City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Halloween 2009 Event Test on the North American Training Room

Avatea

By Avatea,
Posted on: 2009-10-15 17:51 in The Global Training Room Test Server

 

Posted

Attention Heroes and Villains!

We are going to host another Halloween / Deadly Apocalypse Event Test on the North American Training Room server on Friday, October 16th.

Due to YOUR feedback, we've made additional changes to the event. If you would like to check out those changes or improve your strategy to win the event, please join us at the following time.

When: Friday, October 16th

Begins: 11:00 AM Pacific / 2:00 PM Eastern

Ends: 1:00 PM Pacific / 4:00 PM Eastern

Where: North American Training Room only

We are not running the event test on the European Training Room at this time and thank you for your understanding and patience with this matter.

*******************************************

The Halloween Event has been updated for 2009. In addition to the Zombie Apocalypse and the normal City Zone Trick or Treating, City Zones can now host the “Deadly Apocalypse” Event.

Heroes and Villains who enable the “Zone Event” Channel on their Chat Tab will be alerted to the new Deadly Apocalypse Event. (Noted as “Supernatural activity”.

Deadly Apocalypse Event

The fog has rolled in, the sky has darkened, and something is not right. A howling wolf sounds in the night and players are alerted, via Global Alert, that the event is happening in a City Zone (Trial Zones, Hazard Zones, PvP Zones, and Co-Op zones do not have the event running in those zones).
  • As the Halloween Deadly Apocalypse occurs in a zone, the sky changes to a different color.
  • If the Deadly Apocalypse Event is not already running in a zone, Costume salvage redemption at Annah / Granny Beldam has a chance to trigger the Deadly Apocalypse event across all viable zones
  • 4 Haunting Banners (destructible objects) appear across a zone, but are surrounded by a magical barrier (they appear on the MiniMap)
  • Each Haunting Banner is protected by one of four Haunting Defenders/Ambushers who protect the magical barrier
  • There is a chance that Elite Bosses appear as Defenders, depending on the size of the group
  • Players must defeat Defenders (of each "type") before the magical barrier goes down and they can attack the Banner itself
  • If all 4 Haunting Banners are destroyed before the timer runs out, an Aspect of the Sigil (Giant Monster) appears
  • If all 4 Haunting Banners are not destroyed before the timer runs out, the Aspect of the Sigil does NOT spawn and the event cleans itself up
  • If either condition is fulfilled, the event cleans itself up.


NOTE:
  • Players who are within 250 feet of a Banner will have their User Interface (UI) taken over by the Event UI which shows the timer and their status
  • If players travel outside of the radius of the Banner, the UI goes away
  • UI displays a progress bar which shows how close they are to defeating the themed type of mob
  • The status of each Haunting Banner is represented by an Icon in the Event UI. When all Banners appear in the zone, they are shown in the Event UI. Once a particular Banner is defeated (i.e. Transparent Terrors), its representative icon is “blacked out”.
  • The Red Progress bar indicates how close the player is to bringing the Banner to “vulnerability”. As blue creeps in and takes over, that shows the player is making progress towards making the Banner vulnerable.
  • If the Players do not manage to defeat all four Banners in time, the Giant Monster will not appear and the event will clean itself up. The Player will be alerted to the end of the event because the zone will revert to "normal" and a closing sound effect will sound.

Badges

The following badges can be earned by participating in the Deadly Apocalypse (Halloween) Event:
  • Dark Fiend - participate in defeat of Dark Fiend Banner
  • Hell Hath No Fury - participate in defeat of Women Scorned Banner
  • Terror - participate in defeat of the Transparent Terrors Banner
  • Monster Masher - participate in defeat of the Monster Mayhem Banner
  • Monstrous - participate in the defeat of the Aspect of the Sigil Giant Monster
  • Hell and Back (Accolade) - receive Dark Fiend, Hell Hath No Fury, Terror, Monster Masher, and Monstrous badges to earn this Accolade.

*******************************


Feedback points

We hope you have enjoyed the 2009 Halloween Event Test, and are looking for feedback in the following areas:
  • Are objectives clear when the Event is running?
  • Are rewards being handed out correctly?
  • Are there any problems with the event occurring in any City Zone? (Note: The event will only be present In Paragon City or the Rogue Isles City Zones, and not in any PvP Zones, Hazard Zones, Trial Zones or Co-Op Zones)
  • Are there any graphical effect bugs?
  • Do banner icons appear correctly on the MiniMap when the event is running?
  • Do waypoints correctly appear when the event is running? (Note: Navigation waypoints of active Missions orient players to the Halloween Event objectives when a player’s character is near one, and should disappear when they leave the area.)
  • Are enemy NPCs appearing at the appropriate level? (i.e. a Level 50 should be able to fight side-by-side with a Level 5 character).
  • Are all badges awarded correctly?

Feedback is important to our development process, there are two types of feedback and both are helpful although some give us more insight and are more easily adapted into game changes.
  • Objective Feedback: Objective feedback is based upon what you as a user see or experience that other users may also see and experience. This feedback usually can be replicated easily as it involves facts and unbiased opinions. Example: When using the base editor items are sometimes getting caught in columns or pillars.
  • Subjective Feedback: Subjective feedback is based upon how you feel or experience the game as yourself. This experience may not necessarily be replicated because it is based on feeling and emotion. Subjective feedback is important to us but it is usually helpful if more information is present to describe what and why you feel the way you do. Example: I like the way the graphics look on my shield animation it gives me the feeling of being truly super-powered.

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Posted

In the interest of testing out the event it would be very helpful to know exactly what was changed.

@Demobot

Also on Steam

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Demobot View Post
In the interest of testing out the event it would be very helpful to know exactly what was changed.
Ghost Falcon gave this response to a comment I made in another thread:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghost Falcon View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tymers_Realm View Post
I'm hopeful they've fixed the no power awarded when SK'ed issued when the Aspect GM is taken down.

Thank you for the time...
We did.

We have another Halloween Event test tomorrow at 11:00 AM Pacific / 2:00 PM Eastern to 1:00 PM Pacific / 4:00 PM Eastern on the North American Training Room.
Bolded for effect.

If anything other than that was tweaked and didn't break anything else, I'll be happy. We'll see tomorrow afternoon, won't we.

Thank you for the time...

EDIT:
I'll have to check the other thread, I didn't make the test today 'cause of Family related stuff.
But did the bolded part of the above quote get fixed?

@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test)

Arc 5299: Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem Updated!! 09/15/09

 

Posted

Well that sucks, I get off work at 4PM EST.. haha. figures

 

Posted

Objective Feedback (trick-or-treat)
A number of times my tricks consisted of a boss (Vampire Lord or Crone) paired with a lieutenant. In fact, this occurred more often than not when getting boss spawns. (At other times, I would get a lone boss or a boss with a couple minions.)

Subjective Feedback
These particular bosses are bad enough for soloing players, but adding in a lieutenant makes it quite a bit worse, especially in the lower levels. I think all the paired lieutenants and lone boss spawns are challenging enough without throwing in the boss+lieutenant spawns. Could that be adjusted at all before things go live?

 

Posted

Bah, just saw this :/

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Posted

Feedback from Friday Test:


Blackhole GMs: The Aspects can be Black Holed making it impossible for anyone to kill it. That's useful to keep it from being killed by fast players who aren't waiting for anyone else to show up. But it can also be used to grief an event and keep the whole zone from winning.


Memory Problem: Normally, I use about 1 GB of RAM to run the game on Windows XP. And with the slow memory creep of loading in so many textures, it got as high as 1.25 GB of memory. Normally, I can issue an /unloadgfx command and bring that back down. BUT UNLOADGFX IS NO LONGER WORKING. When the command is issued, the screen still goes through the dizzying reloading of all the textures, but the memory didn't budge! And /reloadgfx didn't do anything either. Restarting the game brought the memory usage back down to ~1 GB.


ToT Spawns: Have I mentioned for the past three years how these should be using the 'purple' damage scaling code that all the other zone-invasion foes use?


GM distance finder: Working great! Immediate updating even for a SuperSpeeder. Thanks!

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
ToT Spawns: Have I mentioned for the past three years how these should be using the 'purple' damage scaling code that all the other zone-invasion foes use?
Not a good idea. The new event is already extremely lowbie unfriendly (take down 4 EBs spread all over the zone in 15 or 20 minutes - yeah, I can see that happening when there's a total of half a dozen level 10s in Port Oakes on a weekday afternoon) and implementing the invasion code would remove ToTing as a lowbie option as well, since a typical 3 minion ToT spawn using the invasion code would be very hard for a lowbie to take down solo given the disproportionately high hit points of invasion spawns.

I don't see why it's needed either. Want to ToT on your 50? Presumably you know how to get to Peregrine Isle or Grandville...

 

Posted

The issue, I think is that it doesn't always work out. The things that jump out of the door are scaled to the player. Especially Redside, the zones cover a fairly large level range, and some people have been known to "ding-dong-ditch" an entire street, just because they can. Trust me, it's *way* hard to keep going when a level 14 character runs by your level seven group and knocks on all the doors. (And I've had that happen in Port Oakes. Often.) The new change to costume salvage, where it only drops from actually defeating the monsters, might help with that some. But it won't eliminate it, for the same reason that you have Costume Contests that get flat out canceled due to Buff Griefers - for some people, screwing it up for everyone else *is* the point, no other reward is needed.

Also, with SuperSideKicking it's not as big an issue, but it used to be a problem in mixed teams. I had a friend who invited my brand new character to join him in Grandville for Trick or Treating. Several of his friends did the same, to have fun, hang out, and show newbie characters/players around a little. After about half an hour, the server slightly glitched, and three of the mentors got disconnected. Their three lackeys were instantly annihilated. It took about half an hour to get everything going again.

Now that we don't have to play Mentor Tetris anymore, this won't be as big an issue - UNLESS the group only has one player at the effective level range of the leader. I don't even mean level fives in Grandville - Go to Sharkhead, and build a group where the Trick or Treat team has one level 28 player, and everyone else is less than level 25. That's a viable and not uncommon mix for that zone now. Knock on a few doors and gather the spawn, and then have the level 28 player quit and see how it works out. (Just for an experiment.)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree View Post
Not a good idea. The new event is already extremely lowbie unfriendly (take down 4 EBs spread all over the zone in 15 or 20 minutes - yeah, I can see that happening when there's a total of half a dozen level 10s in Port Oakes on a weekday afternoon) and implementing the invasion code would remove ToTing as a lowbie option as well, since a typical 3 minion ToT spawn using the invasion code would be very hard for a lowbie to take down solo given the disproportionately high hit points of invasion spawns.

I don't see why it's needed either. Want to ToT on your 50? Presumably you know how to get to Peregrine Isle or Grandville...
Which would you want to run into at level 3, a purple scaling ToT spawn or somebodies' level 7 ToT spawn?

I assure you, the latter is much more deadly.

And that scenario repeats for every zone. If you're not at the zone's level cap, you can run into other people's spawns (or they can spawn right on top of you) a spawn that is 1-14 levels above you.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
Which would you want to run into at level 3, a purple scaling ToT spawn or somebodies' level 7 ToT spawn?

I assure you, the latter is much more deadly.
It's also a lot less common.

Though my sign up date reads November I came to the game in mid October of last year, so I've plenty of experience of ToTing on lowbies. Not once in two weeks did I get overrun by someone else's spawn, but then I was mostly in either the Hollows, west of the entrance, or Mercy, away from Fort Darwin.

The way things are set up at the moment I might be attacked by a higher level spawn but only if there's a higher level in the area, and if they are particularly careless or intentionally griefing. Implement the invasion code and I would be guaranteed to get spawns of 2 or 3 stupidly tough enemies every time I knocked a door, even if there wasn't another player in the area.

Post-level 20 or so the invasion code works just fine. Pre-level 20 it doesn't, and I'm glad whenever I'm on a lowbie that the invasion events a) only last 15 or 20 minutes and b) cause no debt - neither of which is true of ToTing.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree View Post
It's also a lot less common.

Though my sign up date reads November I came to the game in mid October of last year, so I've plenty of experience of ToTing on lowbies. Not once in two weeks did I get overrun by someone else's spawn, but then I was mostly in either the Hollows, west of the entrance, or Mercy, away from Fort Darwin.

The way things are set up at the moment I might be attacked by a higher level spawn but only if there's a higher level in the area, and if they are particularly careless or intentionally griefing. Implement the invasion code and I would be guaranteed to get spawns of 2 or 3 stupidly tough enemies every time I knocked a door, even if there wasn't another player in the area.

Post-level 20 or so the invasion code works just fine. Pre-level 20 it doesn't, and I'm glad whenever I'm on a lowbie that the invasion events a) only last 15 or 20 minutes and b) cause no debt - neither of which is true of ToTing.
Agreed. The problem with invasion-coding ToT mobs is that, while it will make them less deadly, it will upset the damage scaling for those trying to fight them. If they set the things at level 30, like the Rikti and Zombies, any character who doesn't have SO equivalent enhancement wil be sucking wind trying to put a dent in the things. If they set them at level 10, the low-levels will do better, but they will be trivially easy for level 50s. There's no Golden mean here.

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Posted

So I wonder if the devs ever figured out what happened to the hellion fires in Steel. We spawned four or five instances of the event in a row with no fires starting in the entire time. I'm still curious if the event prevents an arson from occurring somehow. I don't know the coding, they could (and from the way GF was looking for it, should) be completely independent of each other... but does anyone remember if arsons went off during a rikti invasion event?

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
Bug fixes.
Thank you for the info.

So nothing was done with the timer? ... riight.
How about the scaling towards the players in vicinity of the banners.
(looking at the Devs)
As in... Lets say a few teams of level 13 max (no level above) find themselves alone in Atlas park and the Banners appear. Will they have, in principle, a chance of defeating all them forces and the banners... before the timer goes out?
Cause from the first test I remember with Avatea on Eu test to take the banners down in time... as level 50 with travel powers.

If not this banner-minigame seems to only be for the high levels, and the low levels are bound to be just ToT'ing. (Yes they can be supersidekicked... but they still retain the powers they have at their proper level, so not being a PB or Shade or vet with travelpower at lvl 6... = lots of running and you may not get there in time by yourselves)

Now the event is not going to be too easy, but I soo hope that atleast the banners will be scaled to the level of players in vicinity or something.

Lady Arete on Unionhandbook
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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lady Arete View Post
Thank you for the info.

So nothing was done with the timer?
The timer was changed a week ago to give more time.

@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lady Arete View Post
That is good news GG.
So it got changed from the first test... with how many minutes?
Last time I saw, it was 12 instead of 10.

@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

 

Posted

As cool as the name "To hell and back" sounds, whats the point in an accolade that has no special power or bonus? Shouldn't it just be an achievement like the rest =/