it cant be said too many times: Keyes Island feedback

The times I've run Keyes and had my character fail to make it back to the towers before dying again to the nuke pulse put me strongly in mind of Jack Emmert's flat statement that challenge and enjoyment comes from throwing yourself at the big boss again and again and again, getting flattened each time, until you finally find the one thing you can do in just the right combination of conditions that will work against him, and that's how he wanted CoH to work for the AV fights.

You're offended by the fact that I find being Held in the hospital to be sardonically amusing? I am so sorry, I will get right on that.

While it is nice that people are posting hints for other readers who might be masochistic enough to want to attempt Keyes, this really wasn't an "OMG, please help me succeed at Keyes!" thread. What it was, was feedback as to why this trial is not worth my time. And judging by how hard it is to find a Keyes, even on a well populated server - looks like I'm not alone in that assessment.

There are so many powers going off, not to mention red and blue bubbles, etc. that yes! I admit it! I saw no green circle on the ground whatsoever, to be able to even try to dodge this disintergration ray. This is clearly my fault, I am a simply horrible player.

The point of this thread was to provide feedback as to why 100 things going on at once is maybe not such a great idea for future trials. Even if successful, Keyes is the least-fun thing I have done in this game, in many a long day. I have no intention of running Keyes again, and so I don't have a horse in this race. Good day to you, sir!

I'm not too positive, but I think league chat not being there automagically is a condition of characters that were created before i20 [much like how the 'cutscene' text wasn't on by default for characters created before i18].

I have a character that was created after i19 and they auto-had league chat at least.

For people who like it, Keyes is there to provide an enjoyable trial.

For people who don't like it, Keyes is there to provide an incentive to not complain about Lambda and BAF so much. The devs are doing a really great job of slowly ratcheting expectations upward. Remember when Lambda and BAF were super-hard content that had no business being in a casual-friendly game like City of Heroes? People were saying that less than two thousand hours ago. Now, people talk about BAF and Lambda like they were talking about running Maria's arc at +2.

I don't have enough signature room for this. What is hard today is easy tomorrow. Period.

After being on several MoKeyes runs this weekend, I got a pretty good hang of avoiding the green patches. So good, I relaxed for a moment and took my eyes off the clock and the ground to check on something else going on in the trial and promptly ran right into one. That was not the fault of the trial, that was clearly my fault for being, momentarily, a horrible player.

The green patch is actually not that hard to see, and its actually virtually impossible to be obscured if you are using proper strategy. The proper strategy is to move away from other players and get some breathing room just before the Obliteration timer expires, or just all the time really, so you can always see the ground around you. The green patch is a hazy green circle maybe thirty feet across, but with a green cross hair at the center: you can't miss that detail. If you aren't totally surrounded by players when it appears, you should see it easily and be able to move away. If you are totally surrounded by other players it'll be hard to avoid even if you do see it, which is why its important to keep some spacing around yourself.

It helps if you are not running a full league for this, because the less players the less crowded the area around AM is. AM himself is a relative pushover, and does not require 24 people beating on him to take him out.

As a red/green color blind individual I do find it hard to see at times; for me,the hazy outer circle simply blends with the ground or other visual affects. I can pick up on the more solid reticle as long as it isn't directly covered. Given that color blindness is a fairly common condition, it should have been a consideration. Without adjusting the hue, the devs could still afford to make the effect brighter and more solid.

You mean like the BPoD on Apex? :3

Not quite, it's a bit more. It looks like radiation toggles though, which I can see causing some folks to perhaps not realize it's Bad Stuff.

Also, in general, playing in first person mode is bad, or really close to it. You want to have a good view of your surroundings. Especially with the beam, since it's going to be a ground-target effect, if you're in first person, there's more than a fair chance you won't even notice it.

Oh, I wasn't saying it isn't difficult; merely, it is just a learning curve. Like everything else in this game.

Hehe, difference of perspective I guess . I saw the BPOD remark as a claim that it was difficult . Then again, I'm a compulsive flyer and really really dislike that part of Apex.

It's funny, cus I can't imagine not using Fly for MoApex runs! XD

I run it on my Fire/Rad Corr and have found out the max range of Blaze is just enough to not have the BPoD drop on my team's heads.

Nananana nah nah nahnahnah, nununah nah nah, nuanana nah nahahnah....

sonofa...

Theoretically speaking, although I haven't seen anyone specifically try this yet, the Obliteration Beam is on a timer, but Antimatter's freeze time is keyed (heh) to his health. So just like going for Strong and Pretty, it should be possible I assume to coordinate attacks against Antimatter so he crosses his regen thresholds far away from the times that the Obliteration Beam fires.

That's actually the part I like the best. The three reactors you have to take out to reach that point seem kind of grindy.

trying to time that is insanely hard though, when you have a million different things going on during that battle (avoiding the beam when it fires, paying attention to whose disintegrating, all the alpha/beta entanglement junk that clutters the screen)

how we got avoid the green stuff on victory was we did a 12 man raid and 4 poeple stayed in the hospital (less obliteration targets, and a designated person in the hospital would pay attention to whats going on with the beam timer and announce it in the chat when it gets close firing and when the time freeze is coming to better time it)

actually worked out quite well doing that, IMO avoid the green stuff is still ridiculous to get and darn near impossible in some cases due to the time freeze if you have 24 poeple running around

non-sense, the foundation is a bunch of spaghetti code

It's easier than that.

Antimatter always goes to the NW, then SE, then SW drawdown points to regen.

Have the tanker/brute/whoever's got aggro move antimatter as close as possible to the appropriate point, and his flight time to the regen point is short enough that you have to get *really* unlucky on the timing of the Obliteration Beam/Time Freeze to be unable to avoid the beam.

Having someone watch the timers and hit a 'STOP hitting AM, beam coming!' bind 4-5 seconds before the beam's due also helps to make sure people aren't rooted by animations when it comes time to move.

All that said, I still find Keyes to be annoying because of the sheer number of gimmicks they've got going on at once - three slightly different repetitions of shutting down the reactor, the antimatter pulse, hurting AM himself making life far harder, Obliteration beam, Time freeze, Entanglement, a level 54 Rad/Rad AV, AND trying to herd up to 24 people in the same direction....

(I've got MoK on two alts so far, just need 'Avoid The Green Stuff' for my third.)

Oh, and IMO they need to add one more thing to the trial panel, a 'You have <x> Cells/Pacification Grenades/Molecular Acids, click here to use one' button (two for Lambda, obviously). Expecting people to dig through their powers window looking for one or two temps among the hundred or so that certain character can have, whilst also trying to stay alive in a hostile environment? Not good.

When has roughly 6% of the male population and 1% of the female population made something a fairly common condition? o.O

Yeah, it's possible. In the runs I've been a part of the tanker (the leader of the league) usually has a few macros set up, one to say "5 seconds until oblit. beam, stop attacking!" and the other, "oblit. beam fire, keep moving around" (paraphrasing).

He also does the macro of "stop attacking AM" when he gets close to the 75, 50 and 25% HP meter so that we can time his freezes in between oblit. beams.

Yes, this is much easier with only 12 or 14 or so people instead of 24...but that goes with anything, it's easier to coordinate 8 people than it is 12, and so on and so forth.

There was a couple of times where when we were going for the Loves a Challenge badge where someone was being disintegrated right when AM froze time....yeah...scary stuff but luckily AM's usually right next to the regen. stations so the freeze time doesn't last long and we were able to save the disintegrating person and get the badge

Which is exactly my point. It should have been. You did it what, 3 times? And you make it sound like doing any preparation or attempt to learn is beneath you. You come here complacent in your certitude that all your problems stem from flaws in the trial, and anything anyone says is pointless since you decided not to do it anymore.

This is not useful feedback, and it is not in any way shape or form a productive thread, because of your attitude. Not because you're wrong, but because you have a crappy attitude.

If this second iteration trial is too complicated for you, you may as well give up on the Incarnate System now. Because it's not going to get any easier, and if you're completely unwilling to even make an attempt to learn before you play, you shouldn't even bother, because all you will be is dead weight on the team.

In Lambda we learn how to move fast and stay in a tight group. In BAF we learn how to not stand in certain areas at certain times. In Keyes we're expected to be able to do both, and you treat it like they're speaking Ancient Greek.

Learn to walk and chew gum at the same time before you give "feedback" like this again please.

Perhaps that vital piece of information should be revealed to the players. Just like the players really couldn't know when reinforcements are coming, the same could be said for the Obliteration and Disintegration beams.

Perhaps the developers should add something like this to the info window:

Obliteration beam recharging in 45 seconds
Disintegration beam recharging in 35 seconds

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

the obliteration beam is already on a timer in the interface, its timer is 30 seconds

disintegration however does not really have any queues as to when its activating and its sometimes very hard to tell who its affecting unless they yell out in chat