravitar fight. Honestly, ask anyone, I am no power-builder.
I have written your opinion down on a sticky note and put it in a dirty sock.
Yes, that's one solution. If something is too hard for you and you're just going to give up, then just don't do it, go do something else, and buy the junk you want from the auction. No one is forcing you to play the new content, and if you're unwilling to put a team together, then, what, your answer is to make it soloable? Or what? What's your solution?
More like there's a lot of room between knowing how to handle an encounter, and wanting to go in guns-ablazing-willy-nilly and just win at everything.
Such as myself...
Sounds like a spoonful of "don't want to learn the fight" and a spoonful of "I already gave up." Not a recipe for success.
I've seen people leave all sorts of alerts, all the time. That it happens in this alert is no surprise to anyone.
Have you considered using Zone Chat? (Cue Chat Ban system rebuttals... now!) I see people forming teams for all sorts of junk all the time. It's very sad that all your friends have left, but there are alternatives.
And no, not ANY premade will help. Try it with some 40s.
Were they indeed ADVERTISED TO BE FOR RANDOM GROUPS TO BEGIN WITH or was the queue system just a helper for people who didn't want to find teams? Honest question, answer with links would be appreciated.
Draconis was fixed. It was a bug making his stupid shield too hard to blow up. Let's not base our whole argument on a fluke, huh? Notice I said "All smash alerts" not just Draconis. I heard complaints about all of them. Like many new alerts, they start out as impossible and normally end up being a normal affair. Forum Malvanum seems to be an exception to that though.
Really? You seem to be setting some arbitrary personal rules, here.
So you're saying that, within a week, there will only be like, super-optimal-build players queueing for the alert? Because everyone else is going to quit trying? And maybe also quit the game?
Okay, I'll check back on that one.
Do I personally want to take up that stance? Yes, why not? It suits me. I'm not the one making the decisions for the game or anything. I'm not setting a new status quo. I have friends that I've met in the game that would be glad to queue up with me. That you don't enjoy this alert does nothing for my stance on it or its difficulty.