Focused Feedback: The Labyrinth of Fog

[Spaghetti Betty]

Yargh! I forgot to post some feedback!

 

I staged a small run with a group of 12 (including me) last Tuesday!

 

I do believe this captures the essence of "Halloween Motel but a dungeon crawl" 100%! Running through the maps gathering herds was a lot of fun (I was one of the Tanks)! Although, we went in as the Minotaur was on a small cooldown (think it was 30 minutes or so), so that could've possibly influenced what I'm about to say! Also, I'm an extremely biased player!

 

An entire "gameplay loop" (grind mobs, kill Minotaur, repeat) is very much doable by a team of 8 Incarnates. We eventually had one person (me) scouting ahead for opportune herding spots to maximize uptime on level shifts. If I didn't immediately see dense spawns, I cycled floors and had everyone TP to me. This allowed us to get to and maintain 10 shifts for the 20 minutes we were waiting on the Minotaur. A word to the wise: If you are just intending on getting shifts, just kill the EBs! The other mobs don't matter as much towards getting them.

 

Speaking of the Minotaur - once again, bias coming into play - I think he might be a little too easy*? He is absolutely going to trounce anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves alone, but when he spawned on top of my party (in a PPD station, no less), we didn't even notice that we had lost all of our shifts. We just went right to town on him at +6. I found it very interesting that damaging the Minotaur will cause everyone in the zone to be ported to the arena. This is a really nice feature! It serves as a great checkpoint to pick up solo adventurers and redisperse. 60 minutes seems like a really long time to wait for the guy, though, as there isn't much else to do for a full league outside of going back to grinding mobs (and maybe finding hidden doors). I think someone suggested having zone events randomly take place inside the Labyrinth? That's a really good idea! Make it the everything zone!

 

I haven't been able to get through the Gate of Darkness or whatever yet, because I have no idea where all of the motes are! Whoever hid them either needs a raise because they did such a great job or fired because they are the most evil person on the planet!

 

TL;DR This is definitely group content but it's going to be a breeze for 8 coordinated players or more. Bring a group of friends if you want to focus on badges and stuff!

 

 

*-We had at least 8 debuffers and 12 Lores so this definitely played a major part!

Edited July 15 by Spaghetti Betty

[lemming]

27 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Minotaur will cause everyone in the zone to be ported to the arena.

I don't think it's everyone since I've had times when he's gone to the arena without everyone, but it doesn't seem strictly team related.  (I got ported once minding my own business.  Might be a distance thing, not sure.

[lemming]

29 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I have no idea where all of the motes are!

Someone did find them all and we do have the locations noted now.   I am still double checking, but I think all motes are not far away from spots you get dropped at.  (Orange floor is a bit of a ways, but not too far).  They do make a sound, but ones like the green one are high up enough you wouldn't hear it.

[lemming]

Did a bit more checking around, found my way thru the Cow Door though there is a one time cost in order to be able to go thru both sides.  And this does give you access to the Orange Levels, though so does Follow thru Fog.

 

Found another friendly gladiator that hung out with me.  He does not help against Malevolent Fogs however.  When he left, I did get a Draught.

 

Speaking of Fogs, they are now doable solo quite easily.  Not a speed bump, but done long before one would get bored.

[Cobalt Arachne]

21 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Speaking of the Minotaur - once again, bias coming into play - I think he might be a little too easy*?

I was feeling the same thing...
Was this on the most recent July 13th Brainstorm build that includes the new scaling HP total on the Minotaur?

 

21 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I found it very interesting that damaging the Minotaur will cause everyone in the zone to be ported to the arena. This is a really nice feature!

Almost! He teleports everyone in a 250ft radius when his HP hits ~75%.

[Cobalt Arachne]

18 hours ago, lemming said:

Found another friendly gladiator that hung out with me.  He does not help against Malevolent Fogs however.  When he left, I did get a Draught.

The friendly gladiator has MM pet controls, he should respond and act with the full control suite. You can tell him what to attack, or to attack at all.

[Cobalt Arachne]

On 7/12/2024 at 10:47 AM, Bionic_Flea said:

is it possible or desirable to have a certain color zone start at a lower level shift than the others

Not possible to spawn dynamically without redoing the entire zone's setup, possible maybe someday, but absolutely not happening this late in the Page.

The color of the floors are meant to signify WHO (which enemy groups) you will be fighting on the floor, not what difficulty level they are (except Violet floors which are harder intentionally).

 

On 7/12/2024 at 10:47 AM, Bionic_Flea said:

could we also add a S.T.A.R.T. vendor (fka P2W) to Midnighter Club?

This is probably something we can look into.

[Bionic_Flea]

Thanks for the response.  Understood that it's late in the development so unlikely to change soon.  But at least . . .

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

The friendly gladiator has MM pet controls, he should respond and act with the full control suite. You can tell him what to attack, or to attack at all.

Figured that out later, will have to see if I can double check, but if so, should be good.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Almost! He teleports everyone in a 250ft radius when his HP hits ~75%

Voot!  I thought it might be something like that.  And easy for anyone else to then join if they're in the league/team

[lemming]

Would it be possible for the Mote buff to stay active until they exited the Midnight Club?   (Heck, it would awesome if you could pop into your base and not lose that, but that may be too much)

 

That way if you have a group, it's a bit easier to sell, use the empowerment station, train, etc... without losing progress.

 

Has anyone been able to test Folllow thru the Fog if you have more than once instance of the Labyrinth?

[Cobalt Arachne]

45 minutes ago, lemming said:

Would it be possible for the Mote buff to stay active until they exited the Midnight Club?

They're flagged as non-persistent (for safety reason) and changing that would involve adjusting the way the whole thing is handled; Not impossible, but not sure the huge amount of work redoing them in Lua instead is worth it for the marginal gain of being able to keep them in the Midnighter Club.

Retaining them in SG bases would not be possible without integrating Lua script hosts into all SG bases; I don't know how to do that, and I can't imagine that's in-scope for this feature for me to pull other devs in to figure out.

 

47 minutes ago, lemming said:

Has anyone been able to test Folllow thru the Fog if you have more than once instance of the Labyrinth?

This is not possible, for the same reason as Teleport Target; You can't target somebody who is on a different mapserver than you.

 

[Spaghetti Betty]

2 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

I was feeling the same thing...
Was this on the most recent July 13th Brainstorm build that includes the new scaling HP total on the Minotaur?

It wasn't! This was on July 9th. I guess I could try and wrangle some people up for another go!

 

2 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Almost! He teleports everyone in a 250ft radius when his HP hits ~75%.

I see. I had a couple of randoms get picked up when my group was ported, so I assumed it was the entire zone.

I think it should be a zone-wide TP! This would serve as a way to grab any stragglers that haven't found their way into the League already! Not only that, but due to the nature of the Labyrinth, I think it's a little bit easier to expect than randomly being pulled from whatever floor you're on just because it's technically close enough! Maybe have a way to opt in/out if possible?

[Cobalt Arachne]

5 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

It wasn't! This was on July 9th. I guess I could try and wrangle some people up for another go!

This would be incredibly appreciated; The Minotaur's new HP scaling is about the very last thing that hasn't been stress-tested yet, and is not something I can realistically do by myself.

If you make time for another run on the scaling HP Minotaur's setup, I would be extremely interested and thankful for any test data and feedback!

 

5 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I had a couple of randoms get picked up when my group was ported, so I assumed it was the entire zone.
I think it should be a zone-wide TP!

Maybe have a way to opt in/out if possible?

Hmm, surprising! I wouldn't have thought 250ft was enough to grab people far enough away that weren't participating...
Not really a way to opt/in out, since it's mostly just Lua doing a distance check and if you qualify moving you.

I could make it zone-wide very easily, but it would mean that occasionally people might get pulled into the raid who aren't interested in participating, but at the same time, if you weren't, you can still get a couple hits in on the Minotaur and get defeat credit, so maybe making it zone-wide is the right move.

Anybody else have thoughts on making the Minotaur's challenge to combat summon all players in the whole zone? (I would make it exclude the entrance lobby, core, and secrets)

[Seed22]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Anybody else have thoughts on making the Minotaur's challenge to combat summon all players in the whole zone? (I would make it exclude the entrance lobby, core, and secrets)

I dont think that’d be a good idea for soloers just trying to grab things in the Labyrinth

[Fade]

When he gets to the appropriate health, could he spawn a pseudopet that offers a TP to everyone in the zone? That way it could be opt-in for people who are far away but wouldn't just grab them.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

They're flagged as non-persistent (for safety reason) and changing that would involve adjusting the way the whole thing is handled; Not impossible, but not sure the huge amount of work redoing them in Lua instead is worth it for the marginal gain of being able to keep them in the Midnighter Club.

Retaining them in SG bases would not be possible without integrating Lua script hosts into all SG bases; I don't know how to do that, and I can't imagine that's in-scope for this feature for me to pull other devs in to figure out.

 

This is not possible, for the same reason as Teleport Target; You can't target somebody who is on a different mapserver than you.

 

That all makes sense and was suspected.

[Cobalt Arachne]

26 minutes ago, Fade said:

When he gets to the appropriate health, could he spawn a pseudopet that offers a TP to everyone in the zone? That way it could be opt-in for people who are far away but wouldn't just grab them.

This is a thought... Though it will mean redoing the whole setup in a different way; I'll look into this.

[Bionic_Flea]

I can see people being REALLY upset if they were one hit away from defeating a piñata and get pulled away.  Giving players agency as to whether to be teleported or not is the way to go, IMO.

[Spaghetti Betty]

10 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

This would be incredibly appreciated; The Minotaur's new HP scaling is about the very last thing that hasn't been stress-tested yet, and is not something I can realistically do by myself.

If you make time for another run on the scaling HP Minotaur's setup, I would be extremely interested and thankful for any test data and feedback!

I just got done with another test run!

 

So, this time I made sure to only bring a team of 8. The Minotaur was actually active when we entered, so he was a looming factor. He definitely did hurt a little bit charging into us at +6 while fighting Seers, Arachnoids, and IDF, so we ended up having to vacate until we gained some shifts. One thing that was noticed was that he spawned at +6, but the nav bar notated him at +5.

With our hodgepodge team (it was 3 Tanks, an FF and time Def, kin corr, stalker, blaster), we decided to give the big guy a clear advantage and fight him with only 3 shifts.

I am sorry to say that it felt even easier this time! Our team was definitely way less dialed in this go around (the last run included a handful of colds, a TA, and a kin), but he was just simply not very threatening once we stood our ground. I am going to attribute it to Incarnate spam, honestly. With Barrier up, Hoof Stomp could not even down our squishies. Speaking of Hoof Stomp, I did notice he started firing it off a lot sooner. Like, way sooner!

I'm not sure that giving him more HP is the right idea. Just speaking from experience, more HP doesn't necessarily mean more difficulty. I'm thinking there needs to be some kind of outside meddling with the fight or some such. Shouldn't the sand vortexes be a bit more annoying? They don't seem to do much.

 

We also took the time to gather all of the badges in order to enter the final door, so I'll detail my experience with that below!

Spoiler

I'll be completely honest when I say I feel the reward for getting on the other side is just a little bit underwhelming! I was half expecting some kind of big final fight or something. It really does seem like there should be a lot more payoff for what is essentially a lot of guesswork (you know, without looking stuff up or getting help) than another Prestige Costume, but I also get the need to not bar valuable rewards from less skilled casual busy players that can't invest a lot of time!

The reason Excalibonk works as a reward is because the squeaky noise gives the serotonin! Staring at a blue guy doesn't really do that! At least, not for me.

 

I do still believe the Labyrinth is perfect for its intended purpose: a fun romp for those that want something fresh to look at while they're grinding. I am just someone RPing as a powergamer that wishes for more to sink my teeth into!

[Cobalt Arachne]

4 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I just got done with another test run!

Super appreciated!

 

4 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

more HP doesn't necessarily mean more difficulty.

The HP was less about difficulty and just making sure he survives long enough to feel like he mattered; Did it accomplish that?
More difficulty is like, you mentioned, probably going to be around making Hoof Stomp and the Sand Vortexes more dangerous... Will consider options.
 

4 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Shouldn't the sand vortexes be a bit more annoying?

Hmmm; They originally were non-resistable KB, and had to be Mez'd in order to manage them, but we got constant complaints about it from melee players.
I could revert that but I'm sure they would complain again. Not sure what to do there that makes them more threatening but not annoying. Open to thoughts and feedback here.

 

4 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

We also took the time to gather all of the badges in order to enter the final door

This was added as something extra after everything else was done for explorers to find, it wasn't really a part of the raid per se, just something extra I threw in so that explorers had more meat to sink their teeth into in terms of things to find and lore to reveal.
Sounding like I should start adding alternate Nerf Bat powers to everything, they're quite popular it seems. 😏

[Bionic_Flea]

2 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Sounding like I should start adding alternate Nerf Bat powers to everything, they're quite popular it seems. 😏

Quote

The reason Excalibonk works as a reward is because the squeaky noise gives the serotonin!

 

Just make costumes squeak!

[Luminara]

4 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Not sure what to do there that makes them more threatening but not annoying.

 

 

-Res, -Def and -ToHit that increases over time.  Small stacking percentage per tick that lasts long enough to be dangerous if they're not handled within a certain time span.

[Cobalt Arachne]

35 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Just make costumes squeak!

Nerf Shoes power that does the Eagle's Claw animation for no damage and a squeak on allies?

[Cobalt Arachne]

Looking at the following prospective tweaks for next build:

Spoiler

• Added a Lua function that can set or remove a token that allows or disallows Beta Test powers in this zone dynamically instead of requiring changes to the Lua script running on the zone. This will let us turn it on as needed for tests.
• When defeated, Malevolent Fogs now grant Reward Merits to everyone present in the zone, except to dead characters or those in the entrance lobby, the Core, or a secret area.
  • If you are alive and eligible to be hunted by the Minotaur, you are eligible to receive the zone-wide Reward Merit drops.
  • This is to reduce the burden of movement for defeat credit placed on League organizers.
• Malevolent Fog Reward Merit count reduced from 2 to 1.
• Minotaur's Trial By Combat now teleports all players in the zone to participate in the boss fight.
  • Being challenged to Trial By Combat now has a 20 second confirmation pop-up and can be dismissed if not interested in fighting the Minotaur.
• Minotaur inherent resistances increased by 10%, up to 60% total.
• Fixed off-by-one discrepancy error in the Minotaur's reported level vs. actual level; The zone's 9th player should put the Minotaur to +6.
• Hoof Stomp's damage increased by 50%.
• Hoof Stomp's -RES/-DMG debuffs doubled in duration. 15 seconds to 30 seconds.
• The 50% -RES(Negative) debuff from getting hit by Hoof Stomp now unresistable.
• Increased the hit range of the Sand Vortex's attack (not suction) by 2ft to a total of 9ft.
• Sand Vortex's -ToHit and -DEF debuffs doubled in duration. 8 seconds to 16 seconds.
• Sand Vortex's -ToHit and -DEF debuff from Sand Vortexes now stack instead of refresh.
• Sand Vortex's -Perception is now 100% chance to proc and debuff set at -90% for 3 seconds.
• Sand Vortex's -Perception debuff is now unresistable.
• Third Eye activation rate sped up by 5 seconds, now cycles every 40 seconds. Increased To-Hit granted by 10%.
• Completing the puzzle with the motes no longer requires owning Conqueror of the Labyrinth.
• Being able to enter the True Core now checks if you own the Gladiator In The Fog costume rather than owning Mote of the Gladiator.
• Warrior ally pet is now 85% resistant to all damage so they're more useful in the context of the zone.
• Increased chance of Warrior ally spawning instead of a Gladiator from 1/25 to 1/20.
• Removed yellow spawn that was close enough to the yellow portal entry point that they could aggro.
• Randomizer tunnel now also inflicts -Jump to ensure gravity's embrace can continue their work unimpeded.