Live Feedback: Issue 12: Cimerora (Roman Zone)
By
Airhammer,
Posted on: 2008-05-20 24:21 in Developers' Corner
I love the new zone, and the TF as well. Done it twice now, one success one failure.
On the successful run we had no tank. I was on with my ill/emp (light on the emp) a MM, a fire/kin, 2 scrappers and a blaster. We could not separate the Nictus away from Romi, so we just went to town on Romi and killed him 3 times. Each time he died one of the Nictus died as well.
I dont mind it being difficult, whats the fun in doing something that has absolutely no chance of failure?
And very happy with the other mishes too.
Well done and thank you devs.
I loved the new TF, I've done it once successfully. I enjoyed needing a bit of thought and strategy for it.
The maps and story were outstanding. The map sync bug plagued me throughout, but fortunately a teammate had recall to fix it. We had a ice/ dominator, invuln/ tank, fire/ tank, three scrappers, a zombie/dark MM, and a fire/dark corrupter. Plenty of opportunities for vengeance and revive, rise of the phoenix, etc. Good times, I will definitely run it again.
One weird thing I encountered (not a rickroll)
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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.
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I posted this in the technical issues forum, though it fits here, as well...
Apparently, after less than a week being live, there is no need for the I12 bug or feedback forums... One of the topics heavily discussed was the new TF and, specifically, its difficulty in the final mission. Some say the "healing Nictus" doesn't do much, while others say it does massive heals. I've been on both sides in my experiences. I ran the TF just a bit ago and, although I was not able to make a movie of our troubles, I was able to take a screenshot of the heals that some experience...
Because they were on the roof, there were obviously no surgeons hiding around. Eventually, we were able to separate Romulus from his nictus buffers by having the two tankers split pull and we took them out one by one in the order of summoner, Romulus, aoer, and healer. Oddly, Romulus stayed dead when we killed him, which we did not expect. I believe that having him rezkill his nictus might have been beneficial to us as our entire 8 man team could not take down just the healer because of its massive heals which appear similar to that seen in the screenshot. We gave up on him directly, for awhile, and made sure everything was clear around him and nearly the entire map was cleared before we got tired and gave it another go.
Eventually, we were able to take out the healing nictus by having our two heaviest hitters melee it while everyone else stayed out of its excessively large twilight grasp range. Despite the help of an MM's bots that had enough range, the controller using ranged attacks, and the tanks standing back using ranged epic power attacks, the healing nictus alone took us a good 15 minutes to take down. The entire event took us 3:37 and we had gotten to the last mission after about an hour and a half.
Rather pleased with the Imperius task force, though some visual distinction for each of the nictus would have been helpful. My scrapper's role in the TF was to keep the healing Nictus away from Romulus and the other two nictus so that the others could bang away on them.
It is very hard to isolate the healing one, as the three nictus tended to cluster and overlap when we fought them, so I'd end up with all three of them on me, rather than the single one I was trying to get away from the rest.
The clustering also made it very difficult to see which nictus was giving off which effect.
Though difficult, the task force was quite fun, and the end fight went quite well once we finally got the healer away from the rest of them.
Though for some reason Romulus and the AoE and healer nictus ran off to the Northeast, around the bridge, and fell off, which was rather strange, as we didn't have anyone over there.
They just slowly moved in that direction, and fell off the bridge, resulting in us losing the healer and Romulus for a short time, though it allowed us to take out the AoE nictus, which kept trying to scazle a hill and kept falling back down.
Finished the TF in 2 hours and 8 minutes.
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Originally Posted by reiella
Until I see something that states to the contrary, going to assume VK is right
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One thing about one of the missions:
Rescue captured soldiers (two)
1. One of the soldiers can be defeated, but it doesn't fail the mission immediately
2. The Romulus Soldier captors can defeat the soldiers to be rescued with their whirling sword.
Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
Random Merit Rolls: Scale cost by Toon Level
I guess I'll put this here since the costumes are unlocked in this zone. My complaint is that to get all those lovely new Roman costume options, you have to complete the TF. The real problem I have is that that means level 35+. I've already gotten them on a few of my characters, but I've always enjoyed Roman history, and it'd be more conducive to my alt-making if I could get them at a fairly low level. I can understand not wanting to keep to them everyone at level 1, as well as wanting "unlockable content", so my suggestion is have them unlocked with the completion of the first Midnight Club missions. Those are level 10+, correct? That's a low enough level to keep my alts and me happy, and you could just say you're given them in order to better "blend in" in your future zone missions, or something.
Thanks
I suppose my question on Cimeroria is one outsdie gameplay and more on history.
Yes i know this is a superhero game, and all aspects are seen through a 4 colour prism, but some of what I have seen is rather .....disquieting.
Take the name Imperious. This, in context is ok as a name. The person who has taken the name would have an "Imperial poise or manner".
As a roman name, this does not work. The word Imperial, and Emperor, both derive from the term Imperiator or general. If it was before Gaius Julius Caesar, the term was an honourific bestowed by legions on successful leaders (and of cause after Ceaser during succession wars and other crisis). Imperious may have been a term used by romans, but not as a cognoman (nickname). It would have been persumtious for anyone to take the name, epecially if there was still a Rome, espcially if this is Hollywood Rome (generally reflecting imperial period) , based on the uniforms and costumes. Our main contact would most likely be named Macus Julius Imperiator, or Imperiator for short.
More to come..batrly low on modem!
I'm up to nine attempts at the TF now between Test and Live. All failed. Some of those teams were self-evidently crappy from the start, but several were well enough balanced and coordinated to breeze through the entire TF without a death. None could even dent Romulus and crew.
@Eisenzahn
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AIM - Euroclydon23
Email - scorpany@yahoo.com or <sameasmyAIM>@aol.com (for the sheer novelty of an almost 20 year old email address that hasn't been overwhelmed by spambots yet)
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None could even dent Romulus and crew.
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...Which I find weird. My team last night blew through him like a wet paper bag. No tank (though two brutes) nor anything else exceptional about the team makeup. This is sounding like the early Honoree problems, where some teams mysteriously can NOT get past him, yet other teams barely blink. Wonder what the cause is this time?
I love the new zone. Enjoyed it on test and I actually like the smaller content in the zone. Wouldn't mind a few zones like this in the overarching storyline about going back to repair the damage to the timeline leading to an ultimately "bigger picture" view of the coming storm and Ouroboros.
As for the task force I ran it a few times on test (3 I think) and a couple times on live. So far have had zero issues with the tf. The final battle was always a challenge but each pug I was on finally came together, focused on one nictus at a time and ultimately took them down rather quickly. The last one I was on, once we got everyone to focus on one nictus at a time (we had several differing opinions on how to win) we took out all 4 avs in about 10 mins.
I'm a little unclear on what all the super-elite closed beta testing was for...the encounters are still bugged/imbalanced, there's massive lag when ambushes spawn in the third TF mission, you can fall through the floor in multiple places outside...the Sync bug is ridiculously common here.
I'm sure that at least SOME of the closed testers did something other than play around with their free level 50s and practice for PvP...so why didn't the devs listen to them?
Really disappointed with this zone I gotta say. It's just, boring, plain and empty. There's a tf you need 6 people for. Then that's really it other than the 2 badges...
They could have put in some gladitorial arena where you could go in arena style matches against NPCs, other players and/or mythical creature npcs (manticores, cyclops, medusas, etc)
There was a lot they could have done with this zone but in the end all they did was make a big waiting room for a TF. It has one text filled run about mission arc and some repeatable missions that are good for nothing more than getting inf/prestige and the Centurion badge...they could have at least made a merit system or something here and made the roman costume pieces unlockable via numerous repeatable mission runs.
This just feels like an unfinished zone with a finished TF and they didn't wanna wait on the rest. They could have placed Imperius in the midnighter club and totally left out cimerora until the next issue if that's all it's good for, which it appears it is.
6th attempt was the charm. Had my tanker, a brute, 2 scrappers, 2 blasters and an ice/ice def and an Emp.
I kept Rom taunted and away from his Nicti while the others killed the Nicti. 7 minutes, Rom and his nicti are dead. Best teamwork I'd ever had on a PuG.
After completing it, finally, my only complaint is the annoyingly long shadow cyst hunt and the 3rd mission. Its long and too repetative.
It's funny I used to believe this was far too hard when I thought the only way you could beat it was to separate the nictus from rom and kill them. However since I've started ignoring the nictus entirely and having the entire team focus only on killing Romulus four times, I've had no problems with the encounter at all.
Also you guys might want to try pulling romulus to the top of the left tower to kill him. His cimeroran ambush won't be able to follow, eliminating the dangers of a surgeon percent healing Romulus.
I love the zone and the TF overall. I am disappointed in some aspects though...
I really wish the costume pieces were available another way that a level 35+ TF. I'd happily have paid 10 bucks to get access to them at chargen, so I could use them when developing a character in the first place, rather than waiting till the character's career is half finished before putting them on like a Halloween costume
I'd like to see more content in the zone, in some form or another, but I can wait on that. I just hope they continue to do more with it, rather than just letting it sit there, never being used for any more than it is now. It would be neat to see the island in modern times as another zone.
The TF itself is alot of fun, though I don't really care for the final fight. Romulus looks cool and all, but all in all it just seems like more of a pain than it needs to be, and not as interesting as it could be.
There is one technical issue I'm having with it though. In two locations in the third mission (the beach after you cross the first bridge, and the platform where the AV is) has this horrendously enhanced brightness, to the point where the whole area is just a pure white. I heard that some others have had this issue, on some graphics settings. I'm using the same settings I use on test though, and I didn't experience this on test. Any idea how to fix this? It's very problematic during a fight, especially with the AVs...
Dear NCsoft, if you go through with this shutdown you've guaranteed you'll not see another dime from me on any project you put out, ever.
http://xx-starhammer-xx.deviantart.com/
I, and all of my friends I've talked with on this, have to agree with some of the others that have posted in the feeling that for as big as Cimerora is there really isn't much to do there. Yes the developers have mentioned adding more to it in future issues, but I am of the mind that I would rather they have held off on releasing Cimerora (and the Midnight Squad) another month to add more content to it. Burning through the content as quickly as I did is rather disappointing.
The new mobs aren't bad but could use some flavoring to keep them interesting. As for the TF, it has good challenge (and I think there needs to be more that are challenging) though the story is a little weak. I like the nictus addition and wish they would add them to the regular content as getting to fight Nictus or Kheldians is one of the few pluses to playing a Kheldian. Also why are there so many evident bugs with this issue?
I like the new zone too. Yes, it is very sparse in content, but I believe it has been previously stated that I12 would be a little light in some areas as it is just setting things up for I13. Can make a couple educated guesses as to what some of that content is. First off, I13 will likely have to do more with the 'comming storm' and whoever it was Romulous called Master. The Origins arc was to learn about the origins heroes/villians have and inform us that in the past there were different origins, ones that do not exist today. I think this is a setup, that to face the comming storm we will have to go to the past and do an arc/TF to bring back the Incarnates Origin, as they will be needed to defeat this evil. (and how long have players been begging for Incarnates?)
Liked the TF a lot, very cool! This and Eden are my favorites. Went through twice with Pugs, first time we got to the end and took Romulous down once. Had a hard time doing it again, and several people were falling asleep so it fell appart. The next night another Pug and we rocked it. Oh, on the first time through noticed right off that the Oracle was Sister Psyche. No one else picked up on it either time. Damn but Manticor must be a very happy camper.
FireBrandi - Champions lvl 50 Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster - Tier 4 Alpha
Kim Paler - lvl 50 Crab Spider - Tier 3 Alpha
My DA page
Something I don't really understand about the last fight of the TF. I've run it 4 times now, once on Test, three times on Live, each time successfully. The first two times, we had no problems whatsoever. Kill the Essences one at a time, then kill Romulus.
However, the last two times, we ran into some pretty significant troubles with the healing Essence. It's massive AoE version of Twilight Grasp was healing all 4 AVs at a rate of close to 1000 HP every 5 seconds. Even with Romulus Confused to fight on our side, we couldn't overcome the insane healing rate. We ended up having to have the ranged damage dealers stand at MAX range and whittle away the Essence's HP using only ST attacks, as any AoE (including debuffs) would aggro Romulus and cause them all to charge at us. It was a ridiculously long and tedious way to deal with it. That was the fourth run. The third run, on the second attempt, we somehow lucked out and Romulus was running all over the place, but somehow the Essence was far away enough that we were able to kill it.
My question is how are we expected to overcome or bypass the healing factor? Was it just bugged on our runs and healing too much, or too often? We had plenty of damage output, so it wasn't our team makeup. I'm just curious as to how the fight was *designed* to be fought, because this healing Essence has me baffled, because it wasn't an issue on the first two times I did this TF.
I liked the tf, did it 3x. Once with a pug from our server's badge channel, had no problem, we beat it. Then I did it twice in a row with my friends, once on invinc and once on wus...er heroic and we beat it both times. The only thing that I don't care for is sometimes the floor (the sand area) is veryyyy bright. And we got some lag going up the mountain to defeat the five generals (not just me, the entire team - who consisted of people running windows xp, to vista, to ati cards to dual nvidia cards, a plethora of super computer equipment!).
Otherwise, had a grand time.
Thanks, NC Soft, for closing my favorite game ever without warning and with plenty of life still left in it, and thus relieving me of the burden of EVER wanting to buy, try or even hear about another game from your company. Will my decision make a dent, or persuade them in anyway, shape or form? Nope, obviously not. Don't care. NC Soft is dead to me. ~ PsyFox
Removing or Reducing the number of ambushes that occur in mission 3 would fix the lag. Also it wouldn't hurt to remove the unnecessary wandering patrols and the engineers all lined up at the top of each canyon wall that no one ever fights.
I've really got mixed feelings about the TF.
Did it tonight with
2 Mind/Psi Dom (1 43, 1 36)
1 Mind/Fire Dom (38)
1 Trick Arrow/Arrow Defender (50)
1 Dark Corruptor (50)
1 SS/INV BRute (50)
We just couldn't punch through Romulus or the essences...I've completed it with groups of several Scrappers/Blasters with one controller though.
If you revisit this do the following changes:
Identify each Essence
Reduce healing Essence
Lower hit points of all Essences
Make Essences somewhat easier to debuff
Remember, you want people to get the Roman costume, not to feel frustrated, give up and go back to running Katies (which is what I am about to do).
As it is now...once I get the costumes for my friends, I am not going to run the TF. The final battle is too aggravating. I play this game to have fun with my friends and get cool costumes, not to hammer my head against a wall.
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
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I enjoyed the Task Force, but with all the graphics necessary for it, I won't be doing it again until after I have obtained my new computer.
You guys put so much work into Issue 12, So much awesome and exciting new content, such beautiful art and architecture (the artists really outdid themselves on the new caves/ city) everything... wasted.
Completely wasted. My great big baloon of happiness is completely deflated. Know why?
All the fantastic stuff in issue 12 has been COMPLETELY overshadowed by my irritation at your decision to make the new maps, and more importantly the COSTUMES, exclusive to minimum of level 35. Seriously?
I've been a customer of yours and playing these games for 3 1/2 years and I have ONLY 1 character that can access the new content. Sorry, I'm not a powergamer anymore, I have a real life and I just like to mess around with my many lowbies a few times a week. Alt-itis + casual play...
The new characters I was all set to roll up once the issue hit, can't do it.
I really think ya blew it.
Some issues have had lower level content, some higher level content. They even said this issue would be low on content even before it came out. Seriously though, it doesn't take all that long to get a character up to level 35 even if you don't play often. I know it's fun to play lots of lowbies, but pick a character and concentrate on him a bit. There is lots of cool stuff at higher levels and you'll see your characters evolve more as their skills fill out.
Wow, haven't done this yet but from the comments here it looks like this is a real interesting encounter. It looks to me like the devs are going for 2 things here (but I could be wrong:
1: Make tankers vital again: since the nicti are undebuffable, defenders/trollers/corrs are no longer render a tanking character redundant.
2: Divide and conquer strategy: The AVs work together just like a player group would so the only logical way to deal wih the overlapping support is to pull the supporters as far away from each other as possible. Not surprising they want to inplement this strategy considering the roman theme, and with the focus on tankers dividing is easier the more you have.