Feedback: "Who Will Die?" Part 1

Is there some kind of level minimum to this? Level 20 maybe?

the cap is 20, the minimum is probably 10.

I tested the levels tonight on the Freedom server.

The first contact for the signature story arc "Who Will Die?" is level 10 - 20.

The earliest you can start the contact is level 10. Exemp down to level 20.

Blueside is started via Theoden in Skyway by the detectives. Redside via Alastor, located straight south of AE and east of the ferry in Cap Au Diable.


For feedback: Had no problem on my main soloer (Illusion/Bubbler). Enjoyed it enough as a Rogue to run it twice for the alternate dialog in the first mission. Will probably run it a few more times this week for the fun of it. I think I'll use it along with Twinshot's arcs to show off CoH:Freedom to returning friends.

My level 25 dominator is happily sitting with 4 LoTG:+rech. All attained today through H-merits conversion.

Is the mass number of these we can get expected?

Just soloed it redside on my fire/earth dom. I love the new maps. I like the story. I like that it's low level, but I hope that future ones are higher level, so when they're done we have options across a wide level range.

However, there were a few things that bugged me...

(Potential spoilers ahoy)



1st mish: Couldn't find the exit, took the ouro-bus out. Not a huge deal, but it did feel a little bit like cheating.

2nd mish: Ugh, more Praetorian-style multiple ambushes. Took out the first two ambushes, ran out of end on the 3rd wave and died, used a wakie but got taken out straight away by the 4th wave arriving, so then I just alt-tabbed out while the timer ran down before using my final wakie. These sorts of things aren't challenging, they're just frustrating, especially on low-level toons with limited inspiration capacity.

3rd mish: Yes, it's lovely to have these wonderful new powers to beat up the incoming heroes with, but who has time to sit there and rearrange their power trays when you've got waves of ambushes coming at you? I have 4 power trays on my screen, all full, with powers locked in place. If I'd popped open a new tray, gone into the menu and found the unlock option (or even used the /optionset disabledrag 0 command), then opened up my Powers and scrolled through the 50 temp powers I have looking for the new ones to add to the new tray, there's no way I'd have been still alive by the time I was ready to fight - I ended up just using all my regular powers for this bit. Thankfully Domination recharged and I dinged in the middle of the fight, which I'm pretty sure was what got me through it.

One final thing: Telling us that one of our reward options is 5 times the normal amount of merits for that task would be far more helpful if it actually mentioned somewhere in there what the normal amount of merits is...

Played through both arcs vill and hero last night: solo exed-down and on a new character at the right level range, both squishie corrs. Then on a team with my namesake blaster. Tons of fun. I heartily approve and look forward to more of the story.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Six 2nd mish: Ugh, more Praetorian-style multiple ambushes. Took out the first two ambushes, ran out of end on the 3rd wave and died, used a wakie but got taken out straight away by the 4th wave arriving, so then I just alt-tabbed out while the timer ran down before using my final wakie. These sorts of things aren't challenging, they're just frustrating, especially on low-level toons with limited inspiration capacity.

True. I managed to range ahead and get the glowies to kill the ambushes once, but ended up using the same tactic you did on my second run. When I did it with a team, part of the team held the ambushes back and part moved ahead and cleared glowies. It was hectic, but a fun challenge.

Solo, in what is called a TF up front I decided that I can understand the stress, but I would hope it could scale a little smoother. (Nice, opportunity for a stalker maybe?)







{soapbox}
Since the opinions have gotten so vociferous in some cases, I admit that
I didn't understand the exemp angst when the thread started. I read the comments and discussion on that point here. I accepted it as a difference in play choices - there's plenty of those.

Logged in last night and read the global discussions about disliking exemping... and pretty much loved the counter points I read poking the anti-exempers.

I am sorry that some people seem to get so annoyed by it, but it seems a minor thing to me. Don't like it, don't do it. Just like I skip pvp and avoid the AE these days.{/soapbox}

I did this three times so far, two redside and one blueside, and I'll get this out of the way first: I love it, it's really fun, has some really nice new maps and does a really good job of bringing an old villain group to relevancy (Personally I'd forgotten the Igneous even existed).

But, it does have several issues that I can tell, just in the presentation of the story.

1. Blueside is exactly the same as redside, only empirically worse. I'm gathering that this arc was designed with villains in mind, which I have absolutely no problem with. In fact, I love it - I mainly play villain, and my Brute would jump at the chance to mug Synapse and steal his powers (more on this later, though), so I like seeing that the villains for once get the good end of effort.

But it isn't shining well on this project as a whole that while one side gets the full end of effort, the other side gets the Chinese knock-off. The blueside version is exactly the same in terms of map, of structure, just with all the unique bits surgically removed. You can't side with the Circle to get an easier time of the final mission; hitting the three glowies doesn't completely remove the ambushes, thereby making it an arbitrary restriction; and of course you don't get to power up and fight tons of people at a run speed that means you will most assuredly fall into the lava at least once (I should note that I don't consider this a downside in any way, this is just what super speed is). I was massively underwhelmed playing the blueside variant, because it just isn't special. While I do hope the other arcs still lean more towards one side or the other, because it actually does make for a more compelling story, I really hope the other side doesn't just get a neutered version of the 'real' side.

Taking it as a redside-only arc and pretending the blueside version just plain doesn't exist is remarkably easy and effective, which I don't think is the intention. Regardless, if you do, one other issue still becomes prevalent...

2. The ending removes any real payoff, and relies entirely on everybody present being stupid. The ending, as it appears in the mission (redside, of course) is great, and does feel like a proper 'holy crap we actually had an effect on something' moment. I mean it didn't go as planned of course, but we still got to rock out with Synapse's powers, and we actually killed somebody!

Except we didn't! Because the story decides at the very last moment to unveil the fact that, in that whole fight at the obelisk over Synapse's body he wasn't dead, he was just unconscious. Thereby rendering the entirety of the arc a moot point because no progress was made. Now, strictly speaking, I don't have a real problem with the idea of sticking to the status quo. I honestly didn't expect to actually kill Synapse, although I did have my hope that the devs had developed a complex system by which his appearances in late-game stories are changed depending on whether or not we chose to kill him.

What I have a problem with, is that the specific way this panned out requires every single member of the Lost in the area, as well as the player character(s), to be either so busy, so slow or so stupid that they literally could not take the half a second to two seconds required to ensure that he's actually dead. Most people might not take particular issue with this, but I do simply because I was practically bouncing in my chair at the possibility that my Brute, a powersuited intellectual supremacist who considers unintelligent people literally not worth the air that they breathe, could actually get the chance to have an in-character swipe at likely the stupidest member of the Freedom Phalanx and likely the man that he's wished the most death on in his entire life. I don't really feel like I'm in the minority when I say that structuring a story so that the player has this type of implicit choice and is absolutely required not to take it is probably a bad idea.

I'm probably splitting hairs here, but I know this is going to nag at me until the end of days, my biggest problem with the redside version of the arc is that, if Synapse is required to survive, have him survive in a way that can't be argued this easily with.



So, yeah. Basically, my suggestions for the rest of these arcs:

1. Take sides with whether or not the story is written for heroes or villains, but don't cut corners with the other side.

2. If the devs intend for a character to not die like this, don't make it in a way we can easily argue with.

3. Let me kill Synapse, please. I don't take kindly to big moments being taken from me unceremoniously, please let me kill Synapse.

"Who Will Die?" The answer: My team and I.

Here's some feedback from my performance last night. I'm going to try to separate what I hope is objective feedback from what I know to be complicating factors independent of mission design. First, the situation:

A team of eight, relatively support-heavy (two corruptors, a defender, a controller, a tanker, a scrapper (me), a warshade and a blaster) ran the Theoden TF last night (and I was both disappointed and pleased that no one made a reference to Lord of the Rings). We ran the TF at +2, which turned out to be a mistake.

I was overconfident in our ability to handle +2 Circle of Thorns and, to a lesser extent, Lost. CoT Ghosts, -To Hit Debuffs and stacked Ruin Mages all but crippled us. At level 20, few of us had the requisite abilities to support one another and stay alive. I didn't even have access to my mainstay combos. This is, I admit, my fault. I should've run it at +0 or *maybe* +1.

The mission in Oranbega was relatively smooth until the end. This content was brand new to most of us, so when the system told us that we had exactly two minutes to get out, we rushed heedlessly for the entrance. This was a mistake for two reasons:

1. We had no idea that killing the Igneous Minions on our way back actually gave us more time. The mission objectives did not make this clear. The objectives say something like "The minions of Igneous are causing the area to collapse! Find an escape!" In retrospect, we could deduce that if the minions are causing the place to collapse, then killing the minions should slow it down. However, the presence of a ticking clock made our team prioritize trying to run away.

Dashing through several spawns of Igneous only to find the door locked left us baffled. Some of us assumed that the hidden entrance was actually back at the boss room. This turned out to be false. Once we all hospital'd out, we were doubly confused because the mission hadn't ended. The mission required we leave the map. We left the map. Should we not have succeeded?

The secret door is, of course, located just to the left of the original entrance, but it is difficult to see and does not become immediately evident unless--as intended--the party fights its way back to the entrance--which we did not do, owing to the sense of panic and urgency of a ticking clock.

2. Mission two was relatively problematic. We had three separate objectives to keep track of, and without knowing any better, tried to fulfill all three at the same time: Deal with Igneous spawns every 30 seconds, search for and sift through three rock-debris, and locate the boss. While we were being timed. This lead to confusion and a little more panic as we scurried to find each objective, all while having Igneous minions drop on us with all the grace expected of COH's scripted ambushes.

It was only after we died that we realized the timer is immaterial, and once the clock runs out, enemies stop spawning. Hence, the ideal situation *would* have been to defend one room, fight out the spawns and slowly advance, keeping our guard up so we don't get swarmed. This was only evident to us after we'd all wiped and the timer ran dry anyway.

3. Mission three was fine except for the +2 difficulty, which made the post-boss "ambush" particularly cruel (having several ghosts dump -to hit debuffs on our entire group while three ruin mages protect each other with forcefields and set about crushing our more vulnerable party members because, at level 20, a Tanker can't get a hold on all three.

4. The ending was very cool and almost made the agony of running through this arc at +2 worth it. The reward, however (one Hero merit for my 34 Scrapper) did make it worth it.


Conclusion:

I made the mistake of running this at +2 with a full team. That was my indiscretion and I attribute much of the difficulty of individual spawns to that flaw. This story arc comes with some fine storytelling, a great ending and a lovely reward. It's short, sweet, but the design team needs to do a better job alleviating confusion.

None of us knew that killing Minions of Igneous would stop the timer and that we were expected to fight our way back. None of us knew that we could just hold a room or two in Mission Two and fight spawns until the timer stopped or we'd found all three objectives. This was obviously the intended, expected strategy of the missions. However, if you've done any DMing in a tabletop game, you'll know that the route you expect the players to go is rarely the route they do go.

If this Story arc is going to be on sale for non-VIP players, it needs improvement. If the team doesn't understand the mission until after they've wiped, there's a flaw in communication somewhere. In this case, I sincerely believe that overloading us with objectives made us nervous and prone to mistakes. The timers are unnecessary and just add an element of panic to the team.

I was confused by this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ein_Dose hitting the three glowies doesn't completely remove the ambushes, thereby making it an arbitrary restriction;

In my experience the ambushes ended after getting the glowies on each side, both red and blue side.

In the cutscene its made clear that Numina is the next victim...
I loved the arc.
But I think it should be an Empyrean instead Astral, with 48 cooldown, that way solo players can get Incarnate goodies too.

To clarify the rewards on the SSA's.

There is a "First Time Played" reward, that is independent of the 1-week cooldown. Thus when you first play an SSA, it will seem like you can get two rewards. In the following weeks it will only be one.

All SSA's share the same week-long cooldown, so when you have SSA 1.1 and SSA 1.2 and SSA 1.3, you can only get one week-long cooldown reward, not one for each.

The above is the reason for the "First Time Played" reward. A player who starts playing SSAs in the middle or the end of the arc isn't gated by the week-long cooldowns. They can play each SSA and get the good reward table every time. Only after they have done the "First Time" will they be gated further by the week-long cooldown.

Did not enjoy the arc. Ran it as a Villain and then as a Vigilante. While the maps are incredible, the story felt weak. I realize it's only part 1 of 7 but it's also $5 (for Premiums). It's not worth $5. $2, maybe. Keep in mind that the rewards for non-VIPs just aren't worth it, there should be something on the reward table that caters more to the Premiums that might not have access to Reward Merits yet (tier 4 if I remember correctly). So no Alignment Merits(Not sure where these unlock), no Astrals, no Reward Merits, and I forget what else was on the reward table.

The difficulty of the missions was about right, but the whole 'find the exit before x happens' thing just doesn't work for me. Especially in Oranbegan maps or caves (I'm colorblind and it is hard to navigate in those sorts of maps). I especially dislike being level 20 for this. That flat-out sucks.

I await further parts of the story, I may enjoy it more when there's more to do in it.

Like all 'good' Tf's it takers practice to make a perfecrt run. Especially the get out of the cave part is tricky here. I wonder if even 1 person managed to do this on the first go.

Hah, At the end of the villain content, I got confused as to where I was going, and somehow turned myself around and ended up back at the location where the Freedom Phalanx had just turned up. I coulda just clicked mission exit, I know this, But I was exploring the scenery in what I figured was relative safety...

I looked down, and saw them all just standing there happily, like statues, and I figured I'd go get a closer look, see who had shown up to punish me.

Erm, They were not statues... All of them attacked me, at the same time. That was the quickest I've died in this game EVER.

I clicked the mission exit button at that point.