Winter Event 2009 Sneak Preview on the Live Servers!
By
Amperella,
Posted on: 2009-12-01 11:35 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Sneak Preview: Dev Speak for "We think we got this wrong and need a shed load of extra testing before it goes live.
Team of 7 Damage dealers plus a tank not even denting the Winter Lord in Talos? Hmmmmmmmmm I think not WAI.
Edited to add I think this is a nicely different event thus far but:
Enemies too hard and, the entrance graphic reminded me of old photos of Auschwitz. Chilling in more than one sense. Seriously
Thelonious Monk
Not enough people testing it, eh? Perhaps if it had been put on the EU test as well.......
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Interesting. New. But not surprising, since if they did defeat it, they'd have exactly zero chance of defeating Lord Winter. Try it with two teams.
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Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Team of 7 Damage dealers plus a tank not even denting the Winter Lord in Talos? Hmmmmmmmmm I think not WAI.
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Sneak Preview: Dev Speak for "Oops this accidentally went live with today's patch."
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Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Sneak Preview: Dev Speak for "We think we got this wrong and need a shed load of extra testing before it goes live.
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We don' need no stinkin' signatures!
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Will need a screen cap of the WL's hp or combat attributes to show that this is not an ordinary GM, which the WLs on Test have been. Because, if this is just the same GM that was on Test and the same basic stats of every other GM, then the problem was with your team and not a bug.|
Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Sneak Preview: Dev Speak for "We think we got this wrong and need a shed load of extra testing before it goes live.
Team of 7 Damage dealers plus a tank not even denting the Winter Lord in Talos? Hmmmmmmmmm I think not WAI. Edited to add I think this is a nicely different event thus far but: Enemies too hard and, the entrance graphic reminded me of old photos of Auschwitz. Chilling in more than one sense. Seriously |
There are some teams that can handle a GM and some that can't. GMs were specifically designed to require more than one team and the uber-GM of the Lord Winter will require more than one team... it's working as designed. A complaint that one team can't take down a GM is a non-starter. That's just the way it is.
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Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Sneak Preview: Dev Speak for "We think we got this wrong and need a shed load of extra testing before it goes live.
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Originally Posted by Suspicious_Pkg
Sneak Preview: Dev Speak for "Oops this accidentally went live with today's patch."
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I'm afraid Lord Winter might be a touch too hard on lower-level groups, or groups that can't find enough warm bodies. We finished with two teams just fine...but two of us were spamming Shivans, and I saw a few Warburg nukes in there, too. I, at least, was level 50 on my run, and a "heavy" level 50 at that (lots of IOs, some of them purple). I'd lobby for a minor increase to the timer in Lord Winter's realm.
And Lord Winter's combat text is almost too ham-fisted, with lines like (and I'm paraphrasing here) "This is the last time I'll be able to summon my Guardian," or something like that. While I appreciate that newbies are going to have to catch on to the particulars of the event under fire--and on a short time frame--I think a less jarring phrasing, such as "I fear I'm nearing the end of my strength. Once more, my Guardian! To me!" might still convey the point without breaking the mood of the event. In particular, the "you can not harm me!" taunt was kind of stupid, for a being of eternal winter: why don't you just pick us up and throw us at the Guardian? It'd be almost as subtle a clue. 
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Newton: I observed Mercury's perihelion moving 43 arc-seconds per century more than it should. Is this WAI? --Einstein |
Subjective feedback on the new Lord Winter event:
1) A GM with 226k HP that regens, even at a reduced rate, seems excessive, on top of all his protection and status effects.
2) Those autohit northern light bolts really tear down teams light on support.
3) Lord Winter is so huge that damage numbers and 'unaffected' messages appear out of view from most camera angles. It's not always readily apparent that he's been phased without monitoring combat logs. Clearer visual cues would be good.
3) Lord Winter inflicts autohit endurance drain in an already-prolonged fight. This seems brutal.
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So they accidentally wrote out the detailed text about the preview and accidentally created then pop up window for it too? |
Originally Posted by Suspicious_Pkg
Sneak Preview: Dev Speak for "Oops this accidentally went live with today's patch."
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
We had no problems on redside Virtue,2 lvl 50's(brute & rad corr) and a 29 necro/poison mm to kill Winter Lord.
The Lord of Winter we ran down to 1 minute and only used 1 nuke.Unknown number of players tho.
Would probably be very tough for lower level toons and less populated servers.Still very fun event, maybe longer timer or weaken the Lord would help.The Guardian was so-so.
On our first try Lord Winter was defeated within 15 mins.
On our second try Lord Winter was defeated within 12-13mins.
Both times we had a random team of 8 and the help of 1 additional player.
On the first try we used some shivans and snowbeasts and on the second time there was no need.
The Lord of Winter isn´t so hard at all.
It´s comfortable to have someone to heal or buff shields on the team.
Server: Virtue Server
Zone: Villain Side/Grandville
Team Size: 7 -PUG
2 rad corr
2 doms mind/psi, Grav/unkown
1 brut/dual blades
1 stalker/unknown
1 MM/traps
Took awhile to spawn Winter Lord GM, the whole team was opening presents. It spawned up top Grandville by the webs. Took awhile to find him.
We killed him and waited for 3 minutes. Then we entered the realm.
We killed stuff around to clear. (We shouldn't have done that.)
Started hitting the GM.
8 mins:
He phased at 3/4 health. Spawned another monster. After it died we went back to kill the main GM.
5 mins:
He phased at 1/2 health. Spawned another monster. After it died we went back to kill the main GM.
1 min:
He phased at 1/4 health. Spawned another monster. After it died we went back to kill the main GM.
We almost didn't make it but we pushed through. Got the badge! 20 candy canes; 8 merits.
No buffs, only rad heals, no nukes, no temp pets...
Only our team was inside. Did not see any other team since it was too early.
No bugs, except it should have a way point to tell where the GM is especially in Grandville. We had to fly up to look for him.
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Winter Lord and his entourage needs to be prevented from spawn-camping the hospital, amusing as it is to respawn, drop dead, and respawn exactly where you were. 
He's also very tough by GM standards which is going to be an issue for low-pop servers. Maybe he can con at different strengths depending on how many people are in the zone? That's probably tricky, but really, trying to do him on, say, redside Protector will be near impossible.
The fact he keeps spawning those Northern Lights is a team-killer, but one you'll probably only fall to once, so that's okay.
I have been in 3 attempts to bring him down on the Freedom server with mixed PuG teams.
We failed the first time when we hit him with two full teams. We had him at 1/4th at that time. The second time we had approximately 3 teams and we brought him down fast and spend time to hint the whole winterhorde to extinction in the zone. The last time was with what seemed to be 2 teams again. This time 2 teams proved to be enough.
Conslusion: Bring at least 2 good teams and it should be doable. Don't forget to bring plenty of debuffs and plenty of healing.
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That managed to do it when their PR compandy dropped the GR bollock!
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
So they accidentally wrote our the detailed text about the preview and accidentally created then pop up window for it too?
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Thelonious Monk
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Pretty much agree with this. The defense debuffs that Lord Winter uses is also pretty brutal.|
Originally Posted by ROBOKiTTY
Subjective feedback on the new Lord Winter event:
1) A GM with 226k HP that regens, even at a reduced rate, seems excessive, on top of all his protection and status effects. 2) Those autohit northern light bolts really tear down teams light on support. 3) Lord Winter is so huge that damage numbers and 'unaffected' messages appear out of view from most camera angles. It's not always readily apparent that he's been phased without monitoring combat logs. Clearer visual cues would be good. 3) Lord Winter inflicts autohit endurance drain in an already-prolonged fight. This seems brutal. |
Tried to take him on with 2 full teams and we weren't able to defeat him on time, though we did manage to spawn the Winter Guardian three times.
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I'd like to echo this. On Triumph's first villain run, having to locate the Winter Lord spawn was the only complaint I had. If we could get a locator like the Deadly Apocalypse GM, that would be excellent.
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Originally Posted by Antoinette
No bugs, except it should have a way point to tell where the GM is especially in Grandville. We had to fly up to look for him.
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Not quite the same - when the GR stuff came out early, they just announced it on the forum - this winter event needed the pop up window too |
Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
That managed to do it when their PR compandy dropped the GR bollock!
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Do not like the timer to the zone. The GM's pets were wiping out my team like nothing and the attacks were wth? End drain plus ngy attacks add up really fast. When the GM phase out, laggy city. Winter Guardian spawn on the other side of the map one time so we lost time getting there. And the lag got worse after each spawn.
GM with two full mixed PUG teams were not doing much to him. Like the new idea but ughh.
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All 6 of you might have gotten in............
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Originally Posted by Coin
Not enough people testing it, eh? Perhaps if it had been put on the EU test as well.......
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As with everything "difficult" in this game, bring Debuffers. Nothing like a good debuff to melt that snow.
Cute event though unless something else gets added, might as well let it run as is. One team and 1-2 more players was all that was needed on both sides (Red and Blue that is).
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Its two hours before I get home. So I am going to ask the questions.
1.) Would a cold defender be a help. She is only 33 but should have all the major shields and debuffs.
2.) Is there any good XP in doing this. ToT at least was great XP. I know you get canes and merits, but most of the time GM xp is horrendous. So I am assuming that trying to use this to lvl is highly inefficient.
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Just failed. |
Originally Posted by Blue Rabbit
As with everything "difficult" in this game, bring Debuffers. Nothing like a good debuff to melt that snow.
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/whoall revealed 20 people in the zone (though a few were definitely hidden): 19 Scrappers/Tankers/Blasters. 1 Controller.
So, you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions? We shall see!
I was lucky enough to get a team to defeat Lord Winter and someone asked a valid question about the badges earned through this sneak peek.
Will the badges earned during this sneak peek remain, or will players need to re-earn them once the winter event officially goes live?
At the time my answer was "of course we'll keep them". After thinking on it for a few minutes though, I began to think the badges could be taken away, not unlike the AE badge gutting not too long ago. The only difference is we can re-earn these.
So yeah, will they stay or will we need to rerun this?
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
The Winter Event 2009 is currently available on the live servers for a sneak preview ending at 8:00 AM Pacific Time (11:00 AM Eastern Time) on Wednesday, December 2nd on the North American live servers and 4:00 PM GMT (17:00 Central European Time) also on Wednesday, December 2nd on the European live servers. This sneak preview will be deactivated and will officially launch at a later date!
Before you put your winter gear on, we have a couple of things we need to make you aware of so you can enjoy the event to its fullest:
Don't forget to send us your bug reports by using the "/bug" ingame slash command or share your feedback with us in this thread!
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