Focused Feedback: The Graveyard Shift (Hero Story Arc, Level 20-29)

[Jimmy]

Build 3 - November 7th, 2020

 

New Story Arc: The Graveyard Shift (Hero, Level 20-29)

FBSA NetOps Agent Watkins has set up a small command station in North Steel Canyon, as an optimal location to investigate... something. Being somewhat dodgy about his assignment, he has constantly referred heroes to Positron first, to establish a reputation. The tasks that Agent Watkins has for you are no small feats, and involve the clean-up of one of the city's most exciting showdowns. Heroes 20 and above should seek him out, and bring plenty of club soda to wash out any stains.

• Contact: Agent Watkins, Steel Canyon
  • Listed in Ouroboros under Champion (Level 25-29) > The Graveyard Shift (27.01)
• This arc features new maps, new environments, the return of the Vahzilok Wasting Disease (it missed you), interaction with the alignment system, an actual investigation with clues and interviews, new badges, three alternate endings depending on the choices you make in earlier missions and... dubstep
• The Vahzilok enemy group has also been expanded with a wider level range with some additional tweaks for the higher levels

Changes in this build:

• Opening Monologue
  • Typos and pronouns
• Mission 1
  • Typos corrected
  • Ambushes had conflicting parameters causing ambushing hordes to ignore their spawn radius donut AND their timers
• Mission 2
  • Altered spawn behaviors that sometimes had twin Meat Doctors ruining the aesthetic of entropy
• Mission 3
  • Spawns have been added, moved, and spread away from each other
  • GL0_5T1CC now has a glowing gun!
• Mission 4
  • Nav bar changed to reflect that you must physically talk to Pierce and not trick the player into wasting a TT on it
  • Clue for Dead Air has been clarified on the nature of the event, and the contact
  • All missions granted based on the investigation now have captions after completing for additional context.
  • Jacob Sloan has some minor dialog changes.
• Mission 5
  • Fixed the combat spam again.
  • Moved the entrance slightly so that Interior Design professors don't comment about relative placement of assets and doors.
• Mission 6
  • Watkins dialog has been cleaned up, clarified, and softened. He's a good deal further away from the person he was.
    • There are additional contextual conversation pieces for vigilantes
      • A lot of the emotion has been written out (It was all first draft stuff anyway)
        • I believe the logical flow is smoother now
          • Indents!
  • Pathogen given a slight bump to his native resistances. 40% -> 45%
  • Pathogen gains Strength of Will in round 2 fight
  • Pathogen given Lightning Bolt in second round fight to combat hovercheese
  • Caption overlap issue addressed.
  • Caption color slightly more tolerable in text windows.
  • Mission updated to apply new script to revoke the viral cocktail from everyone but the team leader
• Mission 7 (Finale)
  • Made additional changes to the nav bar for finding and talking to Pierce
  • Fixed the ability to continue talking to Pierce after the mission is over

[Myrmidon]

I had one character sitting at the Pathogen door, so I ran the last two missions. I chose the Hero option, however, the viral cocktail stayed on through the finale and still persists over an hour later while playing around with the new sprint options in Pocket D. Logging out and back in did not cause the wasting disease to dissipate. I’ll check tomorrow to see if it is still active. 

[Lines]

10 hours ago, Jimmy said:

• • Moved the entrance slightly so that Interior Design professors don't comment about relative placement of assets and doors.

I am satisfied.

[csr]

4 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

I had one character sitting at the Pathogen door, so I ran the last two missions. I chose the Hero option, however, the viral cocktail stayed on through the finale and still persists over an hour later while playing around with the new sprint options in Pocket D. Logging out and back in did not cause the wasting disease to dissipate. I’ll check tomorrow to see if it is still active. 

I had the same problem on a newly started arc.  I couldn't get rid of the virus.  The doc at the Pathogen mission never would talk to me.

 

Playing on a L27-29 Necro/Elect Hero MM I died twice in the Pathogen mission.  That mission is extremely unfriendly to MMs.  I used a Medium+Small Orange and a small green (all I had) and still couldn't even run through the bottleneck room alive.  It didn't help that there were about a dozen untargetable Vahz in the room as obstacles.  After I came back a bunch of backlogged ambushes (apparently) swarmed me under with their explosions.  Mission 3 was slow going on the MM too, but I managed that without dying.  And surprisingly also made it through the finale without a defeat, despite twice having to flee from the Giant Mini Space Cortices.  With the virus I simply didn't have the END to keep fighting at that point (I didn't buy any insps between missions).

 

I think everything except the fires and the buggy virus are in a good place now.  Those fires are just ridiculous on a squishy with your HP debuffed.  On my MM at 29 he had 371.5 HP after the -154.2 debuff.  Once my pets burned themselves to death standing in fires I died almost instantly.

Edited November 8, 2020 by csr

[csr]

I tried this again with a L28 Hero DM/SR Scrapper running on common IOs.  I sped through the missions on base level to test the Virus Cocktail.  I was very careful to follow the heroic path and ended up perma-debuffed again.

 

And I was defeated by the fires.  This time I died immediately after defeating Pathogen.  I beat him with a Siphon Life and before the 2s rooting of that attack could finish I was dead.  I was near full health at the time.  The HP debuff is much weaker on a Scrapper than an MM, btw.  My MM lost about 30% of his health (154.2 of 525.7), this Scrapper lost about 15% of hers (126.2 from 876.2).  So that fire damage was somewhere in the vicinity of 700 HP in less than 2 seconds.

 

I did finally realize the Medical Research helped offset the debuffs, but it's just not enough.  Increasing its duration might help.

 

Once again, fighting Cortex with no END to speak of was a nightmare.  He managed to defeat me simply because I had to convert every insp into blue.  My Touch of Fear DoT finished him too.  But I had no insps to make a rez and had to leg it from the Hospital.

 

With the debuff as it is this arc is hard to play on anything less than a fully set-slotted toon.

[0th Power]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but...

 

I ran the arc via ouro with a friend and I made it to the last mission and went to bed.  He went ahead and finished the mission, and now I am stuck with the vahz wasting disease.  If its on a timer then no big deal, but if it depends on completing the arc, this could be a problem.

[csr]

7 hours ago, 0th Power said:

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but...

 

I ran the arc via ouro with a friend and I made it to the last mission and went to bed.  He went ahead and finished the mission, and now I am stuck with the vahz wasting disease.  If its on a timer then no big deal, but if it depends on completing the arc, this could be a problem.

It appears to be bugged atm.  Both of the toons I used to complete the arc still had it more than 24 hrs later.

[UltraAlt]

So starting this as a level 20 character, you are sent to Talos to fight Freakshow.

Lowest I'm seeing are level 23.

 

This time running it, two freakshow ran up and attacked me. I don't know if there is an intended slow-release ambush of Freakshow that are at the level of the mission owner or not. I had to go inside of a building to start writing this.

[csr]

6 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

So starting this as a level 20 character, you are sent to Talos to fight Freakshow.

Lowest I'm seeing are level 23.

 

This time running it, two freakshow ran up and attacked me. I don't know if there is an intended slow-release ambush of Freakshow that are at the level of the mission owner or not. I had to go inside of a building to start writing this.

There is an ambush, with some sarcastic dialog ridiculing the ambush itself.

 

As for the level of street spawns - they actually are set off hero activity in the area.  Higher levels and larger spawns mean higher level heroes and more heroes moving about the area.  I've mostly been finding L20-21 Freaks over by the Magic Store when hunting.  The ones over towards the Hospital tend to be higher level regardless of activity.

[csr]

I ran a couple of more toons through to Pierce's dialog so I could make sure I'd tested all 4 possible results and all 3 options at Hide Park.  Everything looks good up until the Pathogen mission (I left the toons there to test virus issues later).  I have to say I'm getting a little punchy and may have missed some typos (I'm usually pretty good at catching those, but I've read most of the dialog so many times now I may be reading what I expect to see instead of what's actually there).

 

I ran another L28 MM through the Rave mission.  Boy is that thing packed to the rafters with bad guys.  I ended up hitting L29 (untrained) in it (just before the last room), which helped.  But it remained slow going even on an Demon/Thermal MM with +Res buffs and an AoE heal.  Mostly just making sure not to aggro more than a couple of spawns at a time.  Which I managed, so no defeats.  That's not where I die anyway - it's the fires in the Pathogen mission or Cortex's respawn with no insps or END left that get me (the no insps is because I have to burn them during the illusion fights).  The other toon was a Stalker again for speed (an L24 EM/Nin on SOs, not a "real" build 🙂), so the only challenge was Raverobber as a +1 EB.  What a difference AT makes on this arc.

Edited November 10, 2020 by csr

[UltraAlt]

20 hours ago, csr said:

There is an ambush, with some sarcastic dialog ridiculing the ambush itself.

 

As for the level of street spawns - they actually are set off hero activity in the area.  Higher levels and larger spawns mean higher level heroes and more heroes moving about the area.  I've mostly been finding L20-21 Freaks over by the Magic Store when hunting.  The ones over towards the Hospital tend to be higher level regardless of activity.

 

No one else I can see in the area.

But will look over by the magic store next time I look.

maybe the mission text should indicate that "Hunt down 20 Freaks near the Magic Store in Talos".

Always good to get direct mission information.

[csr]

14 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

No one else I can see in the area.

But will look over by the magic store next time I look.

maybe the mission text should indicate that "Hunt down 20 Freaks near the Magic Store in Talos".

Always good to get direct mission information.

I think the level of the Freaks is a small issue with that hunt.  It is essentially asking a toon at the lowest level of the arc to fight at a setting of +2 or so.  But that will still likely be easier than the Raverobber, Pathogen and Cortex missions.

Edited November 12, 2020 by csr

[CrudeVileTerror]

I'm still plugging through the arc, @Piecemeal, but I wanted to follow up regarding:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/23876-something-to-play-towards-or-un-necessary-forced-time-sink/page/6/?tab=comments#comment-290528

 

First off:  Yes.  Absolutely the Legacy Devs made mistakes too, including issues with various enemies dropping dialogue which contradicts their in-game description or the lore/canon established from secondary and tertiary sources.  I don't mean to single you out in this regard.  It's just that your arcs are still in beta, so now was the time to sink our teeth in to them.

Sorry if I'm being to harsh in my criticisms.  I don't mean to demoralize or attack.

 

In the second mission briefing (I think, I need to reply it), there's a reference to a Cadaver being torn apart by a pack of other Cadavers, and then "growling in pain" or something to that effect.

That's the example which I was referencing in the other thread.

 

There's also the timeline shenanigans related to Dr. Vahzilok's arrest and incarceration.   The bit reads a bit messily to my eye, but that could just be the circumstance of the introduction code misbehaving.

I'm not sure if that's bugged or not, but the intro dialogue (at least the last time I read it, not sure if it's been revised since then) implies the player-character was responsible for that.  Is the Contact meant to be locked behind the Positron 1 & 2 Task Force Badges?  

[Piecemeal]

12 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

In the second mission briefing (I think, I need to reply it), there's a reference to a Cadaver being torn apart by a pack of other Cadavers, and then "growling in pain" or something to that effect.

That's the example which I was referencing in the other thread.

 

There's also the timeline shenanigans related to Dr. Vahzilok's arrest and incarceration.   The bit reads a bit messily to my eye, but that could just be the circumstance of the introduction code misbehaving.

 

I'm not sure if that's bugged or not, but the intro dialogue (at least the last time I read it, not sure if it's been revised since then) implies the player-character was responsible for that.  Is the Contact meant to be locked behind the Positron 1 & 2 Task Force Badges?  

The cadaver crying in pain is not going to change - it's interpretable however you think as far as I'm concerned.

 

The dialog in the opening is changed.

 

The contact was meant to be locked behind Posi2, not anymore.

[Jimmy]

Release Candidate 1 - November 13th, 2020

 

New Story Arc: The Graveyard Shift (Hero, Level 20-29)

FBSA NetOps Agent Watkins has set up a small command station in North Steel Canyon, as an optimal location to investigate... something. Being somewhat dodgy about his assignment, he has constantly referred heroes to Positron first, to establish a reputation. The tasks that Agent Watkins has for you are no small feats, and involve the clean-up of one of the city's most exciting showdowns. Heroes 20 and above should seek him out, and bring plenty of club soda to wash out any stains.

• Contact: Agent Watkins, Steel Canyon
  • Listed in Ouroboros under Champion (Level 25-29) > The Graveyard Shift (27.01)
• This arc features new maps, new environments, the return of the Vahzilok Wasting Disease (it missed you), interaction with the alignment system, an actual investigation with clues and interviews, new badges, three alternate endings depending on the choices you make in earlier missions and... dubstep
• The Vahzilok enemy group has also been expanded with a wider level range with some additional tweaks for the higher levels

Changes in this build:

• Adjusted Watkins radio dialog to be more versatile and engaging
• Adjusted Pierce finale dialog to be more engaging
• Fixed encounter spawn error in Hero/Front finale
• Viral Cocktail is now a contained outbreak and not a persistent one
• Reduced fires in Pathogen's mission by 28%

[Myrmidon]

New issue found (by several of us) as of this last patch. Choosing the Roof entry point appears to bug out and keep the Pierce spawn from spawning. My Hero-Ouro-Front Door run spawned Pierce and company as normal. More to add once I finish my “character in level range” run.

[RubyRed]

I ran through this arc again this morning, this time using a level 50 scrapper with set IOs and a couple accolades.

 

Crash the Unholy Masquerave

• Mob density is much better, but still really high. I think at-level characters and solo players are gonna have a bad time with this mission still. As a level 50 exemp'd I still had to chug quite a few insps to keep up.

Investigate Pathogen's Warehouse

• Still really weird that the glowie can only be clicked on the bottom and sides, the big glass part isn't clickable which is the natural place to try. Maybe this object is bug and you should use something else?
• Ambushes after killing Pathogen are much more reasonable, thank you.
• The objectives at the end though are still confusing. Marker was pointing into the middle of a random fire. I couldn't find the glowie for the corrupt the data stream objective at all. I think I saw the one for the sprinkler but couldn't click it since I hadn't clicked the first one. It's still way too easy to fail this due to confusion and low time limit.
• Fire just does insane amounts of damage, and it's almost impossible to avoid in a lot of places. I had to chug green insps to look around the map. I've done maps with fire in other story arcs recently, and I don't recall them doing anywhere near as much as damage as these.

On 11/8/2020 at 5:15 PM, csr said:

I did finally realize the Medical Research helped offset the debuffs, but it's just not enough.  Increasing its duration might help.

^ Agree with this. The ability to offset the debuff is nice but even killing through quickly with a scrapper they were wearing off way too fast.

 

Defeat 40 vahz in Perez Park

• Is this the punishment for failing the previous mission? Because it definitely feels like punishment. Failing a mission should have a consequence, no problem there, but that consequence should still be interesting/fun to play. It feels like you're actively trying to bore the player into quitting the story arc.
• I assume that retaining the Viral Cocktail is already a hefty punishment for failure here (I had to rest after every single fight in the Cortex Hideout with that going). Overall failing the investigate mission feels really easy to do and makes the rest of the arc unenjoyable at that point.

Infiltrate Cortex's Hideout

• For some reason Cortex's room doesn't render on the minimap, you're just walking in blanks space between two elevators. Also parts of the first rooms you enter.
• Once again, on +0/x0... absolutely insane amount of ambushes fighting Cortex. With the debuff going, I had to chug fifteen inspirations, and still ended up running away for part of it. This is just not tuned well for a story arc that should be doable at level 20 by 1 or more people.

3 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

New issue found (by several of us) as of this last patch. Choosing the Roof entry point appears to bug out and keep the Pierce spawn from spawning.

^ Yeah I ran into this as well, I ran through the map 3 times and couldn't find her. Decided I was either crazy or it was a bug.

 

Final Thoughts

• Changes from the first iteration are welcome, but a couple of missions called out above are still tuned really high. This doesn't feel like it was made as a story arc for level 20 characters, it feels like a task force in some parts.
• While there are fewer bugs overall, I would recommend pulling this from the release candidate. Unlike the new redside arc, it's just not ready for prime time. There's too many balance/gameplay issues that still need to be resolved.

[Piecemeal]

I've taken nearly every piece of feedback here and incorporated it into the next patch.

 

The rave is slightly less full of enemies (About 4 groups less)

Ambushes against Cortex reduced

Vigilante Hunt reduced from 40 to 15

Pathogen fire damage cut in half

Pierce spawns repaired in finales

Minimaps repaired

Antiviral booster duration doubled

Bonus merits fixed

And more!

[0th Power]

Thanks!

[Jimmy]

Release Candidate 2 - November 21st, 2020

 

New Story Arc: The Graveyard Shift (Hero, Level 20-29)

FBSA NetOps Agent Watkins has set up a small command station in North Steel Canyon, as an optimal location to investigate... something. Being somewhat dodgy about his assignment, he has constantly referred heroes to Positron first, to establish a reputation. The tasks that Agent Watkins has for you are no small feats, and involve the clean-up of one of the city's most exciting showdowns. Heroes 20 and above should seek him out, and bring plenty of club soda to wash out any stains.

• Contact: Agent Watkins, Steel Canyon
  • Listed in Ouroboros under Champion (Level 25-29) > The Graveyard Shift (27.01)
• This arc features new maps, new environments, the return of the Vahzilok Wasting Disease (it missed you), interaction with the alignment system, an actual investigation with clues and interviews, new badges, three alternate endings depending on the choices you make in earlier missions and... dubstep
• The Vahzilok enemy group has also been expanded with a wider level range with some additional tweaks for the higher levels
• This story arc currently awards 20 merits for completion, and an additional 20 merits for the first completion
  • These values will be adjusted in a future update to line up with other content when we have enough data to calculate the average playtime for this arc

Changes in this build:

• Bonus merits awarded one-time have been corrected
  • 20 Merits for arc completion (Always)
  • 20 Merits for first time earning the arc's badge
    • This is a temporary bonus for i27 release until we get enough data to set a proper end-of-arc merits reward number based on completion time datamining)
• Added an icon to the CDC Vaccine, which somehow wasn't showing.
• Doubled the time that the temporary immune booster lasts.
• Mission 3
  • Rave's missing catwalk repaired.
  • Encounters in total reduced by 3, this should spread things out a little more.
• Mission 6
  • Pathogen fire damage cut in half.
• Finale
  • Pierce's encountergroup should always spawn. Really.
  • Cortex's Vahzilok ambushes reduced. Illusions remain the same
  • Vigilante hunt reduced from 40 to 15.
  • Missing minimaps repaired.

[Myrmidon]

This arc appears to be working as intended.😁

[csr]

I finished a run I'd previously started in RC1.  I used a test-server only toon.  A level 24 SOed En/Nin Stalker.  He was parked before the Pathogen mission.  I followed the Vigilante path.  I forgot this guy had Combat TP and TP.  The Pathogen mission probably would have been a touch easier had I remembered and used those.

 

The Pathoden mission was easier than before with the lessened fire damage and longer buffs.  But it was still fairly hard to deal with Pathogen with the Cocktail.  I had to run down the elevators to rest once.  With slotting such as I had here even +0x1 with Bosses was a bit of work.  It seemed a much more reasonable level of difficulty surviving.

 

The disease disappeared when I took the hunt mission then reappeared when I entered the last mission.  I then got the epilogue cure mission, though the disease was already gone as soon as I exited the Cortex finale.

 

The Cortex mission remains hard.  If I do it again on an SO only toon I'll probably turn Bosses off.  I finally got tired of running off and killing left over spawns to try to get insps.  So I let Cortex kill me so I could blood-port to the Hospital and get some blues.  Once I did that it wasn't too hard.  Having extra inspiration slots - even L25 instead of 24 - and taking the time to get blues (and perhaps purples) would make this mission less of a challenge.  That Viral Cocktail is just brutal.

 

This is definitely an arc where you want to do at least one of three things if you're not using an exemped L50:  (1) Turn down the difficulty, (2) bring friends and/or (3) make sure to get a proper load of inspirations/buffs for the Pathogen and Cortex missions.  Once you have that Viral Cocktail you're almost certainly going to need a few blue inspirations to deal with those two EBs.

Edited November 22, 2020 by csr
Corrected the name of the debuff

[csr]

I just ran the Pathogen mission on a level 29 MM (copied from Live, so decent slotting this time) I had parked before it.  What a difference the reduced damage from the fires makes for an MM.  The bombs and Pathogen's Lightning Rod/Whirling Hands combo is still a pain, but the rest of the mission is much more manageable.  One odd thing though... when I told my pets to attack a Medical Research destructible in the final room, they attacked all four of them instead of just the one I had targeted.

 

I chose the heroic path this time, and things proceeded as expected.  The VC reappeared when I entered the finale.  Cortex as a +1 EB is just plain hard.  On this Demon/Thermal MM I didn't really need the blues (which I brought for once), what I needed was Slow Resistance.  The stacked attacks from the Illusions turned me into a bystander.  I had to use the elevators twice to buy time to resummon when my heals were turned into pinpoints and I was down to 1 or 2 pets.  All the AoE in this arc is just not MM friendly.  At least not on the two I used (Demon/Thermal and Necro/Elect).  MMs with a way to prevent the Embalmed from exploding will do much better now that the fires in the Pathogen mission aren't murderous.

 

The disease went away when I exited the last mission as expected.

 

The great thing about this arc... it can teach even L20-29 to hate Vahz just like lowbies do.

[Crasical]

I didn't get the joke about 'He's not letting anyone who looks like a cat in!' during the mission to take out Raverobber.
The debriefing spells CMRj as 'Cybernetic Measured Rejuvenaton, should probably be Rejuvenation. 

 

 

I felt a little 'after the fact' that Pathogen's overclocking killed himself. I wish he'd exploded or something after defeat so I know he's dead and not in custody. 

 

Had to log out and go cook dinner before I could do the fight with Cortex (Finale?)

 

more thoughts later

[Piecemeal]

Well, he dropped in the middle of a massive warehouse fire.

 

While the place was quarantined by the CDC.

 

He wasn't going to survive no matter how you slice it.

 

Also, catgirls are a closely monitored population and sometimes allowing one into a rave can cause a cascading furpocalypse on the dance floor. So one must be careful.