So, does anyone remember the Incarnate Trials of CoH?
You had a bunch of heroes of the maximum level going to fight one super duper ultimate enemy. These often became puzzle bosses as the bosses had a specific way to be beaten or various steps.
And they felt damn heroic. You weren't just beating up a super villain, you were disabling his generators to stop him blowing up the city. You were fighting off his hordes of minions.
And I would love to see something similar in various missions, tasks force and trials.
Let me just throw out an idea or two.
[B]Trial-like Boss[/B]
You are chasing down a scientist who has a Hyde like evil side with super powers, something like the Lizard crossed with Hulk. He is causing a path of destruction downtown.
You are now chasing after him, fighting his various experiments which he released to slow you down.
So the first step would be street sweeping. You would have a time limit and need to get something like 60% to move on. If you do it within a certain time period, there is a badge. If you get 100% there is a badge.
Once you've cleared it out you chase him down to an active construction yard. The next step would be rescuing the workers using various travel powers, running across steel girders, flying up, while also distracting the boss. Maybe a badge for rescuing them in a time limit or a specific order.
Next up, he decides to climb up the building, so you follow. One of his co-workers manages to give you the antidote, so your next step is to run around dodging the stuff he throws down at you which knocks you back and give him a dose.
Once that is done he is weakened and your job is to knock him out using more of the antidote to weaken him further as needed. Maybe a badge if you don't use any extra.
Now that, to me, is a good example of a trial like boss.
[B]Puzzle Boss[/b]
You reach the inner most sanctum of the Generic Alien Warlord! He is about to activate his supercalifragilistic laser that will wipe the city of the map! Not on your watch! He locks the laser onto the city and the count down starts.
He uses his teleportation ray to send members of your team to rooms that go off from this room to buy himself more time while he puts up his shield. "Muhahaha, you will never get past my photonic disruption shield" What is that in the other room he keeps teleporting your team mates too? A photonic disruption shield disruptor? Use it on him and you can hit him again.
What is that? He is drawing on the ships power to make himself even stronger! The laser runs on the ships power too. If you pull him into this room, you can make him hit the power generator and redirect some of the power from the laser into him giving you more time and overloading him so he can't get any more.
He is summoning all his minions he had in reserve? And has dropped and biometrically locked the shields that were keeping them out down? If you pull him over to the console you can use his biometrics to put the shields up and stop adds spawning.
[B]One more thing...[/b]
A challenge mode is always loved. It gives people something to work for. It gives them a goal. It can be used to tune encounters to different skill levels and play styles. And it gives your hard-core players something to show off. A rare badge, a chance at better gear etc.
Thoughts?
Are you asking for our thoughts on the examples you give or the idea itself?
We do plan to have encounters in the game require strategy and puzzle-like methods. There are things that are difficult for the character, leveraging game mechanics, and things that are difficult for players - leveraging tactics (timings, specific actions, etc...). Both are useful in creating an engaging experience.
We do plan to have a system we call Challenges and Achievements. These can result in cumulative rewards over time. Many of these will be marked by badges. One example is earning an Achievement for going completing a Challenge undefeated. For instanced missions, this would of course be Completing the Mission Objectives Challenge. The more times this is done, they'll eventually result in a badge and bonus awards.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I have always hated 'Boss Fight' mechanics where you have to figure out, usually by trial and error, some ultra-specific and esoteric method to take down the target. I don't mind a boss being difficult to overcome. That's kind of the point of a boss...but if he has an Achilles heel that is the ONLY route to victory, then that should be made evident up front.
It doesn't have to be a big sign with flashing arrows saying "YOU HAVE TO DESTROY SHIELD GENERATORS TO MAKE HIM VULNERABLE!" But it also shouldn't be some complicated kabuki dance that has no rational connection to the immediate circumstance or is not based on previous knowledge provided somewhere in-game.
Don't get me wrong, I definitely do NOT want every arch-villain battle to simply consist of dog-piling damage on an obvious target until they fall down. Not at all. I enjoy discovering, or determining, the most effective and efficient way to bring down the bad guy. But I should be able to do it based on intelligent observation, pre-knowledge of the target character or evidence presented either before, or in the early stages of, the fight. It's okay if, once I've figured out that I need to hit that gap in the armor to do any serious damage, and that is a tough target and it takes a while, all the time dodging for cover and spamming health. (OK, I recognize this mechanic doesn't exactly apply to CoT, I'm just using something familiar for illustration.)
I think it's despicable, and consider it lazy design, if the only way for the majority of the community to get through a particular fight is to look up the procedure posted on a wiki from the poor saps who did it a hundred times to figure it out. Yes, I'm talking about the typical WoW-type battle where it's "Everybody stand here. Now quick, run over there! Wait until he does 'this', then hit him 'there' until 'this' happens. Then, run back over there." Repeat. And if you don't know exactly what to do when, you die. Blam. Every time, no contest.
At the very least, after trying and failing a few times, then finally happening upon the proper tactic I should say, "Oh geez, of COURSE! That makes sense, duh, shoulda seen that." It could have been intelligence gathered by your contact, or something a henchman let slip during interrogation (encouraging folks to actually read some of the dialog.) It could be something present but not obvious during the fight, like a display glowing to indicate a 'ready' status before the boss attacks. Or more subtle, like the boss tries to stay between you and an object, "protecting" it and won't stray too far from it.
I'd even be okay if there was some kind of 'universal indicator' that becomes customary to the players. Like some objects having a glow that says, This Is Important. A convention like that is fairly common in games and would not require a lot of specific experience with CoT to comprehend. (But it's kinda cheap and I'd feel a bit like I'm being spoon-fed, robbing me of the occasional AHA! moment)
So, long post, but to sum up: Give me a challenge. But give me a challenge that has some rational underpinnings so that I can figure it out MYSELF (or with my teammates) DURING the fight from clues that actually add up. (Even if its not the first or second try.) The Devs' challenge, as always, is to find the balance between challenge and frustration, effort and reward, fun and simplicity.
I fully admit to having elevated hopes.
I liked the Lambda Trial with the "get grenades and acids to use later, and HURRY!" runs, and the Abandoned Sewers "get weapons to use on octopus, drop shields, etc". I'm fine with all of that stuff. As long as it's not, as others have suggested, PURELY invisible to everyone until it's found.
The classic example of this is Super Mario Bros. Like 90% of the vertical pipes went nowhere, some went to cool sub-maps where you could get stuff. 99% of the time you went off the bottom of the screen, you dies instantly, then there were some places where you did not. Visual and logical cues are needed to make this kind of stuff at least somewhat apparent to players.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
No no, these are just bare bones examples of what I mean by a puzzle boss or trial boss, ya know.
I've played in "figure it out" MMOs where you are given the tools to work it out with timers for AoEs, red text/emote announcements, looking at buffs and debuffs and examining the enviroment. I've played CoH where it spells it out and even tracks the number of things you have to do.
I much prefer the CoH way where it says "do this" and leaves how you do it up to you.
Sounds perfect! Using CoH as a point of refrence going from 1 being whale on bosses (like archvillians in early stories) and 10 being MoM trial, where do you aim for things to mostly fall?
I agree with you totally about the grenades. That was a very very fun trial, as you could play it in so many ways (my fave being having the newbies go as one big group and then experienced/geared players acting as lone wolfs zipping around, crossing paths, pulling rooms etc).
And going slightly off topic but the Mario pipes/pits I think are perfect. They encourage discovery and exploration. Extra Credits did an excellent episode about how Mario is the perfect intro to a game because it sets everything up so well, rewards good play, shows where bad play is bad but offers you a hand and encourages exploration and replayability :P
Another thing was, far and away, my fave trial was the Keyes reactor one. For people who didn't know it had 4 parts. The first 3 were you running around shutting off the reactors and slowly building on the mechanics (click terminals, provide power to terminals and kill their guards, bring the boss to terminals) etc and then it ended with an awesome fight, that explained itself very well while being mechanically difficult enough to make it interesting for all levels of player.
Gotcha...
My personal feeling on puzzles in encounters is that they are seldom used in interesting ways. (gonna start out negative but it does get better)
Most take the form of repetition of a specific activity in order to succeed. Things like destroying the generator to knock down the foes ultra shield for a short period until the next generator kicks in, or continuously luring the invulnerable boss to his personal kryptonite that seems to be scattered around the area for your convenience. Its just so contrived and dull to me.
Repetition is not the only things I dislike about traditional puzzles. For example ...the use of temp powers as a plot device... If the story says the bad guy is so strong that the only way to beat him is by using these special 'deus ex machina' devices that were just devised then maybe some more thought should be put into the encounter. Worse yet would be the cases where its not a temp power the character controls but the inclusion of an npc ally. Your character becomes less important than the plot device and I really do not like that.
I also dislike artificial extensions of the encounter. Those instance when all of a sudden a horde of foes burst in to aid the big bag or cases where you just lose complete control of your character while the foe escapes to the next encounter. Those situations feel forced and not organic at all.
Those are of course generalization and in moderate doses any one of those types of puzzles or challenges can be effective. Its just that they have become an overused option.
For me I would like to see more combination puzzles that don't rely on any single method for success.
I also would like to see much less common options used more. Things like 'denial of position' or 'forced position', division of resources, multiple success parameters (which is different than success avenues), periods of survival (horde like situations), actual puzzle mechanics that influence the Boss's strength and situations of sacrifice.
Denial or forced position would be areas of the map that have an intrinsic advantage or disadvantage for occupying them. This is not just a situation of buffs or debuffs but also ones of attack options and maneuverability. As an example, one area of the map might have a small room and if the villain hides in that area any who follow will find the cramped environment hinders the avoidance of the foes attacks. Another use could be simply to keep a foe away from a specific area or to keep a foe in a specific area as the goal itself.
Division of resources would be a scenario where the success requires multiple goals to take place in different areas at approximately the same time. An example of this would be a villain threatening to launch a space station rocket. The villain is in his castle but the rocket and a bunch of guards are on the space station. The group must split up and tackle both tasks at once.
Multiple success parameter would be allowing for multiple victory conditions. Using the previous example of Villain and rocket, the group can choose to tackle the rocket together as an immediate threat and let the villain escape, or they can hope by defeating the villain the rocket won't be launched and all go for that goal....or if failure is a possibility in game mechanics, they can still split up and one group could succeed while the other does not.
Periods of survival means that the character(s) face either a huge group or never ending stream of enemies and the goal is to not defeat anyone but instead to not be defeated. It can be based on a time limit or just a larger than normal opposition.
Actual puzzles would be mini-game like challenges that upon successful completion would influence combat with the final boss. This could be cases where you 'hack' a computer to turn off alarms or lock down a section of the map to stop extra foes from coming to the boss's aid. Or it can be adding a new ingredient into the mages potions that removes his ability to self heal. Or it can be as simple as turning the turrets in the area on the villain.
Situations of sacrifice are ones where a character actively choose a negative in order for the rest of the group to have a greater success at completion. This is a kind of subsection of resource division but one I find interesting. This can be as minor as a small debuff for the group gaining a larger buff or it can be as elaborate one character being removed from the final fight either by defeat or capture or even something like one character choosing to hold a door closed while everyone else fights to stop more foes from entering.
These increases to the challenge of an encounter can be used alone or in combinations. The villain might have a rocket on a space station and the group might have to split up and once the half gets to the castle it hacks the system to lock the doors on the space station preventing the group protecting the rocket from getting aid. Meanwhile the group on the space station disables the alarm so the villain does not know the rocket is under attack which allows the group in the castle to assault an unaware boss. After the space station half disable the alarm they now stop the rocket. Meanwhile the group in the castle start attacking the Boss who tries to summon his army to his aid but one character decides to sacrifice acting for the rest of the combat by making sure the doors stay closed. While this fight happens the group on the space station find that the soldiers there have finally pried the doors open and are now assaulting the room with what seems like endless waves of foes. The group sees an opportunity to funnel the foes into a smaller room limiting how many can attack them at once while screaming 'Tonight we dine in hell' and 'This is Sparta'. Because I like happy endings....both groups succeed and everyone rejoices.
This is of course an insanely complex and probably not that much fun type of challenge but its just to illustrate how these types of challenges could be used in conjunction.
One thing I absolutely hate is simply giving the foe increased damage and health in an effort to 'simulate' difficulty. It makes these encounters a chore and not a challenge.
As long as it doesn't end up being a case of "we need these specific classes with these specific builds, and if you're a first time explorer-type rather than an achiever-type doing your tenth speed-run, we don't need you." All too often, 'puzzles' only count for the first couple of groups to learn a solution, then it becomes a dogmatic doctrine and cliquishness sets in.
Looks like someone appreciates a good Dresden novel ...
/derail
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
[Url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/shapeshifting]So it would seem.[/url]
Regarding Keovar's points here, I'm not too worried about this dev team falling prey to making "puzzles" that require specific team mix to complete. And while I can see some players of this game (few that I've seen on these forums, but they'll likely show up after launch) doing exclusively speed runs once they've figured the puzzle out, I can also seee a lot of the folks here telling the 1st time explorer, "Sure thing, throw me an invite. Would you like spoilers, or not?" Not much we can do about cliquish behavior except to swamp it under with helpfulness.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
I agree. Although CO did alot of things wrong, the Therakial's Temple lair mission had alot of cool side things you had to do and I thought it was pretty cool.
I think I prefer a TF challenge where the objectives are clearly described and challenging to achieve (BAF and Lambda were good examples of this for me) to one where you have to figure out the One Solution, because -- as others have said -- the latter tends to be less of a mystery to solve and more a prerequisite trip to the internet.
But I'd definitely like to echo the sentiment that avoiding requiring a specific team composition is the most important aspect of any TF design.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Yes, on CoH I played on the Virtue server, Where Jim Butcher had played as Harry Dresden for a little while. My characters were personal creations, but generally consistent with the Dresden Files mythos. For example, all of my CoV-side characters were Denarians. Small Favor was the first audiobook I was able to get after MS started to screw up my vision, so it's a favourite.
Side suggestion: Devs, please remember to make text sizes and colours, as well as other UI elements, configurable so those of us with low vision have some chance of playing as comfortably as possible. When my vision started to go I had been playing LotRO for a few months, and I enjoyed reading the quest text. Unfortunately, that font wasn't resizable at the time (without magnifying the whole UI, anyway), and simply ignoring the story just isn't how I played. Thanks.
You might want to check out [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/what-are-accessibility-features-disabled-you-would-have]this thread[/url] and possibly add it to there, since it is about accessibility.
I'm intrigued by IslandTrevor72's idea about splitting the party in order to accomplish multiple or layered goals. It's kind of a staple in most 'team-up' comics, after all. But I'm having a hard time seeing how it would work in a real-time MMO without someone managing the storyboard, as it were. I'd kind of want the entire team to be present during the climactic scene of the story, so how do you get them back together? And at the same time? What if it takes one team longer than the other to accomplish their side of the mission? What if half the team gets wiped? What does one side do while they are waiting for the other side to finish? I'm not saying theses are insurmountable, but I'm guessing any mechanism that artificially finagles the success of one side or the other to achieve the goal of re-uniting them appropriately will feel as forced as any of the other pitfalls we are discussing here.
However, the idea of having multiple avenues to completion would be interesting. As long as the whole team goes along for the ride. Present a choice to the players. Let's say a Villain has hijacked a cruise ship. He's stolen the passengers' valuables and has scuttled the ship. It is sinking. So you fight minions on deck and through compartments until you finally meet up with the AV who is boarding his submarine with the loot. So you give the players a choice: "The villain is fleeing in his submarine. Do you (A) stay on the ship and make sure the passengers get to safety, perhaps allowing the villain to escape? OR "The Coast Guard is on its way, they may be here in time to save the passengers. Do you (B) pursue the Villain so that he cannot threaten any more innocents?"
Choose (A) and you fight off fanatical minions left behind to stop your efforts and keep you from pursuing while you make your way through the lower decks "re-enabling" the safety cutoffs to stop the ship from sinking. (No timers, just an annoyingly endless horde of bad guys interrupting you from completing your task) In the end, the Coast Guard arrives to transport the passengers and they tell you the Villain got away.
Choose (B) and you force your way onto the sub, battle through corridors and confront the Villain in the bridge/control room and have a boss fight. After defeating him, the Coast Guard picks YOU up and says the cruise ship sank. Only a few passengers remain unaccounted for, but don't worry. Catching the madman was more important. "Who knows how many lives he might have claimed in the future?"
Either path leads to a Completion. Same rewards, same XP, but you get to chose the path that feels right to your character. And of course, if you want, you can play it AGAIN and take the OTHER path with a different character, or just to see how it plays out. Maybe there's an indicator in the choice menu telling you how your choice might affect your alignment?
Maybe, and I'm not sure about this, put the CHOICE on a timer? You have 15 seconds to decide which way to go. There could even be a mechanism that actually lets the team click a 'vote button' to decide. (If it's an even numbered team, the Leader's vote counts for two) Just to lend a little sense of urgency to the decision.
I'm intrigued by IslandTrevor72's idea about splitting the party in order to accomplish multiple or layered goals. It's kind of a staple in most 'team-up' comics, after all. But I'm having a hard time seeing how it would work in a real-time MMO without someone managing the storyboard, as it were. I'd kind of want the entire team to be present during the climactic scene of the story, so how do you get them back together? And at the same time? What if it takes one team longer than the other to accomplish their side of the mission? What if half the team gets wiped? What does one side do while they are waiting for the other side to finish? I'm not saying theses are insurmountable, but I'm guessing any mechanism that artificially finagles the success of one side or the other to achieve the goal of re-uniting them appropriately will feel as forced as any of the other pitfalls we are discussing here.
However, the idea of having multiple avenues to completion would be interesting. As long as the whole team goes along for the ride. Present a choice to the players. Let's say a Villain has hijacked a cruise ship. He's stolen the passengers' valuables and has scuttled the ship. It is sinking. So you fight minions on deck and through compartments until you finally meet up with the AV who is boarding his submarine with the loot. So you give the players a choice: "The villain is fleeing in his submarine. Do you (A) stay on the ship and make sure the passengers get to safety, perhaps allowing the villain to escape? OR "The Coast Guard is on its way, they may be here in time to save the passengers. Do you (B) pursue the Villain so that he cannot threaten any more innocents?"
Choose (A) and you fight off fanatical minions left behind to stop your efforts and keep you from pursuing while you make your way through the lower decks "re-enabling" the safety cutoffs to stop the ship from sinking. (No timers, just an annoyingly endless horde of bad guys interrupting you from completing your task) In the end, the Coast Guard arrives to transport the passengers and they tell you the Villain got away.
Choose (B) and you force your way onto the sub, battle through corridors and confront the Villain in the bridge/control room and have a boss fight. After defeating him, the Coast Guard picks YOU up and says the cruise ship sank. Only a few passengers remain unaccounted for, but don't worry. Catching the madman was more important. "Who knows how many lives he might have claimed in the future?"
Either path leads to a Completion. Same rewards, same XP, but you get to chose the path that feels right to your character. And of course, if you want, you can play it AGAIN and take the OTHER path with a different character, or just to see how it plays out. Maybe there's an indicator in the choice menu telling you how your choice might affect your alignment?
Maybe, and I'm not sure about this, put the CHOICE on a timer? You have 15 seconds to decide which way to go. There could even be a mechanism that actually lets the team click a 'vote button' to decide. (If it's an even numbered team, the Leader's vote counts for two) Just to lend a little sense of urgency to the decision.
I'm not sure why the group would all 'have' be present for the climatic battle as the division of the group could be for the final battle. But If the division occurred before the final encounter then subsequent missions would simply be ones that do not split the group. Or if you want to be creative, design one half of the division mission to be much shorter and have that portion of the group meet up with the other portion inside the mission.
As for how to deal with one side taking longer than the other and the other side waiting after they complete their portion...couple ways off the top of my head... One timer on the split missions that can either be a joint timer or one that begins when one mission is complete (kind of a last chance to finish or fail). Two, make this division occur as the last mission in a trial and each goal providing a portion of the rewards...that way when one side finishes they are able to continue on and their portion of the rewards is given out to both sides and if the other side succeeds as well the rest of the rewards are automatically given to both sides.
If half the team gets wiped....well I'm not sure what you are asking. Team wipes do not usually indicate success or failure...its a setback only. But if you mean what if one half succeeds and the other does not....I kinda explained that....partial rewards.
Are you thinking that I mean when a team divides its resources in this way that the team actually splits in two in the sense that they are no longer a team? If you do I should have made it clearer that is not the intent. The entire point is that they are still a team regardless of who goes where. The reason for the separate instances is to make it less likely that the group attempts to 'game the system' and have the entire group just bounce back and forth....this can just as easily be done in the same instance by using no return paths as well.
Instead of having the group fighting a boss and his space station....have the group enter a bosses murder maze which requires the group to split up and they reunite back at the boss battle.
The entire point is to change the dynamic of challenge based on the choices the players make. If the group splits up in a way where the damage focus characters take one path and the support focus characters go the other it will have a different dynamic than if they divide the team in a more balanced way. Neither should be 'wrong' just different.
This is what I meant by 'multiple success parameters'. With the added idea that in some cases completing more of the options results in a larger reward.
I really really dislike timers on dialogue choices. And voting mechanisms for path choices offer a false sense of input. I prefer in those cases to present the options to the group and let them pick the path organically instead of forcing the group into a specific goal based on a choice made before hand. That's not to say that there can't be some encounter that require a team to choose a specific path similar to the ones you describe, but I think that type of story direction should be used in moderation. Its basically deciding that because of this choice you made there is only this (or these) success parameters. I feel its better to provide all the success parameters in a single encounter and let the players determine then how they will proceed. Of course this can lead to confusion in the groups goals but I think in most cases it will be a better way to present the options to completion of the goal.
How do you account for AFK'ers if the whole team is being asked to vote? :p
I don't want a team vote. I would like them to proceed to the point where multiple options are presented through play and not a drop down menu.
If the mission offers a chance to stop the rampaging robot or defeat the bad guy the group would choose based on how the group reacts in that instance. Perhaps a door leads to one choice or another...perhaps they are both in the same room....it could even be decided based on separate instance missions. The point is they are not a drop down menu. There is no reason the group cannot make choices on pursuing one of the options for mission completion the same way they would choose the next mission itself.....having the team leader with the ultimate choice.
I know one of the 'rules' is "Don't split the Team", but if there's two paths to progress and you have a strong team, Why Not? Just instantiate the two options, let the team divide the tasks, and run them Parallel. Sure, this invites the infamous 'defeat in detail', but it also allows for 'chase the big-bad' AND 'save the princess', followed by a really big party afterwards!
Be Well!
Fireheart
I brought this up a few times, so I am confused why you think 'don't split the team' is a rule?
I think the only hard rule there should be for mission design is try to make it fun for those playing it.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverSplitTheParty
Be Well!
Fireheart
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Scrapperlock]Scrapperlock[/url]
I would also point out that the Lambda Trial had a very clear Split The League phase to it. Likewise, the BAF Trial also featured a Split The League phase for stopping the escaping Prisoners.
Possibly the worst of all notable examples for Splitting The Team in City of Heroes had to be [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Cavern_of_Transcendence_Trial]Cavern of Transcendence Trial[/url] where you needed to split an 8 man Team [i]8 ways[/i] to simul-click 8 glowies in order to progress the Trial. Making this even more obnoxious than absolutely necessary was the fact that mobs respawned(!) inside the Trial Zone, meaning that as you deployed Team members to their various locations, offensive power of the remaining Team members diminished ... until you couldn't risk engaging in combat. Pretty much the only way to [b]reliably[/b] succeed at the Trial was to bring along someone with Sufficient Invisibility and Recall Friend who could maneuver through the Trial Zone without engaging in combat and deploy all 8 Team members at their designated glowie. Given that the Level range on this Trial was only 12-15, and that originally THERE WERE NO FLASHBACKS(!) it was almost impossible to gather together enough people to even attempt the Trial in the first place, let alone succeed in completing it within the Timer limit of 90 minutes.
Compounding the sense of "We The Devs Really Really Hate You!" going into all of this pointlessness was that if anyone faceplanted inside the Trial Zone, they would have to Hospital all the way back in Atlas Park(!), after which they would have to run back to The Hollows, find an entrance to [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/The_Tunnels_of_the_Trolls]The Tunnels of the Trolls[/url] and either fight their way back (at Levels 12-15!) solo to the Trial Zone Door deep in the Tunnels ... or have the Teammate with Recall Friend step out of the Zone Door to let them skip over the extremely easy to get lost in Tunnels and back onto the actual Trial Zone Map of the Cavern.
It basically all came down to needing THIS for success:
[list][*]Stealth + More Stealth
[*]Recall Friend[/list]
Given the original mix of Powers and Pools available in the game, this was such a Tall Order that pretty much only purpose built characters for doing the Cavern of Transcendence Trial contained the needed combination for success ... and because there was no way to halt XP gain, it was absurdly difficult to find anyone willing to do the Trial more than once for the badge because it was just such a pain to do. It was basically jumping through hoops [i]while juggling the hoops[/i] while the hoops were on fire and all of your characters were sopping wet with flammable liquids just waiting to burn you to a crisp.
Suffice it to say, the Cavern of Transcendence Trial was just about everyone's definition of ANTI-Fun. Before Supersidekicking came along, hardly anyone was eligible to even try to do it, because doing the content that led up to the Trial typically yielded at least Level 15 before you could even begin the Trial! And of course, once you hit Level 16, you were barred from participating(!) unless you Exemplared down to some other Level 12-15 who was going to be doing the Trial.
Long story short ... EVERYONE HATED the Cavern of Transcendence, IF they knew about it. Most people never even knew it existed.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I knew about Transcendence, was involved in one run, we did succeed by having a High-level with your recipe - Invis + Super Speed + TP, and then I never did it again. I honestly have no idea what the Story of that place is.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Cavern of Transcendance was A Pain to do... and when we* did it, I was the sap who had SS and Recall Friend, running around the majority of the time, teleporting everyone into position... well... after we cleared one or Two groups that were just too close to the Clicky. :P Then back to Taxi work. :{
Eden Trial was much more of a challenge, But also... Much More Fun for me! ;]
Trial boss i can think from dark soul 2 one boss name Looking Glass Knight Formerly known as the Mirror Knight, this knight is clad in steel polished to a mirror finish. Wields a mirror shield which it can use to summon NPCs and players to fight against the player during the boss fight, as well as deflect spells that come in contact with the mirror. Real players may also be summoned to fight for the Looking Glass Knight,
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
Bosses with invulnerability are really the problem. As a hero being able to stand toe-to-toe with the big bad and survive and even defeat them is the ultimate glory. If I run into a boss fight and he tells me "you'll never defeat me with this force field active" and I beat him down anyway? That's power. If I turn off his generator first? That's smart. If I trick him into shutting off his force field? That's devious. If I convince him the error of his ways and he surrenders? That's charisma. But if the only way to win a fight is to shut down security and blow up the generator and disable the power couplings before the back up power activates then your are dancing to someone else's tune. I'm not saying all bosses should have 6 ways to victory but for the big fights the story arc enders and the world bosses. Give me the some options.
One thing to be aware of with "splitting up the team" is that the rewards need to be balanced. If one side gets 3x as much XP/$/loot because they fought off 100 minions while the other team was sneaking through the air vents to shut off the security systems, you may find that people are more interested in beating up bad guys and no one wants to do the leg work.
If you lock everyone into a path based on one persons decision that can cause other problems. I remember in one of my first group missions in SWTOR I clicked the option that would take us away from a secondary boss fight, because that met my characters RP goals and I didn't know any better. I was promptly verbally abused and removed from the party because I cost them the rewards from that secondary boss fight. In that regard I like GW2 story missions. There are almost no rewards during the missions, but at the end everyone gets a reward for completion. That is by no means the best solution but it is simple effective and community friendly (no one is hated on for doing something different)
That definition of scrapperlock was written by either a bad scrapper or someone who played with bad scrappers. Part of Scrapperlock was a oneness with ones scrapper. The combined power of painted pixels and heaving heart formed a dervish of digital destruction that was immortal. I was fully aware of my characters health, powers, targets and foes. I was confident in total victory. I just wasn't aware of chat and my breathing. More than once I'd finish a room off and find it funny that I was sucking air like a fish out of water. But it felt good. Most of the time I was teamed with people I trusted to take care of themselves or allow me to go deep. In PUGs I focused on my team drawing aggro from squishies and more often hitting the hard targets as scrappers were designed to do./end_nostalgia
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