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Release Notes, August 23, 2013
trailturtle
Posts: 5,496 Perfect World Employee
Release notes for August 23, 2013.
-Fixed issues with Skarn's Bane and similar buff-removing powers in the Firewall and Cybermind encounters.
-The Disc Belt no longer drops from Cybermind -- please look for it in the C-store, in the Variety Pack.
-For players who are defeated at the end of the Cybermind fight, SOCRATES will appear in Cybermind's location. She'll transport them back to Dr. Silverback's lab to receive their rewards.
-Cybermind's a bit of an egomaniac, and he let us know that he resents sharing the spotlight with himself. Cybermind is no longer duplicated in his intro cutscene.
-Fixed issues with Skarn's Bane and similar buff-removing powers in the Firewall and Cybermind encounters.
-The Disc Belt no longer drops from Cybermind -- please look for it in the C-store, in the Variety Pack.
-For players who are defeated at the end of the Cybermind fight, SOCRATES will appear in Cybermind's location. She'll transport them back to Dr. Silverback's lab to receive their rewards.
-Cybermind's a bit of an egomaniac, and he let us know that he resents sharing the spotlight with himself. Cybermind is no longer duplicated in his intro cutscene.
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20 minutes...
:rolleyes:
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Cybermind:
Dear Cryptic,
I wanna say thanks for no longer having to share the spot light with myself, it was very uncomfortable as you can see from the attached picture. Now I can smash your heroes and that stuper computer SOCRATES without having to worry about gesturing too wildly and slapping myself in the face.
This does not mean I'll be dropping my costume pieces or my mini me any more than I do now though!
k ty bbz
XOCybermindXO
:biggrin:
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Seriously I watched two teams run 15 minutes on cybermind and only take off 1/3 of his health, the next team all got locked inside the firewall for a good five minutes, that's about ten minutes into the map for that team. We all had to quit to get out.
Explaining /killme is a longer process than "quit to exit the map".
For those that need to know try this keybind on your quote key
/bind ' say "/killme, disable dev request button, type nonsense into the field, press Defeat Me to exit the area we are stuck in and then get locked on the other side of the fight when you recover, where you can then exit the map by pressing the Socrates button, oh you don't know the Socrates button? Its the 3rd button down on the left of the minimap, unless you count the zone options as a button then its the fourth, ok got it now? great. Oh we are fighting cybermind, forget what I said, can't use socrates to exit, just QUIT THE GAME TO EXIT THE MAP"
When in a team the in-combat application applies to everyone if one person is in the fight.
Tests with TT yesterday resulted in us pretty much able to exit anywhere, even in the middle of the firewall sequence. (Got rid of the adds and nobody was attacking, the button popped up.)
Fight as a group, or bail as a group. Welcome to Pugz.
Deliciously nutritious!
Geometric shapes as meaningful symbols in a computer simulation game world?
That is some cutting edge stuff there, I'm not sure the industry or the public could handle such a revolution in visual communication.
Maybe cryptic's devs are 'symbol blind' and that's why we have boots, gloves, and pantyliners
as gear, they can relate to those object sillhouttes, it looks like their living room floor.
But throw a triangle at them that says "Yield to traffic" or a big Hexagon that says "Stop doing vehicles, they suck exhaust fumes" and they can't see it in time and disaster happens unless you color code it for them.
It does, for me no need to quit the game.
For color blindness, I'd suggest: Blue Cross, Red Circle, Yellow Triangle. Or Square. Or whatever. Any similarity will be a coincidence.
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@Moustic in game.
Gold since 2009. Lifetime since May 2012.
I play with freeforms AND archetypes.
Solo quit the game, leave people hanging and uninformed and impressed that the game is a stinking turd when they also have no option butto quit to get out of an unwinnable situation.
Welcome to the reality of losing players at a consistent rate by making lazy mistakes.
/logout or quitting, whatever, you have to go back to the login screen.
If its your first character you are not going to know that logging back in will help you of the mess you were in. The impression is "oh i'm screwed", new players are not running around with high confidence for their knowledge of the game.
http://materdoreindustries.webs.com/ Materdore Industries.. For a safer tomorrow.
@-The-Mighty-One
And probably nope.
NPCs get all the good stuff. Allways.
And another thing about the pieces. Why don't the player Bracer pieces tubes connect in the back, instead they do to shoulders.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
That would be a character scale issue. You have to be just right to make it fit. Either that or Cybermind was tweaked to have the hoses connect right.
I dunno about nerfing Cybermind, but something to help the squishier characters (like DPS and Healer ATs) so we can survive the first 2/3 of that battle. I tried this Alert yesterday, and even following Socrates' instructions I found it hard for my Soldier to stay up long enough to do much until that last segment. Bringing in lots of Triumphant Recoveries helped, but I went through around a dozen charges of that (that's three 4-Packs) before I finally was able to get through it -- and I only managed that because on my third try I got in with someone who was powerful enough, quick enough, and generally good enough as a player to basically solo against him.
In short, I spent more than I got back in trying to do the Mission.
This two-part buffing is confusing and demanding, and is especially frustrating when your character gets one-punched in the process of carrying through on it.
Author of the Realm Hunter series of novels
Join in the Doctor Who fan film, Doctor Who 2.0 Origins!
My ideas: Arch-Nemesis
Join Date: Aug 2009 | Title: Devslayer
I think the correct answer is the second one.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
I personally think they ought to just drop the "RUN TO THE COLOR AND RUN BACK" and instead just make it where you STAND on the colors. I also do think Cybermind needs a MAJOR nerf. Either that, or make an alternate non-alert mission, so everyone who plays for the story can enjoy.
Example of Comet Flight: Here.
No. When 'everyone' means people who don't even listen simple instructions. Not even when told 3 times. Or more.
But opinions are good to have.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
I like it as is, but I dont really run PUGS so maybe that is why I don't have the same view. I love the run and grab colors then get to the right spot.
Best thing to do is stay int he middle or near yellow, and when the colors pop up you'll have plenty of time to get to the right places.
and it is not timed, it also allows a learning curve, granted it resets, but it is something original, so great work devs and thank you.
Instead, they die and just have to sit around until I very slowly grind Cybermind down on my own, in order to get the same reward they would have gotten if they'd actually been fighting. wee.
Any content accessible specifically through a queue-based matchmaking system really needs to be based on the assumption of a PUG, not anything else. It's great that a well made team can do something... but if something can't be done without that, it's likely there are some bad design decisions involved - or that it shouldn't be Alert content. FM's timed grind battle is a good example of that.
Cybermind is doable with a typical PUG, but its really, really, really slow. I like the mechanics of the fight with the possible exception of force eruption and the lockout. I don't really understand why he has so much health, though.
Also, it'd be nice if pets weren't totally useless during the fight. I'm not sure what the point of having any class of powers be totally useless for a fight, is.
Only resets if everyone dies, and there's no learning curve if that doesn't happen and a person dies and gets locked out. I'm all for learning curve, but you should be able to get right back in there to learn rather than having to sit for several minutes, doing nothing, to get another 20 second attempt to figure out how to do the fight. That's not learning curve, that's punishment.
On second thought, forget about helping newer players on this one.
And for anyone who tries to reason that the game will die if new players are discouraged from playing the game because of the hard content. Its not my fault that Cryptic can't implement safeguards that ease those players into what the game has to offer without throwing them into a ragequit fire. New players should be encouraged to play world content first, then alerts at level 15, then custom alerts at 20.
Cryptic, you are all terrible at presenting elements of your game to players who don't read the forums. Start encouraging new players to play missions instead of higher difficult queues.
Minor adjustments to make my point.
Ok, the pets(and other such powers which are "kinda pets") thing should be addressed.
So remove their ability to respawn until the end of the fight so they can take notes(or be rezzed, or self-rez). I do not believe that making everything "OMG OMG OMG ZERG" friendly is the correct solution.
Oh and Buxom's post is pretty much on the money. The bar in CO is already pretty low so don't lower the bar...raise the players who are below the bar. Be that minor AT reworking, better overall presentation and player education(like putting the block station back in the tutorial for crying out loud), level-gating the alerts as suggested(and moving that stupid popup to 15, "Congratulations, you are now level 15. Let me tell you about Alerts!"), or whatever it takes.
Some newbies catch on pretty quick, do their research,make friends, ask questions, and adapt while others do not. IMO the approach should be to spoonfeed those struggling players the machanics with "How-to's" and not spoonfeed them the content by playing a game of limbo with the difficulty and stripping out of attempts at new mechanics. IMO the only person at a disadvantage with this system are the color blind and a more defined set of graphics(shapes) or icons would likely go a long way towards fixing that problem.
Join Date: Aug 2009 | Title: Devslayer
It was a good suggestion; it just didn't work.
Author of the Realm Hunter series of novels
Join in the Doctor Who fan film, Doctor Who 2.0 Origins!
My ideas: Arch-Nemesis
I absolutely don't understand how people like you can think that death and lockout is "good challenge". Learning the mechanics is the challenge, but if you fail and then have to wait several minutes doing nothing, then queue again and wait for a queue to pop, and do all the beginning stuff again... just to get a second try... that's not encouraging people to learn. It's encouraging people to blow it off.
If the lockout wasn't present it wouldn't ruin the mechanics - people would still get killed quickly if they failed to master the mechanics of the fight, but at least they'd get another shot at it without all the wait and lead-in content repetition. It doesn't make the fight "too easy" because the presence of the other 4 players doesn't change your personal difficulty level - the difficulty is based around getting the mechanics down, and is individual to each player. The only difference is that it eventually takes the intended amount of time to finish the alert, as we can assume it was built around the idea of 5 people hammering Cybermind the whole time... and the people who died actually work some for their supper, since they'd be getting the alert rewards even if they sat outside the room doing nothing.
There is simply no good reason for the lockout in this fight. It serves no purpose but to be punishing... to frustrate both people who die, and the people who are left behind and have to do the square dance extra long because they've lost some of their party dps.
Right, because they're going to sit there for 10 minutes studying hard rather than going to make a sandwich or take a dump, since the game they've chosen to play has chosen not to let THEM play. You wouldn't be able to "zerg" this fight regardless - you're still going to get killed every time you enter, in 30 seconds or less, until you've got the fight mechanics down.... and you still get the reward even if you sit outside the room and do nothing! I ask you again: what is the actual point of the lockout!? What purpose does it actually serve in Cybermind's alert?
And this is where the whole things fails and why there is a lockout. As you can see in the forums already, in just a day, 'learning the mechanics' makes this another face roll once you have learned it.
Some forum person told me it was a three minute fight today.
Can't even get decent Dockside Dustup teams while people beg for Nemcon
runs for thirty minutes or more and that pays like ten cents a run or more.
This is 12:30AM server time, a Sunday morning.
Can anyone guess the fail rate in the teams below?
This pattern of fail and rage quit will continue.
The problem with the lockout, I'm saying, is that its not adding challenge - unless everyone dies (and this isn't really a team-coordination battle that requires everyone be alive to complete) everyone still gets the reward. Unless the person who died is motivated to just keep queuing and re-trying, he can take his daily reward for completing the alert, even if he died 5 seconds into the Cybermind battle, and not try again until tomorrow. All the lockout adds is tedium for both the dead player and the remaining live players who have to grind Cybermind down without the added dps of the lost player.
Thanks, but no thanks.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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I can't comment on the FPS drop, because I have no loss in either mission.
However, I find that the alert is quite fun, and far easier than some are claiming. Provided the queue doesn't shaft you with a team of level 6s (or you bypass the queue by preforming), there's nothing "punishing" about it.
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
Everyone always complains about how there's no reason to have a healer. Rez is useless, blablabla, my healer has been parked for weeks and really only gets dusted off for the odd grav run. Well, now, there's a point to running one. Tanks, as well. "Why should I run a tank when most hybrids outperform me in dps, and stuff dies too fast for tanking to matter?" Well, there you go. You have a reason to play your tank now. He's probably the only one capable of taking those random cascades, and the dps the bits put out. We complain that every fight is a tank and spank, Well, now it's not. And we complain about that.
I can't for the life of me see why the devs don't just throw up their hands and say "there's no pleasing these people". Because I've seen a few of you ask for these very things, and now you're complaining that you have them.
I personally hate lockouts too, but you know who really doesn't? The healer I tend to run around with, who finally has a useful rez outside of Gravitar.
Seconded, however, on the "lock sub 20s out of these alerts" thing. Because even if you seriously beef up the dps and such a level 15 puts out, and they have all of their super stats, they still don't have a hell of a lot of powers. They lower the odds of everyone else. And, legitimately, if I were a level 6 entering ANY alert? I'd be frustrated enough with my results to immediately uninstall this game and never look back. There's a very good reason we've got alert babies running around right now who don't even know there's anything outside of ren center, and aren't even aware that there IS a block button. They spent the first 15 levels being carried by everyone around em, then did just enough damage to sorta help, while being carried by the veterans that queue. This is bad for the community, and bad for them as players when they actually hit 40 and get stuck carrying an alert themselves. I've seen a few of em that, on being questioned when frustrated that they died so often, link me to their gear. And they're wearing level 12 gear, on a 40. Because they never got drops in open worlds, and therefore know nothing about how gear in this game works.
RIP Caine
I carry a rez around too, which is why I say the lockout is pointless. People keep saying it'd be too easy/fast without the lockout, but even when you bring people back, it takes plenty of time to grind him down, and a lot of them die again... and again. I still have to wait for the rain to finish to rez anyone... and that time could have been spent making them walk back to the fight on their own.
Rez being "useful" in this alert doesn't make me feel giddy. It makes me feel like the janitor. It's another reason that lockouts only make sense on content you can reasonably expect premade groups playing - there's no guarantee there will be a rez in a group thrown together randomly, plus there are no limits on rezzing in CO like there are in most other games.
I like queuing systems for putting people together in MMOs, and I think short group content is actually a good thing... but the Smash alerts, which have, by far, the highest reward for most players, are terrible. They're short-timed fights that punish the presence of non-DPS players and have created a pretty miserably game dynamic. If all alerts were more like the Grab alerts "Museum Heist" and "Fighting City Hall" the Alert system would actually be a really good thing.
I've noticed its mostly people who haven't used Teleiosaurus Pheremones [sic] that complain its abusive. You should try parsing a combat log sometime to see if you still think they're overpowered on teams as compared to your run of the mill DPS character... and at 3k+ G per device, no less.
As for designing around it... good luck teaching pets, especially uncontrolled pets, how to get the colour buffs. All pets, controlled or uncontrolled, and sigils... die every time he drops the rain. They also can't hurt the cubes because they can't get the buffs to do so... and they can't do much to Cybermind in phase 3 because (again) they can't get the buffs.
Aura of Radiant Protection
Inertial Dampening Field
Sigils of Ebon Weakness
Circle of Primal Dominion
Ice Barrier
...and so on.
Illumination is the game's only click-and-forget long-term power that can buff other people. It's not exactly game changing and for good reason; we already have a lot of force multipliers in the game. Who remembers when multiple Inertial Dampening Fields didn't provide diminishing returns?
Hurk, I remember that back in my silver days.
Mega D popped, and there were so many IDF's that the shockwave attack he did took off like, 400 health, max. It was stupid, so stupid. Plus it wasn't even a form so you could just throw it onto any build too.
Deliciously nutritious!