Focused Feedback: The Labyrinth of Fog

[BZRKR]

50 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

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

Or knockout blow, with the wind up sound left in:

 

vvvvvvVVVVVVVRRRRRRR *Squeak*

[Spaghetti Betty]

6 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

The HP was less about difficulty and just making sure he survives long enough to feel like he mattered; Did it accomplish that?

It certainly drew the fight out!

 

6 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

More difficulty is like, you mentioned, probably going to be around making Hoof Stomp and the Sand Vortexes more dangerous... Will consider options.

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.

So, I am a melee player. I wasn't sure the Vortexes did much of anything until I ran into one on purpose. The Vortex itself wasn't very bothersome, but being flung into the spikes definitely was!

A little bit of Knock doesn't bother me. I am one of the few players that thought Freem! was a very fun addition. It's just another thing to adapt to!

I guess from my observation, the main issue with the Vortexes seems to be their path? It could also because there isn't a real threat causing melee to want to move away from the Minotaur, but as it stands right now, I had no reason to move from where the team was initially dropped into the arena, and I am never touched by a single Vortex as the Tank.

 

6 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

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

Nerf Gun with Full Auto please!

 

5 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

• 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.
• 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 6 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%.
• Fixed off-by-one discrepancy error in the Minotaur's reported level vs. actual level.
• 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.

I think these will all be great changes! I am all for making things fair for all players, but I am a bit worried about this fight if the intention is for it to be a reasonable challenge for a potential 50 players with a lot of Incarnates being fired off. I'm hoping my small group testing is at least proving he could use some muscle!

If these roll out, it may be in our best interest to schedule a huge testing event to try to get him to spawn at +10!

[Bionic_Flea]

I have no idea if such a thing is possible, but can a critter be granted a power based on number of enemies around?  I'm not talking about something like invincibility, against all odds, rise to the challenge, etc., where you get a stat boost for each enemy in range. 

 

I am talking about giving the Minotaur something like Dull Pain, Phase Shift, or his own incarnate judgment but only when facing a large number of players.  That could be set at 20, 30, 50, whatever works.  If you really want to be mean, give him Dull Pain at 20, Phase Shift at 30, and Judgment at 50!

 

PS - Bonus points if having X mag of control stacked eliminated one or more of those powers (or others), even if the Mino is still active and not fully mezzed.

 

I know, I know . . . no major changes as release date approaches.  Just tossing out ideas.

Edited July 16 by Bionic_Flea

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Nerf Gun with Full Auto please!

Use the Praetorian Chain Gun with Nerf.   (And lots of squeaks on impact)

[Cobalt Arachne]

4 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

but I am a bit worried about this fight if the intention is for it to be a reasonable challenge for a potential 50 players with a lot of Incarnates being fired off

It's meant to be engaging, but not difficult/challenging per se... If it's so easy it's boring that's not fun, but neither is so hard that raids can waste huge amounts of time by failing/not clearing because that's also not fun.

It's not Advanced Mode content, so it's not going be inherently cut-throat about things.

Reward abuse is gated by the timer, but since the Minotaur is up on an hourly rotation, they're meant to be regularly consumed by players rotating in and out of the zone throughout the day, which is why he scales, so they're doable at times that aren't raid prime times.

If you can organize a whole 50 players together then this should be a very-consistent raid just like Hamidon or Mothership raids.

 

4 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

but as it stands right now, I had no reason to move from where the team was initially dropped into the arena

The current idea was melee should be having to maneuver around Hoof Stomps, while range/control deals more with the Sand Vortexes that will cut through their positioning.

That wasn't the original idea, but there were many colorful and lengthy posts about how much melee disliked the idea that their positioning success would have to be dependent on control locking the Vortexes down for them.

[lemming]

I remember the original vortexes just tossing people onto spikes and insta kills everywhere. That was no fun.

 

I think if they are still knocking people around a bit if not held in place is good and giving the hoof stomp the windup with a  huge KB ability is good. That way people aren't just sticking on him and some situational awareness is good.

 

We got abilities to get more people into the fight now with the follow thru fog which eliminated another issue with it.

Spikes are just really painful, another good bit.

 

We need a few people who aren't as skilled as Spaghetti Betty to run some tests. 😉

[Spaghetti Betty]

13 minutes ago, lemming said:

We need a few people who aren't as skilled as Spaghetti Betty to run some tests. 😉

Please don't inflate my ego! I am the most humble creature to ever exist in all of history!

 

But thankie for the compliment

[fiend]

tried this with some friends, but we were too few to make meaningful progress without the OP QA powers, so instead we just tried to get out of bounds with our various devilish tricks in different areas (a favored pastime)... after like an hour of doing it, successfully getting through some walls sometimes (particularly in Arachnos base areas), but always getting kicked out before we could get fully in the void between floors, out of bounds seems insanely locked down! really solid mapping as far as we could test

 

only thing is that we were able to use the "put a prestige wisp/drone pet on the other side of a wall and teleport to it" trick in the labyrinth maze proper to skip through some dead ends, ultimately being able to use it to reach the end by just picking a direction and crawling that way. but I don't think it actually helped us that much or saved that much time tbh

Edited July 17 by fiend

[Cobalt Arachne]

14 hours ago, fiend said:

always getting kicked out before we could get fully in the void between floors, out of bounds seems insanely locked down! really solid mapping as far as we could test

Happy to hear somebody appreciate the extra map efforts haha, a large amount of preventative work was put in-place to ensure the zone's functionality remained intact and consistent as much as possible.

The zone was designed to run cleanly and automatically and be able to account for things like the Minotaur trying to hunt somebody out of bounds or getting permanently stuck in the geometry. Hiccups may happen, but the zone will always correct itself in short order (between 3-15 minutes depending on what happened).

It was the biggest hurdle with the Minotaur being a moving, persistent entity and the focus of the zone, with how quirky (like to lodge themselves in walls) City of Heroes NPC behavior sometimes can be with path-finding; It needed to be a zone that would never need GMs to come reset it if the Minotaur got stuck untargetable inside a wall, for example.

 

14 hours ago, fiend said:

only thing is that we were able to use the "put a prestige wisp/drone pet on the other side of a wall and teleport to it" trick in the labyrinth maze proper to skip through some dead ends

Sounds like potential new speed-runner strats to me! 😄

[lemming]

Was following a waypoint and instead of the door which is above it, the waypoint is here.   Also the Minotaur seemed to get stuck trying to get thru there to me.

Location: [-2616.1 -243.6 -3413.3]

 

Just shows his hoof, I think he did run off after a bit.  Addendum: Looks like he reset and then a bit later locked on me again.

Edited July 17 by lemming
more info

[golstat2003]

On 7/15/2024 at 4:55 PM, 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.

 

Now THAT would be cool as hell. 🙂 

[Cobalt Arachne]

9 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

Now THAT would be cool as hell. 🙂 

 

On 7/16/2024 at 8:29 AM, Cobalt Arachne said:

Looking at the following prospective tweaks for next build:

• 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.

😄

[golstat2003]

23 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

It's meant to be engaging, but not difficult/challenging per se... If it's so easy it's boring that's not fun, but neither is so hard that raids can waste huge amounts of time by failing/not clearing because that's also not fun.

It's not Advanced Mode content, so it's not going be inherently cut-throat about things.

Reward abuse is gated by the timer, but since the Minotaur is up on an hourly rotation, they're meant to be regularly consumed by players rotating in and out of the zone throughout the day, which is why he scales, so they're doable at times that aren't raid prime times.

If you can organize a whole 50 players together then this should be a very-consistent raid just like Hamidon or Mothership raids.

 

The current idea was melee should be having to maneuver around Hoof Stomps, while range/control deals more with the Sand Vortexes that will cut through their positioning.

That wasn't the original idea, but there were many colorful and lengthy posts about how much melee disliked the idea that their positioning success would have to be dependent on control locking the Vortexes down for them.

 

The problem is as a Raid event, you have to be careful with requiring too much Control. Especially since this could be on at the same time as another group of players doing Hami. And those control characters would be more needed at Hamidon. That could create a problem of haviing to wait for those control players to be available.

 

EDIT: Not sure if the devs have access to this data. But maybe we can find out how many Controller/Dominator players are on, on say Excelsior during prime time raid times in the evening? 8 - 11:00 pm EST?

 

EDIT2: Someone up thread also suggested instead of knockback, have them do some scaling debuffs?

Edited July 17 by golstat2003

[Luminara]

On 7/16/2024 at 8:29 AM, Cobalt Arachne said:

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.

 

 

You know, if you'd made the Minotaur a marsupial, you could've called that power Trial by Wombat.

 

[DarkRevelation]

On 7/16/2024 at 4:19 PM, lemming said:

We need a few people who aren't as skilled as Spaghetti Betty to run some tests. 😉

I second that, @Spaghetti Betty is incredible.

 

I went in two days ago solo on my 'indestructible' granite tank and did fine with the mobs, but once the Minotaur got to me that HP reducing attack ate me up. At one point I had a max HP of 349, and another time 1 HP.  I was the only person in zone, so it kept coming for me and found me within 2-5 min each time. It would stand over me as I lay dead, occasionally popping Axe Cyclone, I guess waiting on me to pop a rez. Using burnout and Barrier I found the defense percentage to keep it from smashing you over and over. 

 

Went in again last night with a friend to see what we could learn. I initially used the same granite tank, and they had a brute. They killed the Minotaur with the QA power when we first met it, so we could explore some. An hour later we fought it again, using burnout and Barrier to keep defense up high enough, and killed it, albeit 'cheating'.  An hour after that we fought it straight up with the brute and I swapped to a controller, and we were able to beat it without using burnout. I don't want to give away too much and spoil the encounter, but there are multiple ways to beat it. Neither of us was on a *meta* build. We both play a lot though, and understand the characters we used and why we use them. I wanted to bring in a Kin defender to check for 'to hit' on the scaled mobs but it would have been slaughtered with just two of us, damn aggro cap. It wasn't a short fight, at all. The tornadoes I didn't even really see while on the granite tank, but I certainly felt them on the controller.  It was a fun fight, and scaling of the Minotaur on a low population server will be very much welcomed. I'm certain that this will be the case down the line for some servers, as there may only ever be a few in here at certain times. We were the only two in the zone for several hours last night. It would have been impossible if it wasn't scaled. We explored the violet/orange zones in the place after you beat the Minotaur (through the white vortex). Orange was my favorite simply because of the mob composition. We thought it was more difficult than the violet. We never found the motes, but we plan on going back with a larger group soon.

 

We had a really good time, and I see us using it in the future a good bit. The XP/inf was great, the mobs are interesting, and the zones/changes/etc. are fun. At the very least it gives an option to go to at 50 with a group to grind some vet levels or to get shards that isn't DA or running through Cim over and over. Very thankful for the TP to a buddy feature. 

 

I appreciate that someone wants there to be actual roles again in the game. It is going to require thought and planning as what to bring, and how to attack it. We picked what classes/roles we brought for a reason. You're not going to beat this unless you utilize multiple roles if you have a smaller group. I'm sure it can be zerged with a large group/raid. You need buffs/debuffs/control/dmg/tank, and I am happy that this is back in some shape/form/fashion again in the game. Facerolling through +4/8 isn't exactly exciting. 

 

I thought it was very well done., and it is obvious the amount of work that went into it. Thank you very much @Cobalt Arachne !

[Bionic_Flea]

Just to make sure, I made a level 1 throw away character and tried to get into the Labyrinth.  As predicted, I couldn't get in and got a little error message UI, basically saying 45+ only.

 

What I did not predict it that the Map icon would not even be visible until I trained to level 45.  Once I was trained to 45, the marker became visible and I could enter.

 

This concludes this test of the Emergency Flea System.

[Herah]

On 7/16/2024 at 4:16 PM, Cobalt Arachne said:

If you can organize a whole 50 players together then this should be a very-consistent raid just like Hamidon or Mothership raids.

 

I have a feeling that running a league inside of this would be the closest to herding cats you could get. My initial thought is this might resemble a SNS rather than a Hami raid. Each 'team' could take on different levels and then group up for the minotaur. This is me thinking out loud, but maybe in the context of a league, the (minotaur) difficultly, resistances, or special attacks scale. I guess in the context of a Hami raid, that certain AT have certain functions to make a successful encounter overall. And maybe it's already like that, technical aspects of the game fly right over my head much of the time.

 

Overall I don't know that I can speak to any of the technical aspects of the raid zone, as my focus is usually on team/league dynamics. I will say that I am intrigued this new zone. It offers content that is fresh and challenging to 'end content' players. What my take away from this is that this brings us back to a time that you need to actually think about your teams composition. And while I've only been in the labyrinth the one time so far, I have been thinking about what that ideal team would be.

 

Many of the suggestions that were offered from our "Hami wishlist" have ended up here and I really appreciate that. Everything from AFKers getting kicked to lobby to the fact that (from the sounds of it) that the map is tight enough to prevent out of bound griefers. Even leaving a toon 'parked' there that will restart in the lobby is a smart choice since there are multiple options on which way to go. I also appreciate that inherently an option to "catch up" to the team has been added, as getting separated from the team w/ no clear way to catch up is more aggravation than some people can tolerate for long (myself included).

 

If I had to make a comparison, this definitely feels like a dungeon encounter. The fog (of war) really does make it feel like you have no idea where to go and that you should stick together for safety. It feels like going on an adventure, and for the time being, I am in no hurry to find ways to streamline or optimize a raid other than settling on a good team composition. IDK if this adds an useful information other than pointing out what I like about it so far. 

 

4 hours ago, DarkRevelation said:

Facerolling through +4/8 isn't exactly exciting. 

 

Speak for yourself. It's kind of my 'thing'. LOL

[DarkRevelation]

16 minutes ago, Herah said:

 

I have a feeling that running a league inside of this would be the closest to herding cats you could get. My initial thought is this might resemble a SNS rather than a Hami raid.

 

On Torch each Saturday night we do the 'Saturday Night Synapse' raid. Multiple raids doing Synapse each week, and the overflow leagues (usually 2) all converge in Skyway City to assist when the leagues all hit the Babbage mission around the same time. Roughly 4-5 leagues in Skyway with 18-28 Babbages. It is fun, extremely chaotic, and with some very real lag which is part of the charm. Chaos abounds with almost 200 players. That is what SNS is for those who didn't know. 

 

22 minutes ago, Herah said:

Overall I don't know that I can speak to any of the technical aspects of the raid zone, as my focus is usually on team/league dynamics. I will say that I am intrigued this new zone. It offers content that is fresh and challenging to 'end content' players. What my take away from this is that this brings us back to a time that you need to actually think about your teams composition. And while I've only been in the labyrinth the one time so far, I have been thinking about what that ideal team would be.

@Herah, aka Tots, is who ran it with me last night. Like @Spaghetti Betty they are very humble, and a helluva player. 

 

 

There are more than enough of us out there that miss having to think and plan for an encounter, figuring out what works and what doesn't. Thank you again @Cobalt Arachne, and keep 'em coming.

[Jacke]

8 hours ago, Herah said:

I have a feeling that running a league inside of this would be the closest to herding cats you could get.

 

I've been on a few runs on the Labyrinth on Closed Beta.  Though the Raid Zone has changed quite a bit over the last few weeks, I think my experience still applies.  Running the Labyrinth will evolve like the other Raids to match how it performs at the moment.

 

I think it's best run by keeping the League mostly together.  The Mobs are much tougher that usual, especially with Level Shifts, and even a Team may not have all the tools to survive while avoiding losing a lot of members.  There can be Players with good stealth and skilled at avoiding or moving quickly past Mobs who ignore stealth (Rikti Drones, Rularuu Sentries) or with longer Perception (Snipers, Turrets) to hunt down the Malevolent Fog and either defeat them themselves or call in some more to do so.  Follow Through the Fog is set up just to aid getting back with the League or going to assist particular League Members.

 

In certain key spots, it will be vital for the League to work together to put down the Minotaur as expeditiously as possible.  Knowing when things are right for this is key, otherwise it's best for the League to run away and regroup.  When going after the Minotaur, there are a few special roles that will get added to the tactics.

[DarkRevelation]

Went back in last night to test again. We saw the popup at 75% when we went to the arena. we saw it again at 50% and 25% as well. At one point we let the health go back over one of those percentages and got the popup again. It was a little distracting asking us if we wanted to go to the arena when we were already there, but we just clicked through it and kept going. We were able to take it down again. We tried other power sets/classes, and got stomped. We have ideas on other things to try against the Minotaur and will test them as possible. 

 

We explored the maze a bit, got hopelessly lost, but it was fun looking around.

[Cobalt Arachne]

1 hour ago, DarkRevelation said:

Went back in last night to test again. We saw the popup at 75% when we went to the arena. we saw it again at 50% and 25% as well. At one point we let the health go back over one of those percentages and got the popup again.

Will look into this; Shouldn't be firing more than once ever.

Update: I can't get this to happen locally...
As soon as I accept the prompt, the power that creates it vanishes from the Minotaur's power list and doesn't fire again.
If this is still happening on Brainstorm's release candidate build, I'll need more details, as I can't reproduce it to test for causes.

[lemming]

I managed to see it fire off multiple times when I was the only one in the labyrinth and refused it, so the Mino didn't port to the arena either.  I did not have him try to port me when I was in the arena though later.

[DarkRevelation]

2 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Will look into this; Shouldn't be firing more than once ever.

Update: I can't get this to happen locally...
As soon as I accept the prompt, the power that creates it vanishes from the Minotaur's power list and doesn't fire again.
If this is still happening on Brainstorm's release candidate build, I'll need more details, as I can't reproduce it to test for causes.

 

What do you need from me that would help you the most?

[Cobalt Arachne]

2 hours ago, DarkRevelation said:

 

What do you need from me that would help you the most?

Unsure, if I knew how to reproduce it, I wouldn't need to ask.

That's what's difficult; There's no HP thresholds activation AI, it's an auto-power that fires automatically when the Minotaur goes below 75% HP at all, that governs the arena teleport and it activating at all revokes itself, so it activating at 50%/25% makes no sense because it's not possible with how any of the Minotaur works.

 

If it happens again, let me know, maybe new details will come to light that will explain what you saw.

No other reports, I can't get it to happen in my dev box, and it doesn't line up with the code I wrote, so unfortunately there's nothing I can do with this; What you're claiming happened shouldn't be possible, and I can't reproduce it. 😥
 

[Spaghetti Betty]

Maybe I'll see it when I dive back in on Sunday night!

 

Consider this an open invitation to join me Sunday night around midnight CST