What would you do to make Underground better?

I would like to do the Underground more, but one of the largest barriers to me doing so isn't so much the trial itself as who else is on the league.

All it takes is 1 or 2 people not paying attention to waste upwards of 2.5 hours of my time (up to an hour to form it, 90+ minutes to do the trial). To me, that isn't a good use of my time.

Problem 1 for me - Escort mission:
Desdemona. The Underground Trial is, at its heart, a huge escort mission. Yes, one of the most player-hated mechanics in the gaming industry. Even developers hate this mechanic. Yet we are subjected to one that is the basis of the longest Incarnate Trial to date.

Worse, the players that should be least responsible for caring for this dead weight (melee) are stuck with her until they die (often self-inflicted by means of Self-Destruct, something I don't think the developers meant by using "unused" powers) or the team tries tricks like teleporting the handler far enough away from Desdemona to get her to latch on to another player.

Problem 2 for me - Visual cues, or lack thereof:
Can you tell me what is the difference between the following pictures and the lichens buffing the Lichen Infected War Walker?









If you guessed that the above pictures have Devouring Earth Eminators showing their Area of Effect, you would be right.

The same issue is to tell who is being targeted by any of the three War Walkers. Why? I don't want to be anywhere near ground zero of any of the War Walker's special attacks, particularly Lethal Force. I'm not shown who isn't listening to instructions and staying with the group when they are being targeted, and I'm not being given the tools to protect myself from their mistakes.

Other visual clues that is hard to spot are the Will of the Earth and which side is Hamidon's back?

Problem 3 for me - Hell is other people:

• People not getting away from the group when targeted can cause the trial to fail.
• People rushing ahead can cause the trial to fail.
• People confused in the last section with the, for all intents and purposes, permanent confusion WILL cause the trial to fail.
• People not paying attention to the bright red letters under their health bar can cause the trial to fail.
• Being forced to bring the above players can cause the trial to fail.

• Take "unknown" or "undesirable" players
• Call it off and do something better.

• Allow the leader to assign Desdemona to a player. The leader is supposed to be the one in charge of her "security" team, so let them do their job.
• Minimize how much damage a few players can cause a league by not paying attention.
• Reduce the Mag on the confuse. If it requires more than the medic in the hospital is selling, it is too high.
• Better visual cues.
  • Show who is being targeted in a clear manner, even on the lowest graphics settings.
  • Show the lichen's regenerative AoE.
  • Show the Demolition Charges' area (actually could use a Force Field graphic to show the "trigger" area).
  • More differential between "front" and "back" of the Avatar.
  • Show the Will of the Earth in a clearer manner, even on lower graphics settings.

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

I agree with all your points Snow.

For one, make it shorter. There are so many areas in the trial that can be shortened, physically. Especially the spore tunnels places. They are really annoying for people who die too, and have to hike back around all those bends. Just doing that would cut 5-10 minutes of I think.

Again, make the visual clues better. I know in many runs I have done, I have been 'Targetted' by the warwalkers, and there is just that tiny red text under my HP. If you happen to have the mission info thingy also moved to that area, it is very very easy to miss.

Do the lichens actually DO anything? Looking at the help text, it mentions their effect on the warwalkers..but every run I have done..I get an invalid target message, for all of them. Of course, maybe someone else just used one.

I don't think lowering the confuse mag is the answer. If it is lowered, the fight will just become a pile on DPS fest. Really needs better visual clues (again) as too what all his powers are doing.

I think the confuse needs to be changed so that if any Incarnate or buffing powers are used during the fight, they do NOT affect the Avatar. All the mobs, fine, just not the Avatar. This would stop him suddenly getting buffed with barriers, regens etc etc. Not to mention judgements killing team mates.

I'd like the Avatar to keep its confuse, but make it a desperation move. Like how pre-GR Nightstar would Nova at 10% HP, have the Avatar keep its confuse in reserve like that, too. Hit 10% HP? Eat Mag 20 Confuse! But not before. Or do the Anti-Matter thing at trigger it at 75%, 50%, and 25% HP. So you know when it's coming and can prepare. Even if preparing means taking a break until it wears off.

Also the reward changes in beta are looking... good. Two salvage rolls with one being between a Rare or a Very Rare? That'll help a lot.

Change all timers from fail conditions to badge earning and possibly Astral conditions. You still have to bring down the bosses to pass, but you don't have to teach new people in 10 minutes or fail completely.

cut the ambushes in half for the "rituals"
reduce the amount of lichens for the LIWW to sponge off of
those team killing bombs should be spread out farther towards the end before you reach the Avatar
I'd rather love it if the Avatar wasn't basically a big middle finger to melee types...freaking overkill on a non-optimal team.
reduce the amount of unresistable damage flying around...

Snow Globe brings up some great points; and it is very nice to see constructive improvements offered to make the Underground Trial more fun to play.

The discussion about being forced to take “unknown” or “undesirable” players however is really a bit distressing to me. I know this topic is not a core part of the original posting, but it just struck a nerve with me.

I am finding I despise the incarnate trials for this very reason…not because I am forced to play with the great unworthy and unwashed masses…but because I AM one of them.

The incarnate trials have become so complex, so time consuming, and SOOOO rewards fixated; that only the worthy are allowed to play this game content. Trial leaders have become the new content gate keepers, the high priests of the incarnate religion; they will form a trial ONLY with known acolytes. Acolytes must have the proper computer equipment, characters that are built to conforming standards, and players that know and perform their assigned role in this religious function. Trials are not about great maps, interesting game mechanics, awesome new NPC opponents…and above all…trials are NOT about story. The gate keeper priests are looking only for those worth of grinding for gear.

So here I am a seven year veteran, with an average computer, and a more casual story oriented play style. On occasion I may pop on my one and only badger character who is also one of my two incarnates. I have read about the various trials, and would love to see this new game content, not to grind for Emp. Merits or whatever reward; but to see the new stories and art and have a little fun.

So I drop myself into the LFG tab and pick a trial I’d like to see. If I am really motivated to get into a trial I might run around to Pocket D/the Vanguard base in RWZ/The Midnighter’s council room and see if people are forming up. If I ever do see groups forming, which is very rare now days; I quickly realize I will never be picked by a gate keeper priest anyway. I am clearly one of the “undesirables”…and I am shunned. Incarnate trials…a wonderful new aspect of City of Heros…for those deemed worthy.

My constructive suggestion is to make the incarnate trials more PUG friendly by simplifying them and making access happen via the LFG tab only. Take away the ability of the gate keepers to strangle access to the trials. Find ways to build fun and challenging trials for the majority of the player base; not just for the very few desirables. I am not looking for a CoH easy button, I don’t want to get all the powers and costumes and whatever new shinies the incarnate stuff provides for no effort, I don’t feel entitled to all the stuff for free…I just want a chance to participate!

1) First and foremost when fighting warwalker AVs it needs to be significantly more clear who is targetted, whether that is large flashing arrow graphical effects pointing to that person that everyone can see, or large text on screen that everyone can see specifically naming the person that is targetted, so that if that person is not paying attention they can be informed that they need to move. In addition make it more clear using a graphical effect what the radius of the lethal force is around the player so they can easily see how far away they need to move to not wipe the entire league.

2) Many things need to be updated for avatar fight.
a) have a door between the last mob and the avatar room so that leagues can properly buff up for the fight
b) melee'ing with the avatar is a death sentence, damage to melee ATs needs to be reduced.
c) There needs to be a way to acquire confuse protection that is not dependant on having your league having x number of people with tactics/clarion or having x number of break frees, cause if you dont or you run out of break frees you become effectively useless unless you suicide to get more. This could be in the form of defeating destructable objects in the avatar's room with 5400 hp that release a small pbaoe mag 10 confuse protection buff that lasts x number of seconds (similar to the buff/debuff tech containers in crey labs).

3) The map itself should be shortened. You could reduce the number of mobs in the map to reduce the overall time it takes to complete however all that would really do is make it look unpopulated, spawn distribution is, for the most part, good currently, the problem is that the map is too big. Whole sections of the map with mindless mob fodder could be taken away and you would be left with a much better, more focused trial.

Example of how trial could be shortened....
Using this map:


1) acquire desdemona and defeat 24 guards: good.
2) Have her perform the ritual, Reduce the number of ambushes at each location to 1 ambush, but triple the size of the ambushes. Currently they are trivial, pointless and do not pose a threat and you spend more time waiting around then actually protecting desdemona. Tripling the size of the ambush should make this objective more fun and somewhat more threatening
3) REMOVE the hallway between the ritual room and the defeat 40 IDF guards. This is just fodder and unnecessarily increases the duration of the trial.
4) Extinction Warwalker fight - as said above make targets more clear.
5) REMOVE approx 50% of the hallway between the extinction warwalker and the crystal trap room, again this is unnecessarirly increasing the threat while nothing interesting is happening
6) Crystal Trap room - this event is good as is. Upon successfully completing this event award each player in the league 1 Lichen temp to use on the self repairing warwalker
7) REMOVE the hallway between the crystal trap room and the defeat 40 DE guards room
8) 2x Warwalker AVs room, again, make targetting more clear, also the second av fight should be less dependant on fighting the AV in a corner to avoid the regenerating lichen
9) REMOVE the hallway between the 2x warwalker AV room and the spore hallway, upon exitting the warwalker room you should immediatly be in the spore hallway, also remove the first bomb to compensate for this.
10) Avatar room - Add a door seperating the final mob and the avatar's room so that teams can properly prepare and buff up. Add 5400 hp destructable objects inside the avatars room that grant a small pbaoe confuse protection buff upon defeat.


As you can see by this post, I feel that the UGT should be heavily altered, in it's current state it is unnecessarily long, full of unnecessary beating up of fodder, and AVs that are overly reliant on hax abilities that need to be more defined.

Slapping more rewards on the trial doesn't make the trial itself better and/or more fun, it just means you get slightly more for suffering through a poorly implemented trial that has the potential to be very enjoyable if certain key things were changed, even if those things are more than the dev team would like to put into changing a trial that they had worked so hard on, I believe that it's worth it.

Snow Globe, I agree with all your points. The big one for me is "make it shorter." DreadShinobi seems to have some good ideas for doing that. Just getting rid of some of the "filler" fights would help a lot. I particularly agree with Dread's point about the ambushes.

Regarding Desdemona, I so very much wish they would just get rid of her. If they won't, then letting the league leader pick the handler seems like a decent compromise. In another thread, I also suggested giving the person who has "control" (and I use that word loosely) of Desi for 3/4's of the Trial a bit of a larger chance to get a Rare or VR, but now that they're changing the end rewards, that's largely moot. And hurray for that!

Regarding your discussion of the War Walker phase though, I feel like I should insert some defense of the people who are new to the Trial and have no idea what they're supposed to be doing when targetted. That was me, the first time I ran it. Fortunately, I didn't cause a disaster, but I certainly could have had I made a different decision about how to react. I ran away. But it was definitely more of a "this seems like the most likely appropriate reaction" moment than it was an "I know what I'm doing" moment. Having said that, I suppose I agree that visual cues should be more clear, as if they were, somebody might have been able to tell me to get away from the league.

And now I'm running late and have to be off, but thank you for starting this thread and your "How to make Keyes more fun thread."

I think it might be an idea to have the Avatar do a slowly stacking confuse effect, so you have some time to get the confuse res spores. Maybe have the spores reset your confuse counter, so it slowly builds up again?

I think something needs to be done about Infection, the Avatar's PBAoE -Defense/-Resistance power. I believe it does -33% to both defense and resistance, and can stack up to three times. It basically allows the Avatar to one-shot absolutely anybody, and makes melee virtually worthless. I'm convinced that trial success/failure at the last fight hinges largely on whether you have an Illusion controller to tank the Avatar with Phantoms who can't be killed, or if you have to make do with a player.

Anyway, if they don't just get rid of it, they need to make it much, much more obvious than it is. Right now all you can do is watch your list of icons for it (it uses the Soul Drain icon, which is also a problem). It should put some red text under your status bar like Held or Confused does, and say how many stacks you have on you. (Protip: Run away at 1 stack.)

The Avatar has A LOT of tricks that it's throwing around. Cluster around Desdemona (who is where, exactly?). Scatter away from targeted player. AoE confuse. -Def/-Res. Even being prepared for it, it's somewhat overwhelming. The UGT team I was on tonight more or less settled on as many people as possible flying over the Avatar's head while our melee types got turned into chum. We need a group hug protocol for hitting Clarion. It didn't happen.

I think the player base would do well to do develop the ingrained tactics that have made it in to people who grind BAF runs all night, or else the League Leader needs to be someone who basically sticks to nothing but micromanaging every fight. I don't think the UGT is too hard, exactly, but it seems like every victorious run is laid at the feet of whomever is tanking and whomever happens to have Clarions.