Live Feedback: Issue 12: Cimerora (Roman Zone)
By
Airhammer,
Posted on: 2008-05-20 24:21 in Developers' Corner
Atleast ours was a success Turbo! :-)
Maybe 'flying colours' was a bit of an over statement, it would obviously be easier to do with a well made team that is used to teaming with each other. But it is possible with a PuG, just not the best set up.
PuG'ed the TF... interesting... would of failed if not for a well spec'ed defender with vengance...
basically the aoe of doom was killer... other than that... easy... looong but easy
Saber Spectre Inv / EM Tanker on Guardian
Wraith Scimitar EM/ EA Brute on Guardian
Attack of the s00p3rphr34k ID 49744
I finally made it on the 5th try, I'll have nightmares with this TF.
Had to call in the repeat offenders forum for people to do it (not that they're all l33t like some say or are lead to believe, I just know they are competent players and won't quit easily like lots of PuGs) and even then the last battle took 1:30 hour (my other 4 attempts failed after 40 mins or so in the last encounter).
I still think this damn thing is way too unbalanced. Easy as pie all the way, the whole armies thing gives it an epic feel but each team member can aggro 8 enemies and still make it, those EBs go down easier than a lot of normal bosses in the game. Probably one of the easiest rides around. Then ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!one111!!! last battle, unlike STF/RSF/LGTF in which the difficulty rises along the way and you know your team will or will not be able to overcome it as it goes by.
Basically we had 2 brutes, one just fooled around with the AV until the rest could pull one nictus off him, blaster did a great job at that since the other brute kept dying and eventually quit. Rinse and repeat. Other than that a dark/dark def, a FF def and damage dealers (my dom, a blaster, lolstalker, scrapper). The damage output was great but each nictus took forever and a day to die.
This TF is so nice till the end battle but I will only be doing it on 2 other toons (my fire kin would look neato with the armor and my mind/emp is my badge toon). Other than that I"ll stay away from Cimerora till this thing gets tweaked. This is the hardest and most frustrating thing I ever faced in the game. Hey everyone dies 30 times in the last room of Lady Grey with 1 thousand rikti? No problem everyone's having fun. RSF? Never failed one, only did it 4 times, 2 without 'optimal' teams (no stone brute, i was the only dom in all 4 so I never did it with a mind dom), and I didn't even die in the last 2 times (last RSF for me took 1:05 hour). STF is cake compared to this one for me, although I still find it more challenging than the RSF, but nothing really 'OMG frustration'. I must've done the STF about 20 times and failed twice, only because people quit in the middle of some mission before the final one.
The fact that it was difficult made it brilliant. After 48 months of playing, I can honestly say it was the greatest, most exciting event I have ever done in all of my playtime. My team had few troubles actually. We were randomly thrown together, and we did amazing, but it wasn't easy, and that balance made for a great experience. The entire task force, and our mystery man's new letter were so enticing and got me into the back-story immensely. This task force needs no tweaking on difficulty standards, the mass amounts of enemies and the vast armies make it the most realistic feeling event/task force I have ever done. Sure it's frustrating, but on the final fight, we had a few deaths, and it didn't take us long to overcome the nictus essences. Just get a good team 
I think a key would be getting a good stone brute though, and a good empathy. Thats it. This is the closest thing to the perfect task force in my opinion. Devs, you have thoroughly impressed and pleased this paying player.
Now, Please, leave it as is! Leave this something actually difficult, make this something you HAVE to work for! If it's too hard for so me, then tough luck, try again later, it'll work out eventually, it worked out the FIRST time for me, with a random pick up team.
This task force takes leadership, coordination, someone to call targets, and for everyone to do their role, and do it well. The fact that you can't just pick this up and blaze it in an hour is what makes it so golden. I truly hope with all of my heart that they leave this task force the way it is, nigh perfect.
Ok, having done the TF, I can now talk about that. It is, in a word, AWESOME. Yes, the last battle is hard, and the last mish took us one of our two hours to complete. But it was a great ride. Yes, the last battle is VERY frustrating, but still pretty fun. The whole "epic" feel of it was also, great, since it truly finally felt like I was one hero of a small team, going up against big odds and a HUGE army. The bodies of Roman soldiers littering the sand made my day. Not to mention the fact that those guys are somewhat hard for my blaster to solo, so taking them out in huge numbers was pretty satisfying and felt like an accomplishment. I can see how the large numbers of ambushes would be frustrating, but I loved 'em. Gave it a sense of realism. And the Surgeons' AI was pretty cool, made things interesting. Anyways, thumbs up from me on the TF!
Thumbs down, however, on what the NPCs in Cimerora say. How exactly does "Romanus Namus" know I helped cure the lost? What does "Citizenus Cimerorus" know about enhamncements? It seems very suspicious. And immersion-breaking. And LAME. Leave the "information" NPCs the same, (E, F, M and... that other letter, N?), but have the Cimerorans say something about the state of their fort, or how great that senator guys is, or how weird the old woman is. Please?
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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.
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Both times I've done this TF, it was with a pick up group. And both times, we succeeded.
It's happening constantly.
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Thumbs down, however, on what the NPCs in Cimerora say. How exactly does "Romanus Namus" know I helped cure the lost? What does "Citizenus Cimerorus" know about enhamncements? It seems very suspicious. And immersion-breaking. And LAME.
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They managed to fix the NPCs so they don't say modern things when you click on them. That much is working at least. It's the spontaneous things that still need to be fixed.
Unfortunately it seems to have broken the regular modern NPCs in Paragon. Apart from the information-giving ones, they now only say 'Nice day, isn't it?'
Im at 5 for 5 on the TF now, only once - and my only time on live with a majority of SG/Coalition mates in the team.
Interestingly, each time in the final fight we have used different tactics according to the team make up.
Eg the time with twin tanks we could seperate the nictii easily, this last run with heavy ranged damage we just zapped the he4lzor from range and brute forced it.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
This TF should be called 8 v's 300 But its so much fun My team had 2 tanks 1 brute and 1 debuffer 1 mm rest dmg and i dont think we had a healer we " tank & brute" just controled everything and let the rest of the team do there thing without worrying about die'n, Had a lil mess up on av's but we pull together and fix it to finish under 2 hrs "1hr30min" the best part was go up to av's we kept getting ambush after ambush from first tower bridge. then after we got done killing the what ever number we had to we got tp to top.But omg the lag was crazy befor tp felt like a hami raid , But i give this tf a A+
for the fun i had
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This TF should be called 8 v's 300 But its so much fun My team had 2 tanks 1 brute and 1 debuffer 1 mm rest dmg and i dont think we had a healer we " tank & brute" just controled everything and let the rest of the team do there thing without worrying about die'n, Had a lil mess up on av's but we pull together and fix it to finish under 2 hrs "1hr30min" the best part was go up to av's we kept getting ambush after ambush from first tower bridge. then after we got done killing the what ever number we had to we got tp to top.But omg the lag was crazy befor tp felt like a hami raid , But i give this tf a A+
for the fun i had
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And it was a pick up team at that, no planing at all 
Did this twice, 1 pass 1 fail.
The pass was with a Repeat offender team consisting of 2 brutes a defender a blaster and a dom (i think). The second mission was hard because it was on invincible and the one guy who knew about the EB after every cyst and the massive explosion chose not to spoil it for us. The final AV fight was pretty easy initially as one of the nictus practically died from intimidation. It got rough for the next few minutes, but they couldn't kill us and eventually we just split the nictus and ate them one by one.
The Pug fail team was something like 4 blasters, 1 Bots/traps, 1 Earth/Kin, 1 D3, and a Grav/Rad. Naturally the Rad left right before the last mish so we lost a blaster he was sidekicking as well. The first few spawns were hard for us as the mobs were out of control, in a couple minutes we found our groove, and steam rolled it. I died at least 20 times, but I was usually rezzed by time Build Up recharged so I was happy. Then we got to the final AV.... 3 of us at least talked like we knew what we were doing. The MM was tanking the AV, and the other 5 of us wailed on a single Nictus. We couldn't put a dent in it.
Forgot to add:
The difficulty was rough, but it was reasonable. My DM/FA was able to tank Rom and two Nictus when our Stoner died, and there seems to be some trick to dropping the thing's regen that we just haven't figured out yet.
I've run the TF three times, two on live, one on Test, 2 PuGs, one group of friends, which basically amounted to a PuG.
Very different runs each time. One group had little to no difficulty. One was hard, but we bulled our way through, and the Test run was *Extremely* frustrating, but we wound up finishing anyway.
I like the difficulty...the sense that 'We might not be able to do this' makes it exciting...but for the love of Pete...make the armour not be unlockable by this TF. Don't inflict TF's with people who are just sliding through to get the costume pieces. Don't force people who are just looking for some fun play to go through a difficult TF (Or find a 'perfect' group) in order to play with the Roman pieces in Icon. Don't make people wait for, what...35 levels before they can use those (awesome!) costumes.
I really like the TF (Although the eternal ambushes got a *little* tiresome) but the new costume set needs to have some other means of unlocking it. Or at the very least have the TF unlock them for all a player's characters, so a casual player would only have to run the ITF once.
Love the zone. It doesn't suffer undue lag (except in the third mission of the TF) like Grandville. It's a really well-done zone. I just wish my under-35 or haven't-done-the-TF characters could fit in with the costumes a little better.
I can't even get into this [censored]ing Zone b/c instead of making it a NORMAL zone entrance/portal like everything else... I have to talk to get some password from some Contact that won't give me any missions b/c I have too many arcs open even though I had PLENTY of space for new missions. Last time this sorta thing happened, I had to spend 5 hours going back and clearing out old Arcs against extremely low level No-XP stuff. And here's the kicker, NO OTHER "new Contacts" are telling me I have too much "stuff on my plate".
I wanna put some "Stuff" on McKnight's plate. ...the kind you read about at Urbandictionary.com
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I can't even get into this [censored]ing Zone b/c instead of making it a NORMAL zone entrance/portal like everything else... I have to talk to get some password from some Contact that won't give me any missions b/c I have too many arcs open even though I had PLENTY of space for new missions. Last time this sorta thing happened, I had to spend 5 hours going back and clearing out old Arcs against extremely low level No-XP stuff. And here's the kicker, NO OTHER "new Contacts" are telling me I have too much "stuff on my plate".
I wanna put some "Stuff" on McKinly's plate. ...the kind you read about at Urbandictionary.com
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Run it in Flashback mode.
Hey look at that, a Crucial Known-Issue that should have been in the Patch Notes... HAHAHA... Terrific
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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.
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The pattern is going to be same pattern as everything else, overkill on debuffs and throw damage at it. Include Stone tank for ease of use.
On point, I found the zone itself to be beautifully crafted and extremely disappointed at the complete lack content and story to go along with it. I find it extremely disheartening to realize that the devs spent all that time and resources on creating a new zone to hold nothing more than a single taskforce.
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Atleast ours was a success Turbo! :-)
Maybe 'flying colours' was a bit of an over statement, it would obviously be easier to do with a well made team that is used to teaming with each other. But it is possible with a PuG, just not the best set up.
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I don't mind a challenge, but there are a lot of things about the final encounter that make a lot of build almost useless. Debuffers can only debuff Romulus since the essences are completely immune to debuffs (which made perfect sense when they were EB, but it's insane now that they are AVs). Low damage ATs like tankers, defenders, and controllers get shafted by the overpowered heal rate of the Twilight Grasp (which wasn't scaled properly when they did the EB->AV conversion). The Mire essence also has it's AoE damage WAY off from what it should be and once again is laziness from when they just increased them to AV class. Also they have the same HP as romulus but because of all of the above they are incredibly tougher to take down.
Now one could argue about just taking down Romulus directly makes it easier, but there are some problems that regularly occur with that plan. First, the mire essence will tear a melee heavy team apart in seconds since it hits really hard and variable buffs Rom's ToHit and Dmg. Range heavy teams generally can't handle the massive AoE from the "Cyst" essence spawns unless they are buffed heavily, since debuffs become fairly useless when the spawns scatter to the wind like they regularly do. The heal rate of the Twilight Grasp only makes these situations worse since it variable heals off living and dead teammates.
The kill the healing nictus first strategy generally doesn't work unless the team has an insane amount of damage or manages to separate the nictus from the herd. Which is a difficult task since their movement pattern is to stick to Rom like glue until they become stationary from Romulus running out of range (like a hostage AI code). The range on this heal is also crazy big like 60-70ft in radius and it debuffs for -11% dmg and can stack twice before wearing off. The healing essence also heals itself for double the amount it heals it's allies since it heals itself and allies for (239 x number of players hit) then a second afterwards gets a heal to only itself for the same amount.
As for the Romulus running away and disappearing bug. This is caused by anyone hovering gaining aggro and Romulus locking on to melee them. However since Romulus can't fly he runs off the map trying to reach his target. It's already well known that there are multiple holes in the final map to begin with so as soon as he falls into one of those your team is screwed out of the TF. Taunting romulus or remaining grounded prevents this from happening. If you must hover do so over the temple behind romulus so he gets stuck in a jumping loop instead of over the plaza where he will almost always run off the map.
One of the things they need to do is nerf the mire and heal essences down considerably and buff Romulus more. Right now Romulus is a pushover by himself, giving him Quasar and super buffed version of Eclipse would do wonders for the encounter. However the essences need to have their debuff immunity removed, the heal toned down, the AoE damage on the mire toned down, and their HP reduced to not be the same as Romulus's but still more than their EB versions had.
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The pattern is going to be same pattern as everything else, overkill on debuffs and throw damage at it. Include Stone tank for ease of use.
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Except the standard combos that breeze through Master runs of the RSF are dying repeatingly on the final encounter of this TF. Overkilling on the debuffs does not work against Romulus and his Essences, it only works when you overkill on the buffs and damage only.
Also, what kind of damage do nictus put out? Is it untyped for position? I know it's supposed to be neg energy but two things happened in my one successful run that made me wonder:
1) FF def goes to try to distract the AV with PFF - nictus use Mire and the summoned attack him - dead in 2 seconds.
2) SR scrapper with maxed defs tries to do the same thing - owned by Mire after 3 applications of it, meaning it never missed him.
Half the time we did it the summoned Nictusesses (Nictii?) were overlapping each other and you couldn't target the Healing or other Romulus Nictii 
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Overkilling on the debuffs does not work against Romulus and his Essences, it only works when you overkill on the buffs and damage only.
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Oh. Gee, how original. Cheers to variety.
Zone... neat...
Content... interesting
TF long... and end boss basically requires nothing more than brute force to kill...
and 2/1 for tf btw...
Saber Spectre Inv / EM Tanker on Guardian
Wraith Scimitar EM/ EA Brute on Guardian
Attack of the s00p3rphr34k ID 49744
I did it again today on my first 50 with my Brazilian coalition (seond succes to make up for the 4 failures before, yay). 1:55 was the time as opposed to 3 hours on my first successful attempt, seemed so damn easy this time! We barely died in the final fight. I have to say the stone tanker being able 3 nictus+Rom made it a lot easier while we pounded on the other nictus. I just had to keep AB and Fort on the stoner occasionally when I saw his health bar move.
But we had a very optimized team with two tanks and I had to babysit the WP tank a lot even against one nictus.
Team:
Me (Mind/Emp troller)
Stone/Nrg Tank
Fire/Fire Blaster
Elec/Dev Blaster (new Gun Drone looks hella cool but he said it wasn't too effective)
WP/SS Tanker
Fire/Rad Corr
Fire/Kin Troller
TA/A Def
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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.
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13 times on test server, 5 failures at the last encounter other 8 barely succeeded. All of them were PuG.