Is mission bugged, or did they dumb it down?

[Piecemeal]

I was thinking in two directions:

 

1) Create a reward bonus for doing it the old way if you have teammates (but not doing mandatorializing it, which is my official term for it). This is the low-hanging fruit option and the path of least resistance.

 

or

 

2) Give those old simulclicks a timer if solo so you can run to each within reason. Clear first, click later, is what I'm thinking. Like the mayhem/safeguard code, a glowie grants X seconds to failure and each one adds X seconds as you go until all glowies are clicked.

 

This is all just exploring my headspace, by the way, so full disclosure, just talking to refine the idea. This is no way, shape or form a commitment OR a promise. Yet. I only make promises explicitly.

[Johnny]

On 8/29/2020 at 5:03 AM, Ukase said:

I am ...what's the word...well, maybe dismayed. This doing away with simul-clicks was a step in the right direction. There's nothing difficult or challenging about it, other than requiring a teammate - which can often be more difficult for some people than others. Sure, anyone can recruit, or ask for help on the lfg. But there's a number of us who can't always be fair to teammates, due to having to go afk with no notice, and be gone for a moment, or two hours or more.

To say there was no challenge is not a true statement.

 

The reality is that having little challenges like this forces the team to take a moment to think, coordinate, and communicate. The game actually lost a bit of nuance by stripping out  functionality like this (er, streamlining the game).

[Johnny]

54 minutes ago, Piecemeal said:

I was thinking in two directions:

 

1) Create a reward bonus for doing it the old way if you have teammates (but not doing mandatorializing it, which is my official term for it). This is the low-hanging fruit option and the path of least resistance.

 

or

 

2) Give those old simulclicks a timer if solo so you can run to each within reason. Clear first, click later, is what I'm thinking. Like the mayhem/safeguard code, a glowie grants X seconds to failure and each one adds X seconds as you go until all glowies are clicked.

How about a combination of those two:

 

1- When the first click occurs, dialog lists all X clickies, with timer counting down for the one.

2- Second click occurs, timer counting down for that one, etc.

3- If all get clicked within ten seconds of clicking the first one, then reward bonus (i.e., everyone was coordinated, standing at the ready, and were communicating in advance).

4- For solo player, they need to hit all clickies before the first timer runs out.

 

This method has extra benefit that, for an undersized team, there is a ten second window for racing to additional clickies in order to get the bonus.

[Piecemeal]

Just now, Johnny said:

How about a combination of those two:

 

1- When the first click occurs, dialog lists all X clickies, with timer counting down for the one.

2- Second click occurs, timer counting down for that one, etc.

3- If all get clicked within ten seconds of clicking the first one, then reward bonus (i.e., everyone was coordinated, standing at the ready, and were communicating in advance).

4- For solo player, they need to hit all clickies before the first timer runs out.

 

This method has extra benefit that, for an undersized team, there is a ten second window for racing to additional clickies in order to get the bonus.

If I get time to study LUA, this is possible. But no guarantees. This sounds like the newfangled raid interfaces.

[nightroarer]

7 hours ago, Piecemeal said:

I was thinking in two directions:

 

1) Create a reward bonus for doing it the old way if you have teammates (but not doing mandatorializing it, which is my official term for it). This is the low-hanging fruit option and the path of least resistance.

 

or

 

2) Give those old simulclicks a timer if solo so you can run to each within reason. Clear first, click later, is what I'm thinking. Like the mayhem/safeguard code, a glowie grants X seconds to failure and each one adds X seconds as you go until all glowies are clicked.

 

This is all just exploring my headspace, by the way, so full disclosure, just talking to refine the idea. This is no way, shape or form a commitment OR a promise. Yet. I only make promises explicitly.

The problem is on the missions I just ran today, the clickies were not close enough together for a soloer to get to with a limited timer.

 

My vote would be to give a bonus of some sort to those who do it simultaneously, otherwise, let players just treat them like normal individual clickies.

[Riverdusk]

This is not "dumbing it down", it is getting rid of an annoying mechanic that forced you to team on certain missions, and not even in a fun way.  I like teaming, I don't like forced teaming, especially not for "regular" content, so big hard NO vote from me thanks.  LOVE that they got rid of the annoying simul clicks.  Things like that to me should be reserved for stuff like incarnate trials if they have to be in at all.  

 

And honestly changing it back to the old way isn't going to actually force most people to try and team for them, it just means they become missions a lot of people end up using their "auto complete" on to get by them.  Assuming it isn't in Ouro (can you use auto complete during Ouro? Never thought about it before).  If not, doing them in Ouro means you get stuck because you can't invite extra people in during an Ouro mission, so that's another bad thing.

 

Potentially I like the idea of extra reward if you do them all at once like the old way though.

Edited August 31, 2020 by Riverdusk

[Bionic_Flea]

1 hour ago, Riverdusk said:

doing them in Ouro means you get stuck because you can't invite extra people in during an Ouro mission, so that's another bad thing.

That's a very good point.

[Coyotedancer]

On 8/30/2020 at 1:31 PM, nightroarer said:

The problem is on the missions I just ran today, the clickies were not close enough together for a soloer to get to with a limited timer.

 

My vote would be to give a bonus of some sort to those who do it simultaneously, otherwise, let players just treat them like normal individual clickies.

 

Not to mention that there are people playing the game who have accessibility/coordination issues. (A friend who's recently returned to the game has RA, for instance. It affects her hands and sometimes makes navigation around the maps a lot more difficult for her than it is for most of us-) Missions with short timers on objectives like that are likely to just be hell for them.

 

It may not be a thing that impacts the majority, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be kept in mind.

 

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[MTeague]

Definitely fine with anything that keeps it optional. 

If extendable timers are used, you might need the timer base value / bonus value to be dependant on the map type / size.

 

Small office building?  Don't need that big of a timer (though @Coyotedancer has a good point on accessability issues for various players...).

Giant Orangabanga map?  Yea, you're only gonna get so far so fast.  You'll need more time.

Big Shadow-Shard cave map?  Probably don't need as much time as a big CoT map, but again, you can have some serious twists and turns to navigate, and the timer shouldn't assume you have speed boost or super speed.

 

[golstat2003]

I’m fine with it as is. I’m not sure if this would be the best use of the limited volunteer dev time we have. 

[Tath99]

I'm sure someone creative and villainous could come up with something more testing than a mere timer to make clickie objectives more exciting.

 

* Unsuspecting Hero clicks on glowie.  A Boss level turret deploys from ceiling.

* Unsuspecting Hero clicks on glowie.  Teleport beam transports them to Jail Cells.

 

What was the original intention of multi-click glowies?  "Teamwork & challenge".  So... design new events that fulfill those intentions?

Edited September 1, 2020 by Tath99

[DoctorDitko]

Booby-trapped glowies that explode when you click them?

 

[Aberrant]

Here is a list of the missions that had simultaneous objectives changed to normal ones in Issue 25. The missions now have a game tip noting the change on the hcwiki.

 

2 Common Missions:

Recover idols from the Banished Pantheon (Level 20-24)

available from: 

• Andrea Mitchell
• Cain Royce
• Dr. Cheng
• Josef Keller
• Oliver Haak
• Piper Irving

Go to the office, prevent the fire from starting, and rescue the people that are being held by the Family (Level 25-29)

available from: 

• Christine Lansdale
• Collin Larson

 

4 Contact Missions

Eliza Thorpe - Check out the caverns (Level 25-29)

Phillipa Meraux - Stop the Rikti raid and destroy the Council's files (Level 30-34)

Anton Sampson - Stop Nemesis' Macro Assembler (Level 35-39)

Madeleine Casey - Save the office workers from the Carnival (Level 40-44)

 

1 Trial

Karsis - The Cavern of Transcendence (Level 12-15)

 

4 Task Forces

Penelope Yin - Stop Clamor from Destroying Paragon City! (Level 20-25)

Ernesto Hess - Infiltrate the base (Level 25-30)

Dr. Quaterfield - {{Several missions}} (Level 40-44)

Faathim the Kind - {{Several missions}} (Level 44-50)

 

Apart from Penelope Yin, you may notice these are all Issue 0 to Issue 3 missions. The live devs appear to have not (as far as I'm aware, let me know if I've missed any) made any more simultaneous objective missions post Issue 3 completely skipping City of Villains and Going Rogue, right up until Issue 23 when it returned in Penelope Yin's Task Force. I feel like the spirit of these objectives lives on in some of the optional badges in Incarnate Trials.

Edited September 3, 2020 by Aberrant