Live Feedback: Issue 12: Cimerora (Roman Zone)
By
Airhammer,
Posted on: 2008-05-20 24:21 in Developers' Corner
I'm really surprised that all the effort was spent on making an entirely new zone, and then putting almost no content into it. One series of "talk to these people" so-called missions, one contact spitting out repeatables, and one TF.
I was disappointed that I exhausted everything outside of the TF in less than an hour. You'd think with how much it was hyped this was the reconstruction of the Parthenon or something, but it turns out to be seriously underwhelming.
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
"Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
- Thomas Jefferson
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I'm really surprised that all the effort was spent on making an entirely new zone, and then putting almost no content into it. One series of "talk to these people" so-called missions, one contact spitting out repeatables, and one TF.
I was disappointed that I exhausted everything outside of the TF in less than an hour. You'd think with how much it was hyped this was the reconstruction of the Parthenon or something, but it turns out to be seriously underwhelming.
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But you're always disappointed 
To the point, I believe Hero 1 said in an interview that they spent a lot of time working on the Midnighters and the Time's Arrow TF, meaning they didn't have much write-up time for other activities in the zone. He also mentioned that it would be very likely that they will return to Cimerora in the near future to expand the content and story, as part of the "coming storm."
IMO, this is the "Issue for Altitis", what with Power Proliferation and VEATs to play with. But I digress from the OP.
The zone itself is beautiful. War Witch has outdone herself. The TF is epic. As a WS player, the storyline is not only enthralling, but also ties in nicely with the background of my WS character. And you can even swim underwater in one of the maps, which begs the question "What's up the devs' sleeves?"
Very interesting indeed.
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I'm really surprised that all the effort was spent on making an entirely new zone, and then putting almost no content into it. One series of "talk to these people" so-called missions, one contact spitting out repeatables, and one TF.
I was disappointed that I exhausted everything outside of the TF in less than an hour. You'd think with how much it was hyped this was the reconstruction of the Parthenon or something, but it turns out to be seriously underwhelming.
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The zone is basically just a setting for the TF. It's much more immersive than just jumping into a portal or clicking on a crystal. I like it, and hope they add more "mini-zones" of different eras.
*spoilers*
I had not logged on Test server during Open Beta so everything was fresh new to me when i played this afternoon.
As soon as i got to Cimerora i could join a team doing the task force. It was very epic. I found some of the missions to last a little too long but overall it was very entertaining. I really got surprised when we stumbled on the nazis! I wasnt expecting them to show up in this TF. The last AV with the 3 nictus really was an epic battle. We were all new and didnt know how to handle it. We thrown everything we had on them. Shivans, Mary, pets, nukes, etc... It was extremely hard and i think we would never have win if we didnt succeeded to pull AV away from Nictus so they stop healing him. It got really crazy when he raised from death and we had to do it all over again! It was the chaos but we did it! We killed him 4 times and we won!
Tf duration was about 2:30 hours and i think that wasnt bad. Killing 300 traitors went faster than i thought. A nice TF, not the TF i like the most but its a nice addition and i should redo it very soon.
*thumbs up*
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
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The zone itself is beautiful. War Witch has outdone herself. The TF is epic. As a WS player, the storyline is not only enthralling, but also ties in nicely with the background of my WS character. And you can even swim underwater in one of the maps, which begs the question "What's up the devs' sleeves?"
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Q.
F.
T.
Except in my case, it was teaming with my gaming partner's Peacebringer. 
Every single turn from the time we stepped into the Midnighter's Club to the time we gave up on the TF (our first try and we were down to 4 people, we didn't have a chance LOL!) had us going "Wow." "Ooooh!" "WANT!!!!!" "Man, this is gorgeous" and variations thereof.
--Virtue--
My 50s:
Tigra Swipe (BS/SR/Dark Scrapper)
Galena Storm (Emp/Ele/Ele Defender)
Master Tolarin (Psi/Fire/Force Blaster)
New zone - Awesome.
New TF - Excellent.
Claws Stalker animations fixed - Instant win!
Member of the Justice Hundredfold, and Operation Unlimited Justice.
Her Imperial Majesty's Archaeologist of Achievements, Accolades, Exploration and History
The TF is just aggravating. The final AV's are damned near unkillable with a small group, even on heroic. As Caesar would, I'd give this TF a thumbs down. I'd rather hunt for merits for costume parts than do a god damned impossible TF.
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The TF is just aggravating. The final AV's are damned near unkillable with a small group, even on heroic. As Caesar would, I'd give this TF a thumbs down. I'd rather hunt for merits for costume parts than do a god damned impossible TF.
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They're hardly unkillable. you just can't go rushing in, guns ablaze. Take out the Essences first, focusing on one at a time. Try to have a Tanker keep Romulus busy while this is done.
Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
Gameplay/Power Issue
There is currently a long-standing issue with Gravity Control/Wormhole that puts this powerset at a significant disadvantage when facing the new mobs in Cimerora.
From what I can see, these mobs have a shield power that grants them resistance to all forms of Control. Fortunately, it's toggled off when they're just standing around. If you can sneak up on them or get the first shot in, you're fine.
The Problem: Wormhole generates aggro about a second prior to the stun effect being applied. The Cimeroran mobs have plenty of time to activate their shield and become resistant before the stun takes effect.
End result: Gravity Control does not have an effective stun when facing Cimeroran enemies. Gravity Controllers are therefore required to rely solely on their Gravity Distortion Field (with a much longer recharge timer) for any kind of AoE control.
Edit: clarified last sentence.
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Gameplay/Power Issue
There is currently a long-standing issue with Gravity Control/Wormhole that puts this powerset at a significant disadvantage when facing the new mobs in Cimerora.
From what I can see, these mobs have a shield power that grants them resistance to all forms of Control. Fortunately, it's toggled off when they're just standing around. If you can sneak up on them or get the first shot in, you're fine.
The Problem: Wormhole generates aggro about a second prior to the stun effect being applied. The Cimeroran mobs have plenty of time to activate their shield and become resistant before the stun takes effect.
End result: Gravity Control does not have an effective stun when facing Cimeroran enemies. Gravity Controllers are therefore required to rely solely on their Gravity Distortion Field (with a much longer recharge timer) for any kind of AoE control.
Edit: clarified last sentence.
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Same thing applies to Plant control / Spore Burst.
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The TF is just aggravating. The final AV's are damned near unkillable with a small group, even on heroic. As Caesar would, I'd give this TF a thumbs down. I'd rather hunt for merits for costume parts than do a god damned impossible TF.
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They're hardly unkillable. you just can't go rushing in, guns ablaze. Take out the Essences first, focusing on one at a time. Try to have a Tanker keep Romulus busy while this is done.
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We DID go after the nicti first, but could barely make a dent. I know I'm not the only one with the complaint that Romulus is overpowered. I've been eharin it all across Virtue.
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The TF is just aggravating. The final AV's are damned near unkillable with a small group, even on heroic. As Caesar would, I'd give this TF a thumbs down. I'd rather hunt for merits for costume parts than do a god damned impossible TF.
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In truth, the Caesar-image of 'thumbs down' actually means the opposite for what it means for us, ie, 'good' or 'let them live'.
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The TF is just aggravating. The final AV's are damned near unkillable with a small group, even on heroic. As Caesar would, I'd give this TF a thumbs down. I'd rather hunt for merits for costume parts than do a god damned impossible TF.
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They're hardly unkillable. you just can't go rushing in, guns ablaze. Take out the Essences first, focusing on one at a time. Try to have a Tanker keep Romulus busy while this is done.
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We DID go after the nicti first, but could barely make a dent. I know I'm not the only one with the complaint that Romulus is overpowered. I've been eharin it all across Virtue.
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SPOILER
I was in a team today with a scrapper, 4 blasters, a mastermind, an emp and my corruptor. Once we established that the nictus need to be separated and defeated, they dropped entirely fast. We went for nictus, nictus (spawner), romulus and nictus (healer). In this pattern, the death of Romulus causes the final nictus to defeat itself (story reason), and then Romulus dies faster than an emp in PVP.
Depending on your group makeup, pull Romulus away from all the Nictus (keep a tank taunting them away) and then down him (he's cake away from his healer). Then continue the same pattern.
My group took down the buffer, then focused on Romulus three times. Worked like a charm once we did that.
Kung Ru - 50++ MA/Regen Scrapper
Kalleesta - 50 Necro/Dark MM
Hidden Justice - 44 Kin/Psy Defender
Altaholic
We did pull away Romulus, but the Healing Nictus was healing for +250 or so 4 to 5 times in a burst, which shocked us all, and was healing far more damage than we could do to it. Eventually, the Nictus started to ignore us and almost rubber banded back to Romulus.
Did the the final mission with 5, and the only debuff we had was my earth/storm. Which meant really only had my storm set, since earth has almost nothing for this TF. The part I hated though was Break Frees do not work. When you defeat a nictus it has, it seems, an auto-hit stun, used break free, still stunned. The basic strategy for the end, is find and defeat the healing nictus first, then deal with the others, then Romuls. Otherwise this TF is a lot of fun, a great big slug fest.
It's very interesting how many people are completely contradicting each other on the difficulty of this TF. Perhaps post some Youtube videoes to show how you succeeded or failed? There may be a pattern.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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I'm really surprised that all the effort was spent on making an entirely new zone, and then putting almost no content into it.
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QFT
side note
the tf was awesome "design wise" ..but i doubt i would sit threw another 2/3 hours agian....merits woulda been the way togo after the new wears off i dont really see many people going back to crim
Reposting this from the test thread:
revised proposed changes:
- Change Twilight Grasp recharge from 5 seconds to 10 seconds to match the debuff duration.
- at the moment Twilight Grasp is healing allies once and the healing nictus twice. Remove the additional heal so it heals the healing nictus only once.
- Remove the 100% resistance to debuffs from Nictus Essences.
- Reduce essence HP count to be less than Romulus
- decrease the damage that the Mire essence does and change it's recharge to closer match the buff duration. It's stacking heavily at the moment. Also have it buff Romulus's resistance in addition to his damage and ToHit.
- Give Nictus Essences unique names
- Give Romulus Quasar to use when he is low on HP.
- change the Nictus Essence model so they can't hide within each other
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I'm really surprised that all the effort was spent on making an entirely new zone, and then putting almost no content into it. One series of "talk to these people" so-called missions, one contact spitting out repeatables, and one TF.
I was disappointed that I exhausted everything outside of the TF in less than an hour. You'd think with how much it was hyped this was the reconstruction of the Parthenon or something, but it turns out to be seriously underwhelming.
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I seem to recall that not only did Hero 1 say the zone would likely be returned to, but that the idea behind the story is that you're "fixing" what someone did to the timeline. Meaning that you don't want to do much else, lest you change the timeline further.
On another note, I was wondering how we can "call" contacts in the zone. Do they have Roman cell phones? It's not a good or bad thing, just... interesting. And possibly immersion-breaking for some people.
Loved the zone.. did the TF with a group of team of six... brute,,tank.. two defenders.. one controller.. one blaster..
NO EMP...
and we rocked it.. did it just about two hours.. It was fun.. loved the zone.. it was beautiful and I will totally do this TF again..
I didnt even get a chance to really explore the zone..
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
the zone itself is awesome. i see all the civis and only hope all or most of their costume pieces are unlockable. however, i don't ever see myself completing the tf. i was part of the very first team that tried it live and considering it was only about 90 mins after launch, there werent many people over on guardian. we got 8 together and proceeded nicely until the final fight. we had no tank and no rad. only dark debuffs and 4 people with nectar. went nectar hit he took about 1/4 of the nictii life away but their health regened faster than out nectar did. the STF introduced a tf that was more or less only for calculated teams, with random pick up teams of standing little to no chance. i thought the LGTF was a return to pick up friendly TFs and it was, but this new imperious TF just went right back to ridiculous. no matter what anyone says, i will never be convinced a pick up team could beat this tf, only a well put together, pre-planned crew. it is way too hard and its even more unfair that beating it is the only way to get the new roman pieces. im a badger and it kills me that i'll prob never get this badge but not as much as it kills me that i will never get the new roman pieces.
sorry for being so long-winded...that tf just really REALLY upsets me
zone details: A++++
content: C-
tf: F-
fun value: B+
We've tried pulling him away, going after nictus, 4 god damned futile attempts at this TF and we're all frakkin pissed off beyond belief and I'm hearing the same complaints across Virtue.
I agree, the TF gets an F-. This is god damned ridiculous and quite frankly, the armor should require merits of some sort like in RWZ. Having to do a broken TF just isn't worth it. Take Romulus off the steroids, Devs.
Did the TF 3 times on test server, each time with a PuG, each time we passed with flying colours. Cursing the devs for not giving us the Sybil outfits while doing so.
So.. the not PuG friendly? Crock mate. You obviously just dont go in with 8 emp defenders.
The zone itself is breath taking. Just standing on the hill over looking the town is a sight indeed. The team who built the zone need a pay rise.
But like everyone else, i think the zone went live with far to little content. The repeatable missions are rather boring after the first 2.
I think however, it would be a RP'ers paradise, to go smooching with their Kitty Girl Ninja Demon Andriod Nurse Vampire G.I.R.Lfriend.
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NEW ROMAN-STYLE ZONE MAPS (LEVELS 35 - 50)
The Midnighters hold many secrets within their walls, including a highly coveted Ouroboros crystal, enabling them to travel to the far reaches of time. There is a familiar threat in an ancient land and the Midnighters need the help of both Heroes and Villains to stop it. Players step foot upon the ancient land of the Roman Cimeroran Peninsula, where they battle deadly creatures, defend an ancient city and ultimately come face to face with the enemy of time itself. Throughout this journey players uncover the mysteries of power and the origins that guide them today.
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Discuss Cimerora zone, the content, missions, and costumes here:
Also see Developer Diary - Stretching the Genre: Creating Cimerora in City of Heroes, by Senior Art Lead Ken Morse for more details on the artistic process.