[SURVEY] Your opinions about the Rampage Revamp?

agentnx5 · March 2014

Specifically, let's discuss the hot-button topic, rewards/loot.

To that end, I made a survey/poll.

Click here to take the survey.

When I get a large enough number of responses, I'll publish the results. I'll be sure to share this in-game quite a bit, since I had good results in not having a majority of the responses coming from the forums last time. Gotta try to include as many non-forum users as possible, to reduce skew.

Let's find out what people in general really thing about all this, instead of just a few highly vocal individuals.

UPDATE!

We have enough responses as to satisfactorily reduce the margin or error, I feel. I have published the results thus far, click here to view them.

Unknown · March 2014

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crosschan · March 2014

<Steps over Xan's post> Nope, not even gonna go there....it's tired.

Ok, so I did the survey but it didn't clarify in the 1st page that these were cumulative kills or just runs since they all became "new and shiny" again. If it's the latter...you might wanna shave a few hundred runs off of LI and Grav for me(or in general). Just mentioning this so it doesn't skew the data...unless it's a non-issue.

dr490nbr347hi · March 2014

How many times I've done Gravi and F&I was a pure guess.

wimpazoid · March 2014

Taken the survey, though may skew the results since I've only done Lemurian Invasion 12 times up to this point, comparatively lower than the other rampages. On the other hand, may also accurately portray how I don't particularly enjoy playing that rampage, and only did it to get the perks on several characters.

championshewolf · March 2014

I took a wild guess on how many runs I did for F&I and Gravi using how much actual questionite I had accumulated through them to get a somewhat accurate depiction.

agentnx5 · March 2014

The some numbers seem to be very enlightening so far, and some of it is what you'd expect.

The current average number of Justice Gear pieces people want is about 6 (2 full sets). But I expect that to lower over time as more responses come in, especially with people who have explicitly stated before that they don't care for it (i.e.: inputting "0"). This was surprising to me because it's more than I expected, but the implications I can't even guess at. Feel free to speculate, as we often do on these forums. I'm reserving judgement on all of these results until I have much more responses.

The most surprising result so far to me is the number of people who enjoy the map design of Sky Command. I mean almost everyone seems to love it. That's a huge compliment to the map designer, which ever developer(s) made it. Honestly I put that I like that map design too, but I didn't think so many others did. Interesting!

I don't feel comfortable with the sample size yet to comment further. More people need to take the survey. This isn't anything I'd email the results to Cryptic yet. Even the last survey had room for improvement, I wasn't fully satisfied. Hopefully this one was done better.

Also, it seems many people were not happy about Question #2 being required, so I changed it to optional instead. I still would encourage people to guess, it'll help with drop chance % calculations (and yes, I'm no fool, I know how to throw out bogus or fringe responses in Excel).

laughinxan wrote: »

You should have included a section called "So hard it's artificially difficult" for the difficulty sections. "Extremely challenging" is very different than fake difficulty.

No, because this induces bias into the question. I'm trying to make it as neutral as possible. I understand the "artificial difficulty" argument however and I have to agree to some extent (insta-kills and bags-o-HP aren't good design). But this wasn't for me giving my opinions (I've already done that), I want to know the community's opinions at large -- especially for those who loath to or generally don't use the forums. Also there are many things I'd have like to done follow up questions with or ask more questions than just 10, but you need to pay for a premium account subscription on the site to do that.

wimpazoid · March 2014

I'm one of those who put a '0' for Justice gear for the simple reason that I never needed Legion gear to begin with on my characters. While they may be an eventual thing to own from continued playing, I had a fun week revisiting just playing the rampages.

The real highlight for me was having players running the rampages, I'm sure many of us sticking with CO put in more hours of play whenever content comes along and we get to do something with others.

flowcyto · March 2014

I didn't participate in Sky Command (and may not for Lemurian Invasion) so I can't really complete the survey (nor should I, I guess).

biffsmackwell · March 2014

laughinxan wrote: »

You should have included a section called "So hard it's artificially difficult" for the difficulty sections. "Extremely challenging" is very different than fake difficulty.

"Fake difficulty" (otherwise known as "don't PUG it") is a necessity in a game like Champions where you have power levels so extremely diverse because of the Freeform characters. Power level disparity is gigantic in this game. It's not just "who's what level" and "who's got that gear." The end result is that "balance" is a nebulous idea. You cannot satisfy everyone with a single encounter. People like me will think it's too hard, while others out there who squeeze every tiny bit of effectiveness out of every stat point and power choice will think it's too easy.

The solution is to resort to tactics which acknowledge neither play/build styles (full team wipes and all that) and homogenize the experience; no matter how you build, if you mess this up, you're gonna die. So what is the solution? Use your head. Learn the fight. Learn what to do, what not to do, and you'll win.

Anyone that's in favor of the freeform system has got to be behind the "fake difficulty," because you can't have your cake and eat it too. I'm defending it as a person who is miles away from knowing how to build a really good character.

Lesson I learned? Zig when you gotta zig and zag when you gotta zag; it matters more than what superstat I picked and put where and what gear I got and what mods I put in it.

It's this or we all roll Archetypes. Or make all further progression vehicle-based so everyone's on the same level. Well, pay-to-win because you gotta have dat GRAAAAV PUUUUUULSE!

flowcyto · March 2014

Gravi actually has more 'fake difficulty' in the form of much higher unpredictable random raid dmg. F&I, as mechanically challenging as some aspects of it are (*cough*Frosticustank/healer), is more fair to builds overall, since most of the non-tank dmg is preventable or predictable (for melee dps, Kenina's aoe can hurt, but she also has long charges on fireball and the fire-vengeance thing if you watch her). The others I haven't done to comment, but they seem to have diff balancing concerns entirely, going off of word-of-mouth.

meedacthunist · March 2014

The only fake difficulty is Gravitar. Terrible, terrible and poor design that will never be revisited and fixed, forever shadowing over the whole rampage update. But now playing this fail of a design is required for tokens, making it only worse.

Honestly, it's an average update, killing bosses for gear, something typical and mandatory for any mmo.
It's outstanding in CO, because this game didn't had it since On Alert. Nothing really bad with this update, except RNG and more emphasis on Gravitar. Nothing outstanding either.

Now here's hoping that devs will put some new gear also in lair bosses, along with the lair revamp.

Unknown · March 2014

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Unknown · March 2014

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cptmillennium · March 2014

I think we've gone a little survey crazy lately. I will say however, that I'm really enjoying the rampage revamp. I'd never played the Lemurian Invasion before, and it's some great content! You battle a giant monster! Brilliant.

I don't mind the random drops or the low drop rate on tokens. I would like it if the Q drops bottomed out a bit higher. Once I start hitting 300Q I get a bit frustrated unless I got another drop I can sell.

One of the things I enjoy most is finally having a reason to group with some of the other players in the community. I like getting into a consistent group and doing runs with the same folks. Hopefully I'll start getting to know some of you a lot better!

meedacthunist · March 2014

gradii wrote: »

gravitar was done better than fire and ice in terms of design. fire and ice just encourages screams of HEAL ME!

why can't your hero look out for themselves? teamwork fine but I didn't know superman or the flash ran around with a healer following them.

I think you are not exactly right in your mind. It's my personal opinion, though.
What F&I requires is tactic and team composition. If players are failing this alert it is because they did somthing wrong either when gathering team, or just playig.

Gravitar requires just unpredictable luck and is very unforgiving for certain builds. It narrows valid builds and actually works against diversity. On the other side, F&I is better at rewarding teamplay and rampages are team content.

Despite its theme, CO is still a game, not a comic book panel. There is nothing wrong with game requiring few team members with different specialisations.

tigerofcachtice · March 2014

X5, great survey, thanks for doing this. Really looking forward to seeing the results.

INB4 any criticisms of the survey. Having some structured data is better than pure anecdotal info.

My favourite part was how you differentiated how we rate something vs. how much we care.

Example - I rated the drop rates as ok mostly, but my motivation was teamwork and strategy. That's why I don't mind the drop rates as it's not why I play. I completely understand many people grind for the Justice gear, even though I'm not in that segment.

So I look forward to the results, but also maybe your interpretation. I don't know if Survey Monkey does pivot tables or analytic tools, but very curious! Thanks in advance.

agentnx5 · March 2014

tigerofcachtice wrote: »

X5, great survey, thanks for doing this. Really looking forward to seeing the results.

Oh! You're welcome for the thanks!

Also thanks for calling me x5 instead of just agent

Yes I'm very interested in seeing the results. At present we have just under 50 responses. I know the population of this game's active population is small, but I feel we need a lot more, particularly from the in-game population. At the moment of posting this response 17 people came from the link on page 1.

tigerofcachtice wrote: »

INB4 any criticisms of the survey.

It may be hard to believe, but I've already had quite a bit of whining (and even one hate mail, as hard as that may be to believe), and and there's even the people who are truly ignorant about understanding why it's a good idea, saying things like, "Surveys are meaningless anyway, all it proves is that they suck." without seeing the effort taken to make this a non-sucky survey. Meh if people want to complain, they'll complain. Thankfully these bad apples are a small minority, but they are quite vocal & aggravating when you put a lot of time into trying to make a balanced and unbiased 10 questions that are important to current discussions and current events (in this case, the Rampage Revamp's rewards, difficulty, and what people enjoyed). Oh well, not going to please everybody.

I'm pleased with how it turned out so far, and (hopefully doing some of the work for Cryptic that they should really be doing on their own) I might be able to give them better feedback data. At least better than just reading some individual response complaints on the forums, customer service tickets, or just a feedback of a privileged few players in a private channel.

Not everything is doom & gloom, and this survey is showing me just how many things you all actually like (as well as what needs improvement)

I feel this is a more quantifiable and with sufficient responses will be a more accurate way of getting some solid feedback. Feedback they might need if they want to make some small tweaks to improve things.

tigerofcachtice wrote: »

Having some structured data is better than pure anecdotal info.

Hey... This one gets it! :biggrin:

Yay!

Yes, that is exactly what I'm going for here. We have these forums for everyone to get have a soapbox to get on to shout their individual opinions into the winds, but I'm trying to do what Cryptic should be doing but isn't: collecting aggregate exit data, about how the design process was received. I feel it would really help if PWE people like TrailTurtle did a lot more exit-polls on every change the developers did.

tigerofcachtice wrote: »

My favorite part was how you differentiated how we rate something vs. how much we care.

Example - I rated the drop rates as ok mostly, but my motivation was teamwork and strategy. That's why I don't mind the drop rates as it's not why I play. I completely understand many people grind for the Justice gear, even though I'm not in that segment.

Yep! There's a lot of opportunities to draw various conclusions such as that. And now you'll be able to put a percentage number to it (plus or minus an error factor, of course)!

So I look forward to the results, but also maybe your interpretation. I don't know if Survey Monkey does pivot tables or analytic tools, but very curious! Thanks in advance.

I think they do, here are their prices: https://www.surveymonkey.com/pricing/upgrade/quickview/?ut_source=header_loggedIn (click the "See all features" link) You can probably see why I'm just using the free option for now. It's an annual fee you pay of $204, $300, or $780.

I'm hoping to be able to share this data so that everyone can mine it for statistically correlations.

So I'm looking forward to YOUR analysis as well!

drgmstr · March 2014

I have no idea how many times I've ran the rampages and how many they count as wins so my numbers is a pure guess. Seeing Gravitar being out much longer than the rest it would be significantly higher than the others.

Unknown · March 2014

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championshewolf · March 2014

gradii wrote: »

wrong. I can do well in gravitar with any build, I do well with my glass cannons at lvl37 and no CON.

fire and ice? it only encourages people who build for trinity roles. whether or not their toon can do more than one of them.

For someone who likes to say wrong all the time, you sure love being wrong. Not to mention is your anecdotal evidence contrary to what other's experience is, you obviously know very little of how the actual fights work to begin with.

sterga · March 2014

Artificial Difficulty is when you simply raise an enemy's HP and damage. That pretty much describes Grav, Frosty, and Blaze perfectly. There are no intelligent tactics nor skill required. Once you realize this, the fights become trivialized. They can never be challenging after that. It is absolutely not in any way at all necessary to have HP sacks with insane damage for bosses even with the existence of FFs.

Considering all of the complaints, do people still love the way justice gear is implemented?

theravenforce · March 2014

I'm currently doing the survey. Due to my lack of runs on Sky Command I am basing my responses on PTS patch notes which have seemed to "correct" this issue.

I, for one, enjoy the fact that even though something like this was promised/talked about (perhaps the latter is more apt), it actually delivered and currently exists in game. The constant rotation allows players to have a three day span to pick up stuff they want to and auras and costume pieces have flooded into the game which is always a way to promote interest amongst the player base.

Overall, I will say that random chance token gain is a poor implementation in my personal opinion. This is not to say you -should- be entitled to a token simply for taking part, cause there are leechers in PUGs if you do PUG.

Aside from 3 of my 5 Fire and Ice runs, I have PUG'd every single rampage I have been in so far.

I personally don't enjoy the scoring system in Fire and Ice. (Now here's your Qualitative Data!

)... I say this NOT because I am incapable of getting high on the table, but because I feel that alert especially is a TEAM effort, and not like FM where it is a team of medium to high DPS capable toons, but is a varied party of toons which all serve purpose and support each other to get the work done. Following that line of thinking, I feel everyone should benefit from the alert, instead of some being alienated for focusing on team support.

But that's just me.

Agent, I am enjoying your efforts to collate data on what the community thinks about certain things, it may have an impact on the way things are done later on in CO's time line, provided the Dev team are interested to find out what players think on a platform where they are not going to face criticism from others based on their opinions or takes on matters.

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sterga · March 2014

When you make an enemy more difficult by giving it a ton of HP and damage, it is artificial difficulty. The base game is very easy and bosses are made difficult by giving them a ton of stats far exceeding that of players. That's it. Nothing about trinity is in there.

I think we should add "artificial difficulty" to the drinking game. I just added three shots, I hope you water your liqueur down.

spinnytop · March 2014

I would like to nominate this thread for title of "Fastest Derailed Thread Of All Time".

It literally got derailed with the very first response and has remained completely derailed since that point, at no point even coming close to getting back on track. That's impressive, even in these forums.

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spinnytop · March 2014

laughinxan wrote: »

There is a question in there stating how difficult each of the rampages are. I simply stated that the survey lacks "it's not really difficult but artificially difficult" option for that question and people got defensive.

Yes, thank you for restating the point at which the thread got derailed o3o I assume you realize this thread's intended topic was not "The difference between real and artificial difficulty"

Unknown · March 2014

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towershield · March 2014

laughinxan wrote: »

Thats why the survey needs an entry for artificial difficulty. It feels like the survey cherry picks with that question.

Then start your own survey that includes this "artificial difficulty" garbage and stop complaining about how this one doesn't conform to your standards.

chaelk · March 2014

filled it in , score so far

F&I, 1 win Q -
Sky command - 10 wins - Q 2 of 3 costumes and 2 ball bearings-
Gravitar - 10 wins -Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q+ vest -
Squiddly- Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,swap characters- Q+scale, Q

since I'm working full-time and still working O/T each day, I can safely say that I am safe from Justice gear for a long time

Fire and Ice was quite interesting but even with graphics turned up, I still couldn't always see the fire cages. I relied on an aoe attacked at the party to get anything which turned up.

jennymachx · March 2014

gradii wrote: »

grav fits this description far less than frosty. her damage is low enough for ranged glass toons to survive if they play smart and use something called BLOCK.

Non-telegraphed fully-charged four-digit damage cascades firing off in a mere second don't seem to qualify as low enough damage to me. Are we playing the same game here?

cyrone · March 2014

jennymachx wrote: »

Non-telegraphed fully-charged four-digit damage cascades firing off in a mere second don't seem to qualify as low enough damage to me. Are we playing the same game here?

Just smile and wave. :biggrin:

spinnytop · March 2014

gradii wrote: »

grav fits this description far less than frosty. her damage is low enough for ranged glass toons to survive if they play smart and use something called BLOCK.

I remember when you spoke for those silent masses who couldn't build to easily survive those untelegraphed random cascades. Last week was crazy wasn't it?

decorumfriends · March 2014

cyrone knows how to handle it:

Just smile and wave. :biggrin:

Just don't show teeth. It's a sign of aggression. :biggrin:

jaazaniah1 · March 2014

Did LI last night with a friend. He got 2 tokens in 2 tries.

r9xchaos · March 2014

maaany many successful runs...

Fire and Ice 1 token...

Sky Carrier 9 token...

Gravitar 3 Token...

Lemurian Invasion 5 Token...

to much grind... and from what i heard its even harder when you only have 2 toons...

thelostone0 · March 2014

sterga wrote: »

When you make an enemy more difficult by giving it a ton of HP and damage, it is artificial difficulty. The base game is very easy and bosses are made difficult by giving them a ton of stats far exceeding that of players. That's it. Nothing about trinity is in there.

I think we should add "artificial difficulty" to the drinking game. I just added three shots, I hope you water your liqueur down.

Bosses not only get a ton of stats, they are also made immune to the few debuffs left. Skarn's Bane is almost completely useless aside from a source of dps for healers because virtually nothing has a buff that can be removed by it. Any time the devs notice you can use Skarn's Bane to reduce something's threat level (rather than just bludgeon them to death with it) they change it so it can't be removed. Stuns and the rest are also ineffective against bosses because I guess it's a crime to try and make a character who does something other than dps or heal.

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championshewolf · March 2014

You can debuff the bosses, but they have debuff resistance so you can't make them easier than they already are.

sterga · March 2014

If you have to make the boss immune to player debuffs just to make it challenging, then your boss sucks. I could see certain bosses being immune or highly resistant to some things. For instance, a mentalist boss with high resistance to sleep attacks or a big bad warrior being immune to fear. Or having actual weaknesses fitting of their character. But that would require AI programming far more involved than "shoot aggro hog in the face until dead", "cast death bubbles at 30% HP".

kaiserin · March 2014

It's difficult to allow mezzes to function against bosses when there is nothing stopping players from spamming them. I don't think people appreciate how powerful mezzes are (preventing all incoming damage and effects for x seconds is crazy).

I could see making bosses that *have* to have an attack of theirs interrupted in order to prevent a team wipe, or ad spawns that have to be mezzed or thy will consume the group, but I don't see much else being viable with the current system.

Skarns Bane should lose its effect and gain something less game breaking. Whoever thought it was okay to give a spammable power with no detriment to the caster the ability to remove entire passives wasn't so good at the power balance.

thelostone0 · March 2014

Well, lots of CO's powers were built without any eye towards balance, this is true.

As for mezzes, well, of course "hard" CC moves that lock down an enemy would be OP on bosses, which is why (assuming they would land on a boss) mez spells in Everquest (where I suspect the term came from originally, thanks to the Enchanter "Mesmerize" line of spells) were broken as soon as the target was damaged. Awesome, awesome spells for controlling crowds, but one AoE and they're all awake and angry again.

Stripping passives off of bosses is not OP as long as Cryptic takes that capability into account and mods their numbers on bosses to allow something like that to work without making the enemy a helpless sack of HP. There's a reason Everquest started having bosses mitigate more and more of the effect from attack speed reducing spells.

nepht · March 2014

I hate it due to random rampage invites U__U"

sistersilicon · March 2014

thelostone0 wrote: »

Well, lots of CO's powers were built without any eye towards balance, this is true.

As for mezzes, well, of course "hard" CC moves that lock down an enemy would be OP on bosses, which is why (assuming they would land on a boss) mez spells in Everquest (where I suspect the term came from originally, thanks to the Enchanter "Mesmerize" line of spells) were broken as soon as the target was damaged. Awesome, awesome spells for controlling crowds, but one AoE and they're all awake and angry again.

Stripping passives off of bosses is not OP as long as Cryptic takes that capability into account and mods their numbers on bosses to allow something like that to work without making the enemy a helpless sack of HP. There's a reason Everquest started having bosses mitigate more and more of the effect from attack speed reducing spells.

Shhhhh, stop bringing up other games that have had the same problem we do. Those other games don't have the same problems we do.

drmechano · March 2014

Actually I think City of Heroes/Villains is the only game I can think of where healing was considered kind of crappy compared to buffs/debuffs and mez/holds could affect bosses but you needed to stack them on them OR have an effect that actually bypassed their mez protection (of which there was one in the game, the poison gas trap had a chance to cause enemies to start vomiting for a short time and it happened mez protection or not).

I have yet to see another game that has players prioritise debuffers/buffers over just straight up healing.

[SURVEY] Your opinions about the Rampage Revamp?

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