Focused Feedback: The Labyrinth of Fog

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

I'm thinking perhaps a scaling-HP solution for the Malevolent Fogs, so they're very chunky with a huge group, and reasonably lean if solo.

I want them to be doable solo, but they need to have enough thickness that they survive long enough for Leagues to get everyone in for credit.
I'll look into this.

I'll have to recheck, but iirc the Fog scales up its resistance due to level shifting.

 

What about scaling resistance  based on how many chars are in it's vicinity, maybe start it slightly lower than current and top off at 75% - 90%?

Edited July 10 by lemming
extra '

[BillyMailman]

  

29 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

This was more intended to be 'You can explore the zone by yourself and find secrets without a team.', it was not meant to be read as 'the League raid mechanics are designed to be soloed', they're not... They're designed for a League, players will find them very dangerous solo.

 

Yeah, there's definitely somewhat of a communication disconnect here. Don't get me wrong, I didn't go in expecting to be able to solo lots of groups, or to be able to meaningfully do anything to the Minotaur. But like, you're using the word "raid" a lot, and this just ain't that. Raids have an end boss and some kind of goal - U'Kon Gr'ai, Hamidon, the Crystal Titan, the Hydra Head, Aspect of Rularuu etc., but the description of this content is that the Minotaur isn't some final boss you work up to. He's pretty clearly described not as the end goal, but instead as a nuisance that players want to get rid of (see, e.g., language like "allowing people to adventure and battle enemies within without danger.", and also just the fact that he doesn't have any unique drops like 4/5 of those other raid bosses I mentioned). The zone instead just doesn't have (at least from the description in the notes) any actual end goal boss with unique drops, no sense of "clearing the raid", etc.

 

So the actual zone description reads more that it's a place to go farm for XP/inf, a la AE farming. An alternative to that, with actual mechanics and less AFK abuse of the Fire damage type. Something groups and leagues can use to farm cool rewards. That's fine, and honestly, we already have places like that. They're called Hazard Zones, and the existing implementation kinda sucks most of the time, but the idea's sound. A tougher zone, where street sweeping scales up for larger teams. And that's the expectation that kinda made me feel like I'd be able to accomplish something in the zone - Hazard zones aren't pure x8 groups, and a top-tier build at an appropriate level can in fact solo them, albeit with some difficulty. I can take my main into the max-level areas of the Storm Palace, Dark Astoria, or RWZ and get some work done, avoiding the enemy groups that would flatten me, and engaging the ones that I can handle. So that's sorta the expectation I had going into this, and the twisty corridors of unavoidable max-size fights really didn't align with that.

 

The Malevolent Fogs definitely do need an HP reduction or something, yeah. Honestly, anything that's gonna outright con as "Pinata" feels wrong to have a second hit point anyway - the entire expectation of a pinata is that it's easy to break open once you land a good hit on it. Maybe lean into that, give 'em scaling defense or something? I dunno, it definitely felt very un-pinata to sit there hammering the thing for long enough that the Minotaur showed up, and still only have about 2/3 of its HP gone, all on a fairly well-built Blaster.

 

 

 

Separate from all that, and coming back around on the stealth thing, I definitely was using Celerity:Stealth while trying to explore the place, but it consistently felt useless. There's anti-stealth enemies in most groups, but even without those, I felt like I was just required to spec into either Speed or Stealth pool to have any chance to poke around for secrets on my own, which stung a bit.

 

Maybe the zone needs something to help out with that. An NPC at the entrance (maybe one of the gladiator things? Or someone back in the mansion) who can help players out by giving them a stealth effect that either only works while solo, or scales down by team/league size or something. It would give players a way to stay beneath the notice of the Labyrinth, but only if they're alone and inconspicuous. Maybe even have it include some degree of like, the Minotaur will see you, and he can still find you, but he's less likely to lock on?

 

If it's implemented as a temp that passively does its thing and revokes itself if you do anything aggressive, you could probably also it have a time limit, so people have to keep coming back to the hub area to refresh it. That would then mean that the zone still puts pressure on a solo player. It should be possible to find some sort of balance where a solo (maybe even duo?) player can explore the zone, but you still gotta keep an eye out for which enemy group is where (Rikti Drones are Rikti Drones, after all), there's still a looming threat, and overall it doesn't meaningfully change the experience for a large league.

 

 

 

Oh! And separate from this, I have a general complaint that the Gladiators are very unintuitive. Normal NPC behaviour is that they do stuff if you click on 'em. I genuinely thought they were bugged and accidentally unclickable, until I read the patch notes very carefully, and saw that "Standing next to one will prompt the Gladiator to respond.". The two I found, didn't seem to be doing anything useful other than normal NPC chat stuff when I got nearby, which I think just means I got the "Respond with hints/tips/lore dialog about the Labyrinth." result on their random table. The problem is, that there's no feedback whatsoever that I did anything useful. Like, talking when a player is nearby is just something random NPCs on the street kinda do, and given that I couldn't click the Gladiator at all, and got no message about rewards, it very much felt like something had gone wrong. I'm sure that if I'd gotten the drop, I'd have at least noticed it did something, though I'm not even sure if that'd work if I was in a large league and other people were fighting and I couldn't really identify why I got an inspiration.

 

So yeah, the Gladiators probably also need some improvement on the feedback in-game, so you know that "Hey, you just did a good thing and got a thing for it; do that again whenever you see one of these!". Right now, it's very possible to do as I did, get the lore/info reward twice, and just not understand what's happening with them at all. And all that, even having read the patch notes.

[lemming]

Looks like it's still possible to mess the timing of the Minotaur's gladiator's summoning.   Granted, I'm doing this via the Beta attack power, but if the HP drops fast enough he won't spawn the gladiators.   (I think he will, IF you run around long enough, but I think you have to let him regen back HP, then drop some again)

 

Based on how Cole bugs out occasionally on the Magesterium raid if the League takes him down too fast, pretty sure a league could do this without beta help.  (I also think this may show a possible diagnosis of the Cole problem)

[Tubalcain]

Give us randomized events. Give us surprises and tension. The greater the level shift brought on by EB stomping the bigger and more severe the surprises. You could make this zone so that it's always challenging no matter how strong the group is. Right now it's just another run from one spawn to the other. It could be so much more.

 

Some surprise event suggestions.

 

Rikit and zombie invasion events but in the fog. Zombie start popping up, rikti start teleporting in. The higher the level shift the stronger and more numerous they are.

 

Cut off the Well. The fog has temporarily severed your connection to the Well. The higher the level shift the more Incarnate powers are locked out and the longer they're locked out for.

 

Random defensive debuffs. The fog has poisoned you reducing Defense/resistance/healing by an amount based on the level shift. Target one defensive stat at a time to instigate groups needing more than one support type.

 

Random buffs for enemies.

 

Hunter spawns. Multiple spawns of enemies (number and strength based on shift) spawn in and start chasing after the players like the Minotaur. These could include AVs and even NPC versions of the players in these hunter spawns.

 

At higher level shifts you could have multiple events happening at once. Take the control from the players. Put pressure on them.

 

Don't include EBs in any of this so that, if it slows the players down, the level shift drops.

 

Increase exp and drop rates based on the level shifts to incentivize seeking out the challenge.

 

 

Edited July 10 by Tubalcain

[Cobalt Arachne]

49 minutes ago, Tubalcain said:

Give us randomized events. Give us surprises and tension. The greater the level shift brought on by EB stomping the bigger and more severe the surprises. You could make this zone so that it's always challenging no matter how strong the group is. Right now it's just another run from one spawn to the other. It could be so much more.

 

Some surprise event suggestions.

 

Rikit and zombie invasion events but in the fog. Zombie start popping up, rikti start teleporting in. The higher the level shift the stronger and more numerous they are.

 

Cut off the Well. The fog has temporarily severed your connection to the Well. The higher the level shift the more Incarnate powers are locked out and the longer they're locked out for.

 

Random defensive debuffs. The fog has poisoned you reducing Defense/resistance/healing by an amount based on the level shift. Target one defensive stat at a time to instigate groups needing more than one support type.

 

Random buffs for enemies.

 

Hunter spawns. Multiple spawns of enemies (number and strength based on shift) spawn in and start chasing after the players like the Minotaur. These could include AVs and even NPC versions of the players in these hunter spawns.

 

At higher level shifts you could have multiple events happening at once. Take the control from the players. Put pressure on them.

 

Don't include EBs in any of this so that, if it slows the players down, the level shift drops.

 

Increase exp and drop rates based on the level shifts to incentivize seeking out the challenge.

There are great ideas!

The Labyrinth of Fog, like the City of Heroes game as a whole, will continue to see tweaks, adjustments, and additions, moving forward.
I'll see what I can't do about adding some more flare to the zone later on! 🙂 

 

2 hours ago, BillyMailman said:

I have a general complaint that the Gladiators are very unintuitive. Normal NPC behaviour is that they do stuff if you click on 'em.

This is a good suggestion, I'll look into adjusting the Gladiators so they're selectable and then activated by clicking on them instead of a proximity.

[lemming]

12 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

This is a good suggestion, I'll look into adjusting the Gladiators so they're selectable and then activated by clicking on them instead of a proximity.

I like this.   I've been asked a lot while running thru the lab about them.    Motes might benefit from this too.

[lemming]

Not sure if this is that useful:

Door at [-2865.0 -422.1 2029.9] leads to Door at [-2869.0 -422.1 1725.0] which is 101 yards away in a straight shot, same map. And looks like they both lead to each other.

[Cobalt Arachne]

6 minutes ago, lemming said:

Door at [-2865.0 -422.1 2029.9] leads to Door at [-2869.0 -422.1 1725.0] which is 101 yards away in a straight shot, same map. And looks like they both lead to each other.

Working as intended, that floor has a gimmick in the # shaped area where half the doors loop the hallway around.

[CelestialDragon]

Just wanted to say that I was able to go into the Labyrinth solo, on my Inv/SS tanker, and defeat a spawn of Nemesis and Devouring Earth, but was easily defeated by a spawn of Arachnos and the Minotaur. So, if one wants to go in solo and just fight the spawns they can, it's just not very easy to do.

 

[burneden]

1 hour ago, CelestialDragon said:

Just wanted to say that I was able to go into the Labyrinth solo, on my Inv/SS tanker, and defeat a spawn of Nemesis and Devouring Earth, but was easily defeated by a spawn of Arachnos and the Minotaur. So, if one wants to go in solo and just fight the spawns they can, it's just not very easy to do.

 

You are the first person I've heard of soloing that regardless of AT and Ive been asking around for days, not that I don't believe it just interesting, my main toon a widow is way over incarn cap for defense (fort build not my NW has 60s for AOE and Ranged, 78% melee) and has very high resistance (with scaling resist, rop, sets and the veat powers bring everything to 85% at 50% hp) and even with demonic aura didn't last longer than 1 min 30.

 

Edited July 11 by burneden

[CelestialDragon]

13 hours ago, burneden said:

You are the first person I've heard of soloing that regardless of AT and Ive been asking around for days, not that I don't believe it just interesting, my main toon a widow is way over incarn cap for defense (fort build not my NW has 60s for AOE and Ranged, 78% melee) and has very high resistance (with scaling resist, rop, sets and the veat powers bring everything to 85% at 50% hp) and even with demonic aura didn't last longer than 1 min 30.

 

 

Well, it certainly wasn't quick. It was much like trying to solo an AV, each spawn took around 10 minutes or more to bring down. I was surprised at the number of Elite Bosses in the spawns. I would have expected only 1, but at least half the spawn is an EB, which I guess helps with the level shifts, but it's a lot of damage.

 

Also, I'm wondering can the new inspirations drop from the regular spawns? In the spawns I was able to clear I only got a few regular inspiration drops so I wasn't sure if the new ones should have dropped there or not.

[Unknown Magi]

@Cobalt Arachne Feature request, would it be possible to reduce the Minotaur's respawn time in the Beta server, or otherwise give another way of speeding up its respawn, or creating private shards, or something?  Ran with a group last night wanting to try out ideas for the minotaur fight, but it seemed to get gacked very quickly (unsure if using beta auto-execute power, or what), even by solos, and then we got to sit around for an hour waiting for a new minotaur and hoping that didn't happen again.  The zone itself is interesting, although I don't feel like I"ve played it enough to have an educated opinion yet.  Just wanted to voice this particular frustration which was shared by our whole group and see if there's anything to be done about it.

[Cobalt Arachne]

3 minutes ago, Unknown Magi said:

@Cobalt Arachne Feature request, would it be possible to reduce the Minotaur's respawn time in the Beta server, or otherwise give another way of speeding up its respawn, or creating private shards, or something?  Ran with a group last night wanting to try out ideas for the minotaur fight, but it seemed to get gacked very quickly (unsure if using beta auto-execute power, or what), even by solos, and then we got to sit around for an hour waiting for a new minotaur and hoping that didn't happen again.  The zone itself is interesting, although I don't feel like I"ve played it enough to have an educated opinion yet.  Just wanted to voice this particular frustration which was shared by our whole group and see if there's anything to be done about it.

In an upcoming build, we're planning to disable the usage of beta playtester powers in the Labyrinth, which will help prevent people who are using them right now to insta-kill the Minotaur which is the main reason he's dead so much currently.

Otherwise, the zone can be manually rebooted by a GM or myself on Brainstorm, shoot me a DM when you plan to do testing and I can try and ensure the zone is in a fresh state for you.

[Unknown Magi]

13 hours ago, burneden said:

You are the first person I've heard of soloing that regardless of AT and Ive been asking around for days, not that I don't believe it just interesting, my main toon a widow is way over incarn cap for defense (fort build not my NW has 60s for AOE and Ranged, 78% melee) and has very high resistance (with scaling resist, rop, sets and the veat powers bring everything to 85% at 50% hp) and even with demonic aura didn't last longer than 1 min 30.

 

Went in last night to test, and was able to solo most every mob other than the minotaur (who we didn't get to test against very much, see previous post).  As CelestialDragon said, it wasn't particularly fast, but I felt comfortably survivable.  For reference, I'm playing SR/Savage tank with full incarnate kitting.  

[Unknown Magi]

1 minute ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

In an upcoming build, we're planning to disable the usage of beta playtester powers in the Labyrinth, which will help prevent people who are using them right now to insta-kill the Minotaur which is the main reason he's dead so much currently.

Otherwise, the zone can be manually rebooted by a GM or myself on Brainstorm, shoot me a DM when you plan to do testing and I can try and ensure the zone is in a fresh state for you.

 

Thanks a bunch, looking forward to the change and will DM you if needed!  🙂

[Cobalt Arachne]

Just now, Unknown Magi said:

 

Thanks a bunch, looking forward to the change and will DM you if needed!  🙂

Most welcome!

It won't be the immediate next build, because we're changing the Minotaur's HP scaling to work dynamically based on the players in the zone and I'd like testers to have the beta playtest powers to make sure everything with that is functioning correctly and as-expected first, but the build after, they'll be disabled.

I'll also be announcing and leading a scheduled test raid myself open to anyone who can attend on Brainstorm once they're disabled.
It would be good to get at least one large-scale raid organized for close-to-live test data while it's in open beta if we can.

[lemming]

Sorry Unknown Magi.  That was probably me.  I was checking the Mino's spawning the gladiators when being knocked down in HP quickly (like if a league ganked him)

 

He definitely was having an issue with finally summoning the gladiators so that he could be defeated.  (Took almost ten minutes of me running around avoiding him smushing me before he stopped stomping and finally summoned)

 

Wonder if we could get a reset button in the lobby like the adamaster summon.  (it actually just pings Cobalt...)

 

Oh, and I did get a helping gladiator yesterday.  First time.  Sadly, he ran into a spawn and evaporated.

[Maelwys]

Crossposting this here at the request of the One that Moogles and Googles:
 

(In Short: a brief study in getting repeatedly punished by the Minotaur for daring to venture into the Labyrinth solo as a fully decked out level 50+1 T4 Incarnate VEAT. Although I did at least manage to record his inside leg measurements whilst he was continually stomping on my corpse...)


As per this brief test and my earlier comments in the above linked thread:

"I do not enjoy "random" severely punitive mechanics, even when offset by potential rewards (a classic example is a roulette wheel or "mimic" treasure box setup in other games where you are randomly either instantly killed or given a reward) and as a result, I do not enjoy running around in a maze with a level 54+10 archvillain behind me. That makes me feel like I'm a mouse stuck in a cage with a cat, not a powerful superhero.
A [My Current Level]+5 Archvillain - who I have a chance of surviving and beating - sure. That's fine. And I understand that the objective of the zone is to team up and gain level shifts so that things get easier to manage.
However those level shifts currently decay too rapidly for a small squad of heroes, let alone a solo one - I'm simply unable to put up a decent fight. On the larger population servers this might not be a huge deal, but not on Brainstorm in UK primetime hours it seems; and I expect the same will be true on Reunion once this hits live.  So personally it would be very much appreciated if you could allow the Labyrinth level shifts to last 30 or 60 minutes, not five... or alternatively let their duration scale in inverse proportion to the number of active players in the zone."

(I appreciate that this content is not intended for soloers/small teams, but unfortunately that's often what happens on lower-population servers; particularly whenever the bulk of the people on the Western side of the pond are asleep) 👍
 

Edited July 11 by Maelwys

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Unknown Magi said:

Went in last night to test, and was able to solo most every mob other than the minotaur (who we didn't get to test against very much, see previous post).  As CelestialDragon said, it wasn't particularly fast, but I felt comfortably survivable.  For reference, I'm playing SR/Savage tank with full incarnate kitting.  

Have to say this was my experience too - the rest of the mobs are soloable slowly... but the minotaur ignores stealth (and largely ignores defence too due to the level scaling and inherent 150% Accuracy and 63.75% ToHit bonus) and kerbstomps you.

It's not even a "slowly moving unstoppable steamroller"... the darn thing supersped towards me; and their very first attack would have one-shot me even without the effects of the "Diseased" debuff. In my second encounter with them a regular attack (Crushing Blow) dealt 3560HP worth of Negative Energy damage before my damage resistances; and that was at their minimum level of Lv54+5.

Sure it's technically killable... but without oodles of friendly Level Shifts in play you're talking capped Tanker levels of MaxHP and Damage Resistance to survive even a hit or two from them - and that's before their apparently considerable amount of -MaxHP debuffs

[Unknown Magi]

14 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Have to say this was my experience too - the rest of the mobs are soloable slowly... but the minotaur ignores stealth (and largely ignores defence too due to the level scaling and inherent 150% Accuracy and 63.75% ToHit bonus) and kerbstomps you.

It's not even a "slowly moving unstoppable steamroller"... the darn thing supersped towards me; and their very first attack would have one-shot me even without the effects of the "Diseased" debuff. In my second encounter with them a regular attack (Crushing Blow) dealt 3560HP worth of Negative Energy damage before my damage resistances; and that was at their minimum level of Lv54+5.

Sure it's technically killable... but without oodles of friendly Level Shifts in play you're talking capped Tanker levels of MaxHP and Damage Resistance to survive even a hit or two from them - and that's before their apparently considerable amount of -MaxHP debuffs
 

 

I will say the one time I did get to test fighting the minotaur, I was able to hold my own against it for a minute or two with my only outside buff being a widow using link, and without popping purple or orange insps (including no draught or ultimate); zone level shift was +2 or +3 at the time, IIRC, and minotaur was only at +5.  The only reason I actually went down was Streak-breaker triggering on Plague Howl and crushing me under a mountain of toxic damage and debuff.  I'm curious to go back and retest that tanking fight with a draught on to protect from disease.

[KaizenSoze]

48 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Have to say this was my experience too - the rest of the mobs are soloable slowly... but the minotaur ignores stealth (and largely ignores defence too due to the level scaling and inherent 150% Accuracy and 63.75% ToHit bonus) and kerbstomps you.

You run as soon as you see the mino or placate him. Placate does work, unless they changed that recently.

 

Either way you need to beat feet to the nearest door.

[Maelwys]

47 minutes ago, Unknown Magi said:

 

I will say the one time I did get to test fighting the minotaur, I was able to hold my own against it for a minute or two with my only outside buff being a widow using link, and without popping purple or orange insps (including no draught or ultimate); zone level shift was +2 or +3 at the time, IIRC, and minotaur was only at +5.  The only reason I actually went down was Streak-breaker triggering on Plague Howl and crushing me under a mountain of toxic damage and debuff.  I'm curious to go back and retest that tanking fight with a draught on to protect from disease.

If you were Lv50+1 (Standard Incarnate with T3+ Alpha) and the zone was giving you another +3 then a Lv54+5 Minotaur would conn +5 to you.
That's *just barely* squeaking into soloable territory for AVs - you'd be taking 155% regular damage and hitting them for 30% regular damage.
 
So "Crushing Blow" should have been dealing about 2935 base damage to you; which a SR Tanker could theoretically get down to ~293 with enough scaling damage resistance - definitely survivable even without any outside healing.
I'd be interested to know what the ToHit rolls were like though for you to be flooring their accuracy... there were no zonewide level shifts in play when my Bane encountered the Minotaur, but I was sitting at a smidge over 50% defense to all positions before being attacked (suppressing to a smidge over 45% whilst attacked). The combat log shows the Minotaur's "Cursed Plague" power apparently had a 95% Hit chance against me; and their Crushing Blow had a 89.24% chance. Even with 63.75% Incarnate ToHit chance and 150% inherent accuracy plus another 15% ToHit from the +8 level scaling, that still seems a tad high to me...
 

Edited July 11 by Maelwys

[Unknown Magi]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

If you were Lv50+1 (Standard Incarnate with T3+ Alpha) and the zone was giving you another +3 then a Lv54+5 Minotaur would conn +5 to you.
That's *just barely* squeaking into soloable territory for AVs - you'd be taking 155% regular damage and hitting them for 30% regular damage.
 
So "Crushing Blow" should have been dealing about 2935 base damage to you; which a SR Tanker could theoretically get down to ~293 with enough scaling damage resistance - definitely survivable even without any outside healing.
I'd be interested to know what the ToHit rolls were like though for you to be flooring their accuracy... there were no zonewide level shifts in play when my Bane encountered the Minotaur, but I was sitting at a smidge over 50% defense to all positions before being attacked (suppressing to a smidge over 45% whilst attacked). The combat log shows the Minotaur's "Cursed Plague" power apparently had a 95% Hit chance against me; and their Crushing Blow had a 89.24% chance. Even with 63.75% Incarnate ToHit chance and 150% inherent accuracy plus another 15% ToHit from the +8 level scaling, that still seems a tad high to me...
 

 

Another member of our group who tested tanking it saw the 95% hit chance you're describing, but I was encountering very low hit chances (I'm not at home to check my combat logs, but I recall seeing at least some attacks coming in at ~9% final hit chance).  The build I was running on Beta was overtuned for defense, clocking around 70% to all positional defenses before outside buff Widow Mind LInk, which IIRC clocks in at around 15%.

[Maelwys]

2 minutes ago, Unknown Magi said:

 

Another member of our group who tested tanking it saw the 95% hit chance you're describing, but I was encountering very low hit chances (I'm not at home to check my combat logs, but I recall seeing at least some attacks coming in at ~9% final hit chance).  The build I was running on Beta was overtuned for defense, clocking around 70% to all positional defenses before outside buff Widow Mind LInk, which IIRC clocks in at around 15%.

Aye the big killer is the effective level difference between the Minotaur and whoever he's hitting.

The only way I can get Crushing Blow's ToHit chance to balance out at "89.24%" vs my VEAT is if the Minotaur's attacks are getting additional buffs on top of the big cow's listed base stats (+63.75 ToHit/150% Acc) and the level differences (against my VEAT who was -8 to the Minotaur it'd be getting +15% ToHit and +50% Acc).
Whilst the exact values involved are tricky to pinpoint from a single data point (the required Accuracy decreases as the ToHit increases; but one example is roughly "+7.5% ToHit plus +50% Accuracy") the same attack versus a foe which is only -5 to them (e.g. your SR Tanker) would get its chance of hitting floored at somewhere between 60%-75% defence.
Therefore with around 70% Defence to start with, I doubt you even needed the buff from Mind Link!

So I'm in favour of lessening the level differences between Players and the Minotaur or making it less damaging/slower/etc whenever there are very small numbers of people in the zone (e.g. It's fine for it to be a major threat, but I dislike the idea of it being completely unbeatable and unsurvivable whenever the rest of the server is asleep...)

[lemming]

One things to note is the Minotaur has different weapons.

 

One time I was doing OK surviving, and another time he smacked me so hard I wound up on a Hami raid on a different server.