7 randoms ran the new Cavern of Transcendence. It got ugly.

[Kai Moon]

Ran it in a team of 7, some low level, some high. None of us enjoyed the run. Here's 4 reasons I think why.

 

1. The enemy design.

 

The new minion and LT difficulty is far above existing level 15 minions and LTs.

 

The new minions have a huge DPS attack chain - at least 4 of the boss's damage powers. The new LTs have all that DPS, plus the hold too. Multiple LTs stacking holds will break the tank's mez protection consistently at level 15. Then the team is in danger of wiping because the incoming DPS is so much higher than level 15s can handle.

 

Compare, for example, Scorcher, a level 15 Outcasts LT with just Fire Blast and Scorch. A level 15 tanker can handle that.

 

2. The encounter design.

 

Before, the lack of minimap could cause adds from splitting. Now the adds are guaranteed, by infinite respawning ambushes with no breaks in between.

 

By the time our 12th ambush wave in a row, we wised up, and saw that running the trial normally would get us nowhere. We shifted to a degenerate strat: ignore the ambushes, push forward with mission objectives, pop insps to compensate. I expect the optimal strat will be even more degenerate: maybe hit all the glowies simultaneously, ATT / rush to the end room, clear it before the ambushes arrive, smash the Exit button.

 

Ordinary level 15s won't be savvy or patient enough to figure this out. More likely, they'll get on the treadmill til they wipe, disband, and go back to something that they can make progress on and complete, like DFB.

 

3. The team size scaling.

 

Some spawns don't scale all the way down to solo size. The rest don't scale down at all. This wasn't an issue in the team of 7, but when I reran it solo, I saw no solo size spawns. Some single bosses, some LTs plus 2 minions, and some full size team spawns that I completely avoided.

 

4. The reward.

 

Boosted from a paltry 7 merits to a paltry 8 merits. This would be fine, if rushing the end and smashing the Exit button is the intended strat. Any slower than that, though, and you're better off doing anything else.

 

-----

 

But also two small things we liked:

 

1. The minimap.

 

Hiding the minimap added difficulty through UI shenanigans and repetitive cave appearance. Also an accessibility issue for anyone with memory impairment. Adding the minimap is absolutely a good thing.

 

2. The Volcanic badge.

 

Counts the new Pumicite Lords as expected. Farming ambushes for this badge seems to be a fast way of getting it. Our team of 7 got it in about 15 minutes without trying.

[TheZag]

6 hours ago, Kai Moon said:

I expect the optimal strat will be even more degenerate: maybe hit all the glowies simultaneously

 

I havent had a chance to run it yet, but the original version of the trial it was required to click all simultaneously.  Teams would have trouble trying to clear each tunnel before respawns or drop someone off each time and they would stand around for 20 minutes waiting/hoping the rest of the team would make it to their clickies.

 

As for merits,  you can thank the speedrunners for the low amounts.  8 speedrunners finish in 2 minutes,  a solo speeder finishes in 5.  Cant be giving them 20 merits for 5 minutes of soloing.  If a certain mission has out of proportion rewards you can be sure it will be farmed.  Not that farming is good or bad just that getting 8 together for an hour could potentially produce over 300 merits times 8 members.  It would be better merits then a hami raid if you didnt have to wait for the league to fill and hami spawns off the first mob each time.

 

It may need a balance check but i suspect it will be awhile so they can let the changes 'sink in' before making more changes.

[Doomguide2005]

^This

Feedback is great, but any time new content (or in this case substantially revamped) is created it can take time for the knowledge within the general community to develop on how to complete the content and/or what needs adjustment.

[Kai Moon]

Solo'd a few times, looks like the old speedrun route plus Koago still works. Koago just an added speed bump (insp mail exploit), ignore all other Igneous spawns (ambush AI exploit), rush the objectives, smash the Exit button.

 

So it's only the "hey let's get randoms together and fight stuff and have fun and be superheroes" route that got shut down by these changes. Speedrun or die.

 

"It may need a balance check" You can balance before, looking at comparable level 12-15 mobs and see if things are in line or not. (They're not.) You can balance after, too, but that'll be hard if only speedrunners and hardcore badgers are attempting the trial anymore.

[BrandX]

I'm wondering if that was the same team I was on.  Everlasting?  I was on a Claw/Stone Scrapper.

 

The ambushes did feel endless.  A little tough imo, if the group doesn't have either a great makeup or IOs to rely on.

 

I know I ended up flying to most of the nodes, clearing the spawn, clicking and then flying out, as the ambushes were to much and staying together didn't seem to help much at all.

 

Made me wonder if the ambushes were continuous or just a big number of them.

[Kai Moon]

Ran again with 7 different randoms. Except this time, I advertised and approached it as an infinite ambush fire farm, not a normal trial. We did fine, farmed tons of ambushes, got some levels, all got Volcanic badge easy.

 

Finished the trial too, for those who wanted that badge, but that took a lot more coordination. We basically wiped on purpose, restocked insps, team transporter, rushed the rear room.

[Kai Moon]

1 hour ago, BrandX said:

I'm wondering if that was the same team I was on.  Everlasting?  I was on a Claw/Stone Scrapper.

Maybe. I was also Everlasting. I was on my kinetics corruptor for that disastrous first run, claws/invul scrapper for the intentional farm run.

 

I don't know if there's a limit on the ambushes, but both times, we stopped fighting the ambushes when we got sick of them, not because the ambushes stopped coming. Volcanic badge is 100 bosses, 2 bosses per ambush, so well over 50 chain ambushes in each run.

[TheZag]

Its becoming more difficult to compare new mobs to old mobs,  especially at lower levels.  Players used be a mix of DOs and TOs in the 12-15 range and you couldnt even slot a SO until lvl 22.  Now you can be fully SO at lvl 2 onward and that can be taken into consideration when making new mobs.  With enhancements that are 2 to 4 times stronger then what players had,  yes it may need a balance check but we arent playing city of 2004.  The devs are trying new things.  Some are well received and others arent but they are moving the game forward and thats much more then most other CoH servers have.  

[Dr. Voltage]

Is it just me, or does this feedback make anyone else want to run CoT. 😂 

 

Sounds like a hell of a scrap.

[Dispari]

Yeah I was worried this would get a lot harder because of the changes, but I couldn't really get a group together to test it. Not sure how I feel about making everything as hard as possible with tons of ambushes. People who don't have minmaxed builds do play this game too.

[Faultline]

1 hour ago, Sejanus said:

Is it just me, or does this feedback make anyone else want to run CoT. 😂 

 

Sounds like a hell of a scrap.

 

Well the ambush chance is dropping to 1/4 of current on the next patch, so if you want a crazy ambush fest, do it now. The current chance is 1% * obelisks * players, every 30 seconds, on 16 spawns -- that ended up being waaay too much. It's being dropped to 0.25% * obelisks * players.

[The Chairman]

1 hour ago, Faultline said:

 

Well the ambush chance is dropping to 1/4 of current on the next patch, so if you want a crazy ambush fest, do it now.

 

Interesting. When do you expect the next patch to drop? In other words, how much time do I have to experience the crazy ambush fest as it is?

[Lazarillo]

1 hour ago, Faultline said:

Well the ambush chance is dropping to 1/4 of current on the next patch, so if you want a crazy ambush fest, do it now. The current chance is 1% * obelisks * players, every 30 seconds, on 16 spawns -- that ended up being waaay too much. It's being dropped to 0.25% * obelisks * players.

Out of curiosity, is that obelisks done, or obelisks active?

[Kai Moon]

It's obelisks done, I think. Last run, I told the team to park in the open, and then I ninja'd the glowies alone. Ambushes got steadily more frequent as I went, until they're nearly nonstop after all 8 are done.

[Solarverse]

Figures. I have been WISHING for this game to be challenging again and when we finally do get something that requires something more than Tank and Spank "Tanks can get mezzed!" instead of bringing along an Emp Defender with Clear Mind, we instead get complaints and people want it to be easier. FFS...this game will never get that level of difficulty back if we are going to continue to complain when something comes along that requires real team work with real balanced teams.

[arcane]

Thread title could be “Randoms. It got ugly.” and would lose little value though. PUG at your own risk!

[arcane]

16 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

Figures. I have been WISHING for this game to be challenging again and when we finally do get something that requires something more than Tank and Spank "Tanks can get mezzed!" instead of bringing along an Emp Defender with Clear Mind, we instead get complaints and people want it to be easier. FFS...this game will never get that level of difficulty back if we are going to continue to complain when something comes along that requires real team work with real balanced teams.

QFT

[termyt]

It seems like al the new content - going back to Praetoria and the "new" King's Row arcs - is designed around high level toons doing the content through Ouroboros - where they have fully enhanced and fleshed out powers.  It's extremely difficult for toons actually doing it at their appropriate level with training and dual-origin enhancements at best.

 

I don't know what the answer it, though.  The power imbalance between an actual level 15 and a 50 exemplared down to 15 is huge.

[arcane]

5 minutes ago, termyt said:

extremely difficult

How fresh and exciting then

[Hedgefund]

Oddly enough the ambush formula makes me more inclined to solo it than run it on a team.  The ambush rate is 1/8 of a full team's for solo.

 

Historically I've been one of the dirty speed runners and I'd do this trial for every single character I had that was eligible.  That's become more cumbersome each quarter and was evaluating dropping that policy, these changes have made the decision for me.  Not a complaint, I'm actually relieved.

[TheZag]

3 hours ago, termyt said:

It's extremely difficult for toons actually doing it at their appropriate level with training and dual-origin enhancements at best.

 

Training origin doesnt drop anymore.  Vendors in supergroup bases still have them available for purchase.  

 

Regular vendors sell single origin all the way down to level 5 meaning a level 2 can use them.  Only a new account would be likely to not have enough influence to have a full set of single origin.  Choosing to only use drops or influence earned by that character doesnt take the vendor away and its reasonable to design content with fully SO'd low level characters in mind.

 

Im not saying all content is supposed to be hard,  but ive also not found a mission that cant be solo'd at -1 no boss no AV either.

[BrandX]

5 hours ago, Solarverse said:

Figures. I have been WISHING for this game to be challenging again and when we finally do get something that requires something more than Tank and Spank "Tanks can get mezzed!" instead of bringing along an Emp Defender with Clear Mind, we instead get complaints and people want it to be easier. FFS...this game will never get that level of difficulty back if we are going to continue to complain when something comes along that requires real team work with real balanced teams.

 

I did it with lots of IOs and using Inspirations when needed (with ambushes going, they dropped enough).  While I felt fine, there was risk and I have to say, I worried a bit on a team of lowbies with just SOs doing it.  I also had the advantage of a few more powers due to being over it's level.

[Faultline]

20 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

Oddly enough the ambush formula makes me more inclined to solo it than run it on a team.  The ambush rate is 1/8 of a full team's for solo.

 

The formula can be tweaked easily and without a patch, so feel free to drop feedback on that; there are 16 spawns on the map that are eligible to detach, so it's not difficult to come up with a table of ambush chances that covers all 64 possibilities (1-8 obelisks, 1-8 players). Doesn't need to be a simple additive formula either, feel free to go nuts.

[Akisan]

Definitely going to have to try to visit the ambush madness while it lasts.  Meanwhile, could we transform the ambush chance to be self-correcting for stronger/speedrunning groups vs. weaker/unfamiliar groups with a -(t) component to the chance:

 

Chance% = (80m-time elapsed)/75m * obelisks hit * players in trial (or leader's difficulty setting, minimum 4.  This is still a Trial, after all).

 

A team of 8 strong players completing it (simultaneous obelisk tag) in 5m can expect to see 10 to 11 ambushes joining Koago, with the horde slowly thinning as the fight wears on.

A team of 4 players who've never run the trial (and taking about 45 minutes) can expect to see 2 to 3 ambushes joining Koago (though they would have also seen several as they worked around to the obelisks). 

In either case, the ambushes will slowly peter out before stopping at the 80min mark, giving (hopefully) enough time to finish the trial (it *is* still timed, right?  Did I miss that patch note?)

 

This seems much more reasonable, as it keeps the possibilty of a hectic fight in the center there, complete with a sense of progress as fewer and fewer ambushes spawn. Plus, this still gives very strong groups the option of a crazy, half-hour long fight if they want it.

As far as during the trial, groups can strike a balance between "how fast do we want to complete this" and "how fast can we complete this", as faster clears mean significantly more ambushes as they move between obelisks.

[TheZag]

2 hours ago, Akisan said:

Definitely going to have to try to visit the ambush madness while it lasts.  Meanwhile, could we transform the ambush chance to be self-correcting for stronger/speedrunning groups vs. weaker/unfamiliar groups with a -(t) component to the chance:

 

Chance% = (80m-time elapsed)/75m * obelisks hit * players in trial (or leader's difficulty setting, minimum 4.  This is still a Trial, after all).

 

A team of 8 strong players completing it (simultaneous obelisk tag) in 5m can expect to see 10 to 11 ambushes joining Koago, with the horde slowly thinning as the fight wears on.

A team of 4 players who've never run the trial (and taking about 45 minutes) can expect to see 2 to 3 ambushes joining Koago (though they would have also seen several as they worked around to the obelisks). 

In either case, the ambushes will slowly peter out before stopping at the 80min mark, giving (hopefully) enough time to finish the trial (it *is* still timed, right?  Did I miss that patch note?)

 

This seems much more reasonable, as it keeps the possibilty of a hectic fight in the center there, complete with a sense of progress as fewer and fewer ambushes spawn. Plus, this still gives very strong groups the option of a crazy, half-hour long fight if they want it.

As far as during the trial, groups can strike a balance between "how fast do we want to complete this" and "how fast can we complete this", as faster clears mean significantly more ambushes as they move between obelisks.