Cobalt Arachne

The required temp to kill the Hydra Head is not locked by the challenge, but the other one that kills the towers is.

I would give try Malicious difficulty (the second level, the minimum required to earn all the badges) a try, it is nowhere near the ballpark of difficulty of Really Hard Way, in any capacity. It is really very quite reasonable, despite the name. Malicious difficulty can be played at +0, at any team size, and the only difference is that the enemies are given the additional powers needed to complete the badge challenges. Enemies do not get the additional stats and you have no restrictions. This is the difficulty to choose if you want the badges.

The designed goal was that anybody who has the Rogue Alignment power can confuse the target and achieve the badge, as the content is red side. However, per feedback, we'll be adding a special +confuse component to the Golden Throwing Wrench temp power rewarded for completion of the ASF that can be used to confuse them specifically. Badges are always optional content; Anybody trying to collect all the badges already requires the player to touch all types of content, whether they enjoy it or not, such as PvP. Hard mode is no exception to that precedent that has existed almost as long as the game has. If you want every badge, expect to do every type of content that exists.

We've already had some internal discussions on a new 'Easy Mode' for TFs that allow them to be solo-able by any character for reduced rewards. Can't comment on any of the specifics, as it's not a Page 3 thing. At the very least we would have some details to nail down on the how's and what's before committing to it as a feature, but it's very possible to do and on our radar.

Assuming this is referring to the Golden Brickernaut's self-destruct. Telegraphed moves with a positioned warning indicator are not exactly auto-hit, they 'miss' by you moving out of the locations they are targeting. They also aren't doing special un-resistable damage, they just do unsurvivably large numbers. 😛 My statement still reads accurately. If any enemies have true auto-hit in any of their regular attack powers that are not telegraphed with a chance to avoid them by moving, that's likely a bug.

Those blue energy strikes should be targeting players randomly, including ranged, the fact they seem to only target melee is a bug and will be looked into.

Easier? Definitely. Faster? Not so sure... A single AV defeat in Relentless gives 3 Astral merits, which is the total of all three main objectives of the whole BAF, and the ASF has... nearly twenty possible if you do the optional ones. Also a couple of the big AVs give Empyreans instead. You'd have to run the BAF ~20 times within the duration of one ASF on Relentless difficulty for equal merit payout.

There's nothing we can design in this game that can compete with the ease and speed of soloing Dark Astoria story arcs on -1 difficulty in terms of ease/payout. Trying to compete with the bottom baseline isn't a feasible benchmark. The main draw of higher difficulty is the gameplay experience. That being said, right now the Aeon Strike Force on the highest difficulty pays out around 300 reward merits if you take all merit options at the end, and convert all the Astrals/Empyreans into reward merits. That number is likely going to go up as well once the placeholder 40 merits on completion is adjusted later. I don't think it's wholly an unworthwhile payout and is only set to go up.

The 40 completion is a placeholder, as with all content like it, until we have an acceptable data point on average completion times to assign a proper amount. Also, the bulk of the challenge mode reward comes from the Astral/Empyrean merits that come from fighting the AVs. Check your salvage, if you fought everything you should walk away with a mountain of merits. Ripple 3's final boss AVs are tethered to that room, and if you pull them too far from their spawn point they will reset. That being said, the aggro doesn't seem to be resetting with the tether, so we're looking for an alternative solution to ensure that those AVs are fought only within the confines of that room. Expect changes in the next Page 3 build.

I want to stress the comparative measure of length is a weird scale in a game where the latest new group content is weighed against far older content. Existing TF content has had many years for people to memorize every facet of their maps, objectives, enemies, and challenges. Which means they've been extremely optimized. The Aeon Strike Force is brand new, and many people playing it are opting to play through it at a slow pace to fully immerse themselves in the new maps, new enemies, etc. Because of that, and the lack of familiarity with the content, the completion time is inflated as a result. I'm feeling fairly confident that a few months from now, when the content is no longer the 'brand new shiny', the average completion time will not remain that high.

The Vanguard AVs cannot be pulled out of the room they are fought in, if you try to pull them too far away from their spawn location (about the length of the room), they will run back and reset to full health.

This is exactly the reason. The Dr. Aeon Strike Force was my primary development task for Page 3, and it was one of the first things started and one of the last things finished. It by far took the most time to make out of all of the Page 3 additions. Since I'm also the dev that does the Tour Guide tips, they simply had to be postponed to get the ASF done, as it was a higher priority for me to be working on. Expect the remaining zones to get their Tour Guide tips in Page 4 though!

Even at Relentless, the difficulty is not so extreme that you MUST have any role, only that it was balanced so that having each will make a noticeable and appreciable difference. -If you don't have a tank, expect to do more ranged pulls around corners to mitigate enemy alphas. -If you don't have damage, expect things to take longer to die, and thus being exposed to dangerous enemies longer. -If you don't have any control, expect aggro management to be much more critical and to avoid overpulling. -If you don't have any support, expect everything to require a higher degree of coordination and less leeway on mistakes. I've done many many runs of the Aeon Strike Force with many very different team compositions, none of which I vetted with any kind of 'you must bring X or Y' and they all completed Relentless, but every role felt valuable, and the runs where we were missing types of ATs had noticeable differences. The goal wasn't to require any role, but to ensure every role felt like they properly contributed to the success of the team.

Ah, yes I did! I didn't realize they had wrapped up the Master of Challenge changes into this feedback post, thought it was solely the new ASF difficulty options. That's fair then, we could swap out the reward for a non-incarnate reward, maybe we could give empyrean merits equal to the system buying price of that incarnate salvage. Good feedback, I'll bring it up for discussion.

We'll look into this then; Thanks!

Let me know on that... I was told we can do two reward tables and they simply queue up and you select the first and then second, if the second isn't coming up, that's not working as intended. This is in reference to running the content on Relentless: Arch-villain ranked enemies will reward 3 Astral merits per defeat. Certain powerful Arch-villains have double base health (with normalized regeneration numbers) and will reward 1 Empyrean merits per defeat.

I'm unsure what this is supposed to mean, can you provide more specific details on what is hard to understand or read? How you described it reads like you didn't understand it because you weren't trying to read it? I'm happy to adjust the text if it needs adjusting, but need more information. Dr. Aeon hires you to raid Aeon Corp to teach his research staff that he's the only reason they get to enjoy a safe work environment, while also finding out what secrets his head of R&D was selling and to who, since that's illegal by Arachnos law.

In the new expanded Cimerora areas, there are many Cycopses and Minotaurs wandering around for zone hunting. Try the mountains to the northwest of where you fight Romulus in the last ITF mission. One of the new exploration badges is found there as well. 🙂

With over 1500 badge titles, you don't have to use that one if you don't like it. There are plenty to choose from. There are a lot of sewage-themed characters who've already expressed their excitement to use this badge title.

The badge descriptions in the patch notes are more vague because we obscured the proper names of things so that people reading the patch notes that haven't played the ASF aren't completely spoiled on who they fight. The hints in-game that unlock after you have done the ASF once are much more succinct, using the exact names of everything you need to do.

I need to check, but I think there was a plan to turn the amplifiers into toggles so you could use them when and where you want.

The goal of the mode is relying more on the team vs. eight individually self-sufficient players all soloing the same content at once. It gives support characters more chances to make a difference. Additionally, this was needed as a measure to mitigate mass spamming of Super/Team Inspirations for balance purposes. We're looking to find a solution in the future that lets you use Inspirations but on a limited basis in these difficulty modes (something like using Inspiration causes you to go on a 30 second cooldown before you can use another). That won't be on Page 3 though, expect it go live where it currently is. The higher difficulties were balanced around level 50s using Incarnate powers and IO enhancements. It's not 'Incarnate' content in that there are Incarnate Shifts or it has to do with the Well, but it's absolutely endgame content, warranting an endgame tier reward. It's also not without precedent, several of the max level TFs give Incarnate Salvage Components even though they don't deal strictly with Incarnates. It just seemed like the lesser option to make a brand new Alpha Slot Component for the ASF for parity when those were already superseded by the Incarnate Thread components.

They don't have the base Elite Boss status protection values? Should be mag 6 on most types of mezzes. (Those don't show up in Combat Attributes)

Void Hunters are currently found in specific Kheldian arcs and in the Dr. Aeon Strike Force; That being said they're poised to feature prominently in some planned future story arc content, so you can choose to grind it out now, or do it later when it's easier.

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