Improving the Terravolta trial

I can't really think of a proper way to be ridiculously wordy as I normally would be when making a suggestion thread. I'm just going to throw this out there.

Last mission of the trials takes 30 minutes, minimum. I had an idea for how to make it go faster - Reduce the number of waves from whatever it currently is to 3. Each one of those waves is accompanied by an Archvillain, relevant to the group being fought, breaking down thusly:

Respec 1:
Wave 1 - Captain Stone + One group of Sky Raiders
Wave 2 - Captain Castillo + Two groups of Sky Raiders
Wave 3 - Colonel Duray + Three groups of Sky Raiders

Respec 2:
Wave 1 - Clamor + Freaks
Wave 2 - Bile + Two groups
Wave 3 - Dreck + Three groups

Respec 3:
Wave 1 - Dra'Gon + Rikti
Wave 2 - Hro'Dtohz (or an AV Magus/Priest) + Two groups
Wave 3 - Honoree or Ukon + Three groups

Each new wave would be triggered by the defeat of the wave's AV, with the extra groups of enemies appearing at the doors as normal. This would serve to make the trials a bit more interesting and a LOT faster than they currently are.

Thoughts/Concerns regarding this idea would be appreciated. Refinements and changes are welcome with proper reasoning. As always, if you're just going to /jranger the idea, don't bother posting. If you ignore the thread, it goes away faster

Quote:

Originally Posted by Venture I'd never use a nuke in a superhero universe. You nuke a city, you kill 1.5 million people minus one. The last guy not only gets superpowers from the explosion, but ones that let him survive a nuke...and wow, is he torqued off

The number of waves isn't a problem so much as the length of time in between each wave. 30 seconds between the end of one wave and the start of another should be sufficient, a minute if you're paranoid about groups needing to recover. The current eternity between waves is what makes it such an unbearable TF.

Though while we're on the subject of the TV respec, MM pets don't last very long in chamber if you don't have a heal power (sonic, FF, and dark all lack out of combat heals). If you were to set the radiation shield buff to be an AoE rather than a single target buff, it would make MM's actually able to contribute beyond being a gimped defender or spending half the fight resummoning henchmen who are going to die in 15 seconds anyways.

MMs have a Go To command they can issue their henchmen. So issuing EACH group of henchmen a Go To stand in the anti rad bubbler one at a time, then move them off should be fine.

I need to test this, but my controllers have similar issues, I have to stand behind the bubbler to get the pet to walk into it.

/signed for reducing the time between waves though. Or upgrading the spawns as suggested.

At the last Player Summit, I exhorted Positron (and friends!) *PERSONALLY* to do SOMETHING about "Terrible Volta" and the tremendous waste of time that the Reactor Room involves. It is more than a little depressing to see that absolutely NOTHING has been done since then (although something may be in the works) and I will be "reminding" certain Devs at the next Player Summit that fixing this situation falls into the "gimmie" category (so long as the underlying programming is amenable).

When I posed my question of the minor eternities between attack waves in the Reactor Room, Positron misunderstood (and you can see this on the UStream recording) ... asking if there should be fewer waves of attackers. My response was that the problem wasn't the number of waves of attackers, but the *LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONGGGG* delay between attack waves and that the waves of attackers need to come *FASTER*.

My understanding is that the attack waves are running on a delay that matches the amount of time between assaults on the "side rooms" when you first entered the reactor building and are trying to find the key(s) to the doors to progress deeper in. Whatever the code logic is for the timer between attack waves, it REALLY needs to have an upper bound limiter put on it. I've taken my Warshade on Terrible Volta Trials (in the past year) and used Extract Essence on the last corpse of an attack way to summon a Pet that lasts for FOUR MINUTES ... and watched the Pet's duration expire BEFORE the next attack wave entered the room.

When you've got FIVE MINUTES OR MORE of inactivity between attack waves in the Reactor Room ... that's just way too long of a delay and it needlessly WASTES TIME in a way that promotes *frustration* more than fun.



Then again, I remember "Ye Olden Days" when it was actually POSSIBLE to Fail the Terra Volta Trial ... and you actually felt a sense of accomplishment when you succeeded! Nowadays, with the excessively long delay between attack waves in the Reactor Room there's essentially no "Thrill" to completing the Trial, and when faced with the prospect of doing it, you get a leaden feeling of DRUDGERY and a tiresome sense of needing to "go through the motions" to complete it to achieve the objective. And that's all because you *WASTE* so much time in the Reactor Room because the delay timer can't be "tripped" by the Players to be FASTER so people spend less time waiting around BORED trying to maintain combat readiness/vigilance for almost half an hour with nothing to do.

As I said to Positron ... in person ... there once was a time when it was possible to Fail the Terra Volta Trial. Now ... it's so easy that you practically have a 50% success rate even with everyone AFK for the duration.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Hey, if you're going to be there anyway, why not direct him to my little suggestion here?

That in mind, I had another thought. Why not have computer terminals that vent coolant directly onto the reactor, rather than the temp power (which I always end up throwing at my allies anyway)? As a catch, each time you do this it spawns the next wave. This would be good for people looking for a challenge, who choose then to vent the entire thing at once (logic and nuclear physics be damned), thereby spawning all three AVs and 6 extra groups of enemies to fight, without the benefit of being able to heal the reactor (which is kinda what is already happening, since the temp power is broken and doesn't actually heal anything).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Venture I'd never use a nuke in a superhero universe. You nuke a city, you kill 1.5 million people minus one. The last guy not only gets superpowers from the explosion, but ones that let him survive a nuke...and wow, is he torqued off

I'd trade all things sacred just to be able to HEAL THE REACTOR.

As it is, the environment does a D.O.T. to the reactor, un-healable damage.

Guess what happens if an enemy gets stuck under the reactor? <which seems to happen reliably now>

Guess what happens if a GM doesn't respond to your petition in a timely manner regarding this issue?

That's right! You fail!

All that time spent?

All that effort to get to the end?

All that waiting?

Wasted!

Going by the way the new Penny Yin TF plays out, they could be planning to totally redo the entire Respec Trial story and setting.

I've been playing this one since it was released.
Originally it was comically hard, except for well-built, highly organized teams....the fate of a typical PUG composed of random strangers with messed up builds wasn't pretty. It took me 5 tries to earn that respec for my mind/kin so he could get rid of Teleport (which he re-spec'ed back into years later, but that's another tale).

At some point it was pretty good- still a tough fight for your average PUG, but not pointlessly hard.

But now, it's just an interminable wait between waves. Even the most half-baked team can defeat the spawns in good time- the challenge is no longer defeating enemy spawns, but conquering the boredom of waiting for their arrival.

So yeah, please do something devs.
Given our brave new world of being able to buy respec's from a store, the trial is in dire need of an upgrade.