Discussion: The Deadly Apocalypse is upon us!
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2009-10-20 10:23 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Quote:
Yes, you did it on a 48, and I bet it was in PI. That's the problem, for a lowbie toon, it ends up being a lot of faceplanting and general frustration. Even if they've been sk'd up to 49 in a team, they still only have a select number of powers, and many of them still have the END drain problem associated with the low levels.|
Originally Posted by TECHWON
It wasn't that bad i played through the DA twice and got all the badges with my level 48 charecter Fire-Ace at the time whom became level 50 by the time i did it a few times. just can't solo that ish
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I'll reiterate what I'be been saying all event long - the devs are deluding themselves if they think that there will be tons of teams doing this all at the same time in the same zone. As has been pointed out in other threads, we don't have the population that we did years ago, when there were tons of teams doing stuff like this.
We only have this event on until the 10th - although it was supposed to have been over today - and I'm sure there are plenty of players who have not been able to get this event done. There are players, I'm sure, who would like to have already gotten this done, but real life got in the way.
(I was on a team Firday night with a RL friend when one of the other team members asked why it was so quiet in the event. My friend rightly pointed out that they were "Probably doing Hallowe'en parties IRL." Of course, I had to shake my head when this person then asked "What's IRL?")
Not to mention that it seems that things have been turned 180' from last year's event. The 'trick' count is a lot higher than the 'treat' count - I've seen as much as 20-1 in a few cases - which causes it to be the case that a player will have all five of the enemy badges, yet still has to work on the costume badges. (In once case, I have a toon with all five, but still only 6 costumes total, so not even the Clotheshorse badge.) Then there's the case of trying to rectify the issue over the Ghosts from last year, which means that this year it is the first one you end up getting - but it seems that in order to do that they've slighted Zombies, as they have always been the last of the five badges that I have gotten on a toon.
Then there is the problem with the deadliness of the monsters this year, to the point that I was seeing a LOT more purples while on teams then I can ever recall in years past.
In short, I understand why certain things were done. However, the problems that they were meant to address probably were not, and in the end it only upset those it was not meant to.
Global: @All-American Teen
70 toons across 11 servers.
Top hero -All-American Teen lvl 50 eng/invul Tanker (01:10 EST; 1/24/09)
Top villian -Poisoned Plum lvl 30 robots/devices Mastermind
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I have not seen this high Trick to Treat ratio that you're talking about, and I've soloed the ToT part of the event on about 20 Characters so far. Never once did I get Dead Head before Ostentatious, and only once did I get Malleus before Ostentatious. I'd put the ratio at about 1 to 1 over the long run, similar to any other year. This sounds like the general issue of teams sharing defeat credit from Tricks, but not the costume credits from Treats. I think that's something that they should look into fixing, if possible, since it does discourage teaming. |
Originally Posted by Dave_67
Yes, you did it on a 48, and I bet it was in PI. That's the problem, for a lowbie toon, it ends up being a lot of faceplanting and general frustration. Even if they've been sk'd up to 49 in a team, they still only have a select number of powers, and many of them still have the END drain problem associated with the low levels.
I'll reiterate what I'be been saying all event long - the devs are deluding themselves if they think that there will be tons of teams doing this all at the same time in the same zone. As has been pointed out in other threads, we don't have the population that we did years ago, when there were tons of teams doing stuff like this. We only have this event on until the 10th - although it was supposed to have been over today - and I'm sure there are plenty of players who have not been able to get this event done. There are players, I'm sure, who would like to have already gotten this done, but real life got in the way. (I was on a team Firday night with a RL friend when one of the other team members asked why it was so quiet in the event. My friend rightly pointed out that they were "Probably doing Hallowe'en parties IRL." Of course, I had to shake my head when this person then asked "What's IRL?") Not to mention that it seems that things have been turned 180' from last year's event. The 'trick' count is a lot higher than the 'treat' count - I've seen as much as 20-1 in a few cases - which causes it to be the case that a player will have all five of the enemy badges, yet still has to work on the costume badges. (In once case, I have a toon with all five, but still only 6 costumes total, so not even the Clotheshorse badge.) Then there's the case of trying to rectify the issue over the Ghosts from last year, which means that this year it is the first one you end up getting - but it seems that in order to do that they've slighted Zombies, as they have always been the last of the five badges that I have gotten on a toon. Then there is the problem with the deadliness of the monsters this year, to the point that I was seeing a LOT more purples while on teams then I can ever recall in years past. In short, I understand why certain things were done. However, the problems that they were meant to address probably were not, and in the end it only upset those it was not meant to. |
Going into some of the other things. These GM-coded events do favor higher levels. It's a tricky balancing act, trying to make it even slightly challenging for high levels while making it anything beyond frustrating for low levels. That's a balance that they have yet to achieve, in my estimation, but many of the people who test these things tend to test them on their high level characters, so the input gets skewed toward that.
The Deadly Apocalypse doesn't really take that many teams, either. It can be done with a couple of full teams, provided that the leaders are above level 30 or so, and there is a decent mix of damage and buffs/debuffs. The teams were plentiful in the first week of the event, but it died down as most of the people got the badges on whatever characters that they wanted them on. The same thing happens every year with these things. It was hard to get teams to do the Zombie Apocalypse last year after the first week, for example. Die-hard badgers who want these badges on every character are just out of luck as the majority of players only really care about getting them on 1 or 2 characters, then move on from the event.
All of that being said, these large-scale zone events should probably be reconsidered to be tuned toward one full team, and perhaps find a way to tweak the invasion/GM type mob coding to make them a little more fair across the board. Perhaps make it so that you don't do the same numerical damage to them as you do to something of your own level, but instead do the same proportion of their total HP of damage to them as you'd do to something of your native level of that rank, assuming that that was possible. That would greatly increase the effectiveness of low level characters while, in most cases, increasing the challenge for characters at or near level 50.
"I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes."
Except that I've seen players during both the Winter and Valentine's Day events staying on and helping other players right up until the last day of the event. (In fact, I've done so myself the past two years in both events, kinda paying it forward from the help I recieved the year before.) That being said, even with the event having been scheduled to end tomorrow, there has still been a very large drop-off much earlier then normal.
Look, on one server (Infinity) I have 12 alts, all of whom have all the non-time-trial badges from the Winter event, and almost all the badges from the Valentine's Day event. (I still need to get Weed Whacker on 10, and Coldblooded on 9.) Yet I still need to get the supernatural event badges on my one toon there that has everything else so far. Why was I able to do so during the other events, but not so on this event? What is so different here?
As to levels, yes I can how more higher-level characters being used to test these events can skew the results. Yet, it seems like the levels of the monsters are higher from 'trick' doors then would be if you were on a mission at the same level. Perhaps as you said, it should be scaled more appropriately to the level of the toon.
And I believe the whole "Risk is applied to the whole team but reward is applied only to a few." has been a problem for a while now. The fact that the event is tooled to be zone-level specific is probably the only thing that keeps low level toons from faceplanting as they run into a high-level mob in AP or Galaxy left behind by a high-level toon looking for treats as they knock on door after door after door.
It's just that this looks to me as yet again, the devs coming up with a great idea, but not thinking through the implimentation 100%.
Global: @All-American Teen
70 toons across 11 servers.
Top hero -All-American Teen lvl 50 eng/invul Tanker (01:10 EST; 1/24/09)
Top villian -Poisoned Plum lvl 30 robots/devices Mastermind
There's really no comparison between Winter and Valentine's and Halloween, though. Of all of the special tasks of both of those events, you can solo or duo all but one, the Winter Lord. The large group style events are almost completely segregated to Halloween. The Deadly Apocalypse is probably the only event that really requires more than one team to be successful, so it suffers more from evaporating interest than any other. I can't imagine any but the highest-level single teams being able to handle a Deadly Apocalypse. That would be an average of 2 people per banner for the first part.
As far as Tricks go, the higher level with more teammates thing is weird. I don't recall ever getting levels that were higher than the highest level on the team before this year. I'm not sure if it's a bug, and I've never seen the Devs make a statement about it one way or the other. Higher ranked mobs being made more common has flipped it around to pretty much the exact opposite order of defeat badges from previous years, and while it fixed the Spirit problem from last year, I'm not sure if it's an improvement over previous years to that, since it seems to take the same amount of time to get done now that you end up waiting on the Witches and Zombies.
I think the only mistakes the Devs really made were overestimating continued interest, making the Deadly Apocalypse unsustainable for the long run, and really not taking the low level experience in these invasion type of events into consideration. I'd suggest that they try and do one of them with just a couple of groups of level 10 or so characters to understand how frustrating it is.
"I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes."
I completely agree with you Ms. Mesmer. The other mistake they made was that the power of the banners and minions/LTs was not scaled to any zone. In every zone, the minions are 295/100 (health/endurance) and the LTs are 585/140. This was true in Talos, in Skyway, in Steel, and in Atlas Park. Then, each banner is aprox. 43,750, which means that it will take a lot of work to bring just one down - and this is while the creatures are still spawning.
The other problem I realized tonight speaks to your notion that this mission can not be compared to the other event missions, in that this is a specific mission that spawns at select intervals for a select amount of time. Whereas the Winterlord, Baby New Year, and Snaptooth missions - and the initial missions that help with Coldblooded and Weed Wacker - can for the most part be done at any time during the event by any size/level team, or even solo. (Well, okay, maybe just the BNY and Snappy ones, but you get my drift.)
As it stands now, I have only one toon with all six badges for the event, with one at three and another at two. It'll be an effort to see those two toons getting all six badges by next Wednesday.
Global: @All-American Teen
70 toons across 11 servers.
Top hero -All-American Teen lvl 50 eng/invul Tanker (01:10 EST; 1/24/09)
Top villian -Poisoned Plum lvl 30 robots/devices Mastermind
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I wouldnt necessarily couch it in the same terms, but
I found myself actually regretting re-upping my subscription a couple of days ago. Aside from the actual launch day, Ive yet to see more than two or three players on Protector. The banner events, when they happen, are extremely frustrating (no: impossible) to solo, and as has been pointed out elsewhere, boss-level baddies while ToTing on medium- to low-level characters is no fun.|
Originally Posted by Ultimate_Power
I have yet to find enough people, on my server, to finish this event. This halloween event blows big time.
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A friend of mine who started CoH six months before me (who got me addicted, in fact) says hes quitting after the Christmas event because CoH has become boring. Our server is practically empty of players and those who are on only seem interested in AE.
I like a lot of the new content, but Im missing the fun that I used to have in the game. The fact that the Mac OS X client implodes if you look at it funny (or zone, or run across a zone, or fly, or engage in AoE combat ) isnt helping any, either.
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Thing is, is that the fault of the devs or the players? While the devs could have been keeping that in mind, most people who jump on Test seem to only use their lvl 50s instead of the lower levels unless it's a situation where they more or less have no choice like with brand new powersets.|
Originally Posted by Ms. Mesmer
I think the only mistakes the Devs really made were overestimating continued interest, making the Deadly Apocalypse unsustainable for the long run, and really not taking the low level experience in these invasion type of events into consideration. I'd suggest that they try and do one of them with just a couple of groups of level 10 or so characters to understand how frustrating it is.
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The following was posted elsewhere so forgive me for the multi post:
It's interesting to see how things present themselves now that the event isn't as fresh anymore. Personally, I love the Deadly Apocalypse and would like to see more events of its kind. However, I'm seeing problems with a few things. As mentioned earlier in the thread, ToT is sort of hard for low level characters due to the high chance of getting bosses. Some sort of scaling of the spawn sizes would most certainly be welcome.
I vastly prefer the banners to the zombies since there seems to be more of an actual goal other than just "survive". However, it seems like redside has developed a bit of apathy towards the Deadly Apocalypse while still actively participating in the Zombie and Rikti invasions. Granted, this could be due to the fact that they actively pursue you as opposed to being in their own spots but I've had one instance of someone outright quitting a banner team to join a rikti team. This is where the arguements for fluctuating event timers due to server size come into play. When you finally have people interested, the event is nearly over despite the fact that the team is now finally making decent progress on the banners.
Another possible problem is lumping the banner event and the zombies together. I'm not sure if increasing both by the same amount was a good idea. Likewise, it seems like it would be best if the banners were triggered off of something other than Halloween salvage so they don't have to compete with the zombies.
Finally I have a question. Isn't there supposed to be a spot in the game that talks about the event? If there is, where is it?
The answer should be on Paragonwiki, but the page isn't really that helpful. They even have a full section with a list of keybinds for team leaders to set up in order to coordinate teams - which seems worse than useless.
And once again, I was counting as I clicked on doors, and after 30+ I only found 2 'treat' doors. (I'm in Steel, trying to get the Clotheshorse badge for all 12 of my sorority sister alts - yes, they're in a sorority SG - so I'm doing a lot of running back to the AP entrance to have the police drones deal with the bosses and LTs.)
And yet again, I have a serious issue with the Hallowe'en werewolves, they are just too fricken fast. My toon has a flight speed of just over 44 mph, and the werewolves were able to keep up with her. That is just plain wrong.
Global: @All-American Teen
70 toons across 11 servers.
Top hero -All-American Teen lvl 50 eng/invul Tanker (01:10 EST; 1/24/09)
Top villian -Poisoned Plum lvl 30 robots/devices Mastermind
I think the way I might have done it is to have the banners start spawning bad guys right away, and then have the bad guys wander off toward the other banners, attacking any heroes they encounter. As the bad guys encounter bad guys from other banners, they would fight each other.
That is, the point is that the denizens of the banners are there to fight EACH OTHER (supposedly destroying the world in the meantime?).
That would spread the enemies out across the zone, and would give us a reason to defeat the banners. Another thing I'd do is have the banners spawn a giant monster "Aspect" after a certain number of its minor spawns are defeated. These "Aspects" would wander across the world toward the nearest other banner as well.
Imagine coming across a pair of GMs battling each other!
Anyway, just an off the cuff idea.
Something needs to be done to attract more players, when it came to this event it's been pretty underwhelming. Sometimes you can't even scratch together half a team. I must of done this banner event just twice total.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
See, I'm all about soloing, as I'm sure many of us are. Most of these events just aren't accessible to solo heroes. Even the Rikti raids and Zombie attacks are so overpowering that you really can't fight them alone. These events need to scale up to group dimensions FROM solo dimensions. The trick is to inspire people to group.
Using the Rikti as an example, you will note that the power suits don't appear except to larger groups. That encourages people to group, right there.
Another part of the problem is lack of purpose. WHY are the Rikti beaming in? WHY are the Zombies showing up? WHY are the Apocalyptic circles there? There has to be a reason for them to be there that the "Heroes" will want to stop them.
Either way, these events need to be accessible to soloists if only because often it's nearly impossible to get a group together. Playing villainside, the largest group I saw was THREE people, of which I was one. That's not enough to do much of anything.
I have never failed to be able to get a group if I wanted, even 3-4 players isn enough to get the EBs out.
I have also frequently taken part in the events when on a flashback solo, so the invasions are accessible to soloists. (Banners not so much)
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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Scrappers and Tankers can usually handle the Rikti (not the Zombies, in my experince, they're just too resilient and do too much damage - and spawn too rapidly). Controllers and Defenders, however, just can't keep up. They get overwhelmed too fast.|
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
I have never failed to be able to get a group if I wanted, even 3-4 players isn enough to get the EBs out.
I have also frequently taken part in the events when on a flashback solo, so the invasions are accessible to soloists. (Banners not so much) |
As an example, I had my Grav/Rad Controller hovering out of vomit range (man, that looks wierd written down...). Zombies erupted out of midair around me and fell to earth were I would zap them. By the time the Zombie invasion was over, I had defeatd a few, and there 66 more standing around on the ground that spawned in that time. I was the only hero around, so that was a solo spawn. 66-1 is pretty long odds. If I hadn't been hovering, I would have been dead in seconds.
My Storm/Elec Defender encountered the same thing. The vomit attacks do so much damage that after a couple of seconds, you're dead. That was WITH Hurricane running (Steamy Mist was less than effective too...).
Part of the problem here is the disparity between the ATs, but that's a whole other thread.
The last one I ran solo was on my fire troller. Heck I stepped afk for a couple of mins. Hotfeet and the imps dealt with everything that spawned without any intervention
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
Are the zombies particularly susceptible to fire? Otherwise, I don't see how that could be. Not saying it didn't happen, just that my experiences don't follow that pattern. I mean, my Storm Defender has around 800 health and the vomits were doing 150 damage each. By the time there were 12-15 vomits coming my way, there was little I could do to survive. That doesn't even include the possiblity of being hit in melee (since the vomits also have a -fly aspect).
The only thing that allowed my Controller to survive was that he was out of vomit range.
I've had my Tanker chewed up by the zombies. Now, he's an Invulnerability Tank, so his Toxic mitigation is minimal, but even so...
I have a question about this event and a possible major oversight...
Are Eochai and Jack in Irons running around with their Unseelie Courts? I am missing this set from my level 42 Spines/SR and my level 50 Mind/Psi
Has anyone seen them in this event? Someone said that they are out and about but I havent seen them...how come they didn get an encounter rate buff but the DE and ZA got them?
I just heard that they are random and do not appear on the chat window as an announcement...is this true?
http://s305.photobucket.com/albums/n...stumes%202011/
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Yes they are.|
Originally Posted by Shadow Wail
Are Eochai and Jack in Irons running around with their Unseelie Courts?
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Originally Posted by Shadow Wail
Has anyone seen them in this event?
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Originally Posted by Shadow Wail
I just heard that they are random and do not appear on the chat window as an announcement...is this true?
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If you are after their badges, check out paragonwiki for their spawn points.
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What I personally hated about their speed and such... the fact that they can't be held. I've tried, many times. They...just...keep...coming!
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Originally Posted by Dave_67
The answer should be on Paragonwiki, but the page isn't really that helpful. They even have a full section with a list of keybinds for team leaders to set up in order to coordinate teams - which seems worse than useless.
And once again, I was counting as I clicked on doors, and after 30+ I only found 2 'treat' doors. (I'm in Steel, trying to get the Clotheshorse badge for all 12 of my sorority sister alts - yes, they're in a sorority SG - so I'm doing a lot of running back to the AP entrance to have the police drones deal with the bosses and LTs.) And yet again, I have a serious issue with the Hallowe'en werewolves, they are just too fricken fast. My toon has a flight speed of just over 44 mph, and the werewolves were able to keep up with her. That is just plain wrong. |
Well I guess I have a long night ahead off me! I haven't seen them and seeing as champion is dead and empty when it comes to red side I am screwed till next year...maybe GR will save the game
http://s305.photobucket.com/albums/n...stumes%202011/
Well, for the banner event and it's badges, for certain. I'm not that bummed out about the zombie badges, as there's always a chance of getting into one of those events throughout the year.
What I'm really bummed about is just how fricken' long it takes to get the costume badges. I'm trying to get at least 'Fashionable' (25 costumes) for each of my 12 alts on Infinity, who are all in a sorority SG that I created. I've only gotten 5 of the 12 so far, with 1 sitting at 12, and the other 6 still at 10 - and I think it was over two hours with each of three of them Monday night - and that was with me knocking on doors and dragging the baddies back to any police drones to deal with them. (Sorry, but I don't feel like amassing lots of debt for nothing.)
Global: @All-American Teen
70 toons across 11 servers.
Top hero -All-American Teen lvl 50 eng/invul Tanker (01:10 EST; 1/24/09)
Top villian -Poisoned Plum lvl 30 robots/devices Mastermind
Quote:
Theoretically it is possible with 3 (2 can meet but not exceeed the threat ratio requirement) however they would all need to be extremely high damage to maintain the threat ratio at the required level.|
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
I have never failed to be able to get a group if I wanted, even 3-4 players isn enough to get the EBs out.
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Player threat level needs to be >6 times the zombie threat level to spawn EBs
Players have threat 1
Minions 1/3, Lts 1, Bosses 2
so 3 players vs 1 minion is sufficient - the trick is to maintain that ratio
Mind of Gaia lvl 50 Defiant's first Mind/Storm 'troller.
Deadly Doc 50 Dark/Dark Corr
and lots more on Pinnacle,Union and Defiant
A few things now that it's essentially over...
1) Bring back decent Treat rewards for Trick or Treating. A Tier 1 insp is NOT a good reward...for anything other than a mob defeat. It just isn't. While I can understand not wanting to give out Tier 3s, the simple fact is it's a limited time frame. In such a situation, a Tier 3 would not be out of line.
2) The banners. Oh boy, the banners. They need to scale. They need to be able to be taken down by a single group, for the low population servers. I've been in a full team that, 10 minutes after the banners start spawning mobs, they STILL aren't vulnerable. And if they get vulnerable? Impossible to take down all four and get the GM. Lucky if you get one or two, in such a scenario.
3) The GM. WAAAAAYYYY too squishy for an encounter that has a 20 minute timer. Combine that with idiots who can't understand, "Wait for everyone" and you have potential for a lot of people to get very mad.
4) The overall timer. It has taken an average of about six minutes (on Protector, in the times that I've been doing it) to get the banners vulnerable. That means you need to average better than about 2.5 minutes per banner to get the GM to spawn. Now, that is an extremely short amount of time when you factor in travel distance in places like IP or the Hollows. Compare that with the 20 minutes simply for the GM spawn. About the longest I've seen the GM stay up is roughly 2 minutes. Finding him isn't that hard that it'll take 15+ minutes. There needs to be more time on the Banner timer or they need to be a bit squishier.
5) Please, for the love of doG, put in a streakbreaker for Jack-in-Irons spawn! If he hasn't spawned randomly in 9 Eochai spawns, tell the system to spawn a Jack.
To sum up...Treat rewards are too little, timers are not good, the banners need to be squishier and the GM needs to a tougher, and put a streakbreaker in the Jack spawn.
This event needs to be much shorter in the future. Three weeks of darkness and disruption is two weeks too long. The first Halloween event back in 2004 was about four days long.
"He may be arrogant, but he happens to be correct" - Ellis
"The server is full of crazies" - New_Dark_Age
Rainbow Arcana / Diamond D: Legion of Freedom - Virtue
lof.guildportal.com
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Nope we need another week extention since all the server instablities of last patch. Can't stay on long enough to even form a team let alone play.
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Originally Posted by Rainbow Avenger
This event needs to be much shorter in the future. Three weeks of darkness and disruption is two weeks too long. The first Halloween event back in 2004 was about four days long.
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The first time it happened to me, I was alone, and unaware of this new event. I stumbled upon a banner, and went to investigate. As I approached, four bad guys spawned. Then, 2 seconds later, four more. Then 2 seconds later, four more, and so on. I was swamped by dozens of foes in a matter of seconds. Not much fun, I'm afraid.
The next time, I was on a team, and it happened around us, so we started doing it. We fought foes at a banner for ages, but it never became active, and the event passed unresolved. Again, underwhelming.
The third time, there was a big group of people doing it, so I took part. On this occasion, I was fortunate enough to get on a team, and got all the badges. The final fight was kind of disappointing, it went so fast and wasn't anything new. Just Jack-in-Irons.
The next time, I took part as much as I could, and after the four banners were destroyed, the avatar was defeated before I coudl get anywhere near him. Telporters are seriously disadvantaged trying to find him.
Every other time the event happened, a dozen or so, I was playing redside. The largest team I ever saw was 5 people. On average 2-3 people was the most that showed up, and they were entirely unsufficient to the task of even surviving the overwhelming spawns, let alone trying to damage the banner.
Like so much in this game, I see here an event with tremendous potential and eye candy, but little substance and poor execution.
I get that solo players aren't supposed to be able to overcome it, but you should not have made it impossible for a soloist to enjoy some of. If I could go to the banner and fight reasonable spawns, I might enjoy it somewhat. As it was, it took all the street spawns away, and left me with no way to enjoy the event (because of the unreasonable spawns... 30-1 is LONG odds), so I had nothing to do in the zone.
All in all, a good try, but underwhelming to say the least.