Apparently unpopular opinion: 100CM is one of the best pieces of PVE content released

[Tibuss.4527]

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to reflect on the new 100CM. I did the title 4 times now and cleared it about 10 times, and I can say that at least for me, the fractal is one of the best pieces of PVE content that Anet has released. The emotion mechanic feels great, doing the rifts with gluttony (which I'm convinced IS actually intended) feels like such a cool, thinking-outside-the-box mechanic.

The boss doesn't have too much health, since the fight is so fluid and there is not much downtime (compared to silent surf, where the boss decides to dash around and disappear every 5 seconds) so it feels really satisfying to fight. The actual boss fight took my groups around 4 and a half minutes, which is about the time you need for both AI fights.

The "slippery slope" that happens when you don't manage your emotion stacks well and can't get rid of the envy orbs immediately is a really nice balancing act, it lets the group decide between continuing the fight (when its only 1-3 stacks) or just resetting it. Rather than having a mechanic one-shot the group, its up to the players to decide if they want to proceed and if they can handle it.

Only the pre-event with Deimos and Cerus doesn't make any sense on the CM. There are no adjusted mechanics for them, so they should just get skipped and the Eparch alone should be the only encounter on the CM. On top of that toxic trail is pretty devastating on the boss, since the instability itself is pretty buggy and makes positioning (especially for the arrow attack and the AOE succ) a pain, but adjusting the valid instabilities shouldn't be an issue.

The strategy we used (2 envy collectors, 1 of the stacks reds, the other blues; 1 gluttony collector, mostly quickscrapper; remaniing dps collecting malice; the healer focusing on keeping everyone alive) works really well, even though having one of the envy collectors call out if they have 6 stacks ready for the envy attack or if the 2nd envy collector has to backup is a big help, which obviously makes it harder in random groups who don't have any voice chat to rely on.

In the case that using gluttony stacks to get the portals is not intended (and I like to reiterate, I seriously believe that it IS intended) and instead someone is supposed to stack rage orbs on themself and nuke the champions that way, it wouldn't really change the strategy of the fight much at all, you would just stack the red orbs instead of the yellow ones. Even though it wouldn't change much, in my personal opinion it would just be so much of a less cool mechanic. Having to kill invulnerable portals with AOEs seems so much more intriguing than just doing the portals how we did for all of SotO a thousand times.

 

To summarize, please Anet, remove the pre-event with Deimos and Cerus on the CM, there is nothing really happening, and maybe adjust the list of instabilities available for the fractal. Then it would truly be a 10/10 piece of content for me. And if gluttony is an exploit and not the intended way, I BEG you, please embrace what you have done and make it the intended way, its a one-of-a-kind thing we've never seen in this game (I know that Solid Ocean had a bug a while back where you could one-shot the boss with a similar mechanic, but I don't think anyone ever thought that was intended, since it ended the fight pretty much instantly).

[Inssengrimm.7924]

Very unpopular.
Design wise, it's a blunder at best, actual devteam giving up at worse. 

It is probably the worse strike mission ever developed.
Sorry, fractal, i cannot tell the diference anymore. 

[Cyninja.2954]

6 hours ago, Tibuss.4527 said:

The "slippery slope" that happens when you don't manage your emotion stacks well and can't get rid of the envy orbs immediately is a really nice balancing act, it lets the group decide between continuing the fight (when its only 1-3 stacks) or just resetting it. Rather than having a mechanic one-shot the group, its up to the players to decide if they want to proceed and if they can handle it.

Yes, the collection mechanic is an interesting design choice. Now imagine how good it would be on an actually well made fight.

Players overcoming poor design and implementation does not suddenly make the design good. Some player enjoy overcoming sloppy design and take enjoyment in that, which is fine. Others overcome the encounter but still see the poor design underneath.

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On top of that toxic trail is pretty devastating on the boss, since the instability itself is pretty buggy and makes positioning (especially for the arrow attack and the AOE succ) a pain, but adjusting the valid instabilities shouldn't be an issue.

Just another not properly tested element to this  fractal. What, you do not enjoy being able to stack inside the boss to overcome most of its attacks easily?

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Having to kill invulnerable portals with AOEs seems so much more intriguing than just doing the portals how we did for all of SotO a thousand times.

You are misaligning your euphoria for overcoming a poorly implemented mechanic with a cheeky bug abuse for intrigue.

Here is the crux of it: if it's not a bug (which it is), it's poorly implemented because it does not mirror ANY of the previously taught ways to overcome this mechanic with no indicators to this being the way to overcome the challenge. That's not well designed content.

If it is a bug, it's glitch abusing to overcome the challenge.

Neither of the 2 options scream "amazing content" in a good way.

[Tibuss.4527]

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Yes, the collection mechanic is an interesting design choice. Now imagine how good it would be on an actually well made fight.

I don't know what exactly makes the fight a bad fight. All the attacks are manageable and avoidable properly, it's super fluid and the fight feels quick.

 

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

You are misaligning your euphoria for overcoming a poorly implemented mechanic with a cheeky bug abuse for intrigue.

The "bug abuse" doesn't really feel that exploity to me, the champions having over 6 million health each and the adds spawning at an insanely high rate don't make it feel as if killing them and keeping the adds in check is a real possibility. On top of that, it still requires someone to bring proper skills and manage the gluttony orbs during the boss fight, it's not such a freebie as some people make it seem.

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Here is the crux of it: if it's not a bug (which it is), it's poorly implemented because it does not mirror ANY of the previously taught ways to overcome this mechanic with no indicators to this being the way to overcome the challenge. That's not well designed content.

I can totally understand your argument about this, when there is a rift everyone thinks "oh I have done this a million times, kill the things and then press f", so did I at the start (obviously). But actually having to do the rifts "normally" would take out a lot of momentum of the fractal in my opinion, while gluttony-killing is so much more fast-paced, which would fit the play-style of fractals a lot more. Also I completely agree on there not being any indicator about the gluttony orbs. It was fun trying to figure it out and bashing our heads against it on release day, but they should definitely add some better communication about the gluttony mechanic, maybe change up its description to make its effects clear. I still would like for them to embrace it and make it "seem" more intended.

[Cyninja.2954]

3 hours ago, Tibuss.4527 said:

I don't know what exactly makes the fight a bad fight. All the attacks are manageable and avoidable properly, it's super fluid and the fight feels quick.

I explained this in another thread where others also chimed in. A not well designed fight is one which has elements which go against how this game is designed combat wise.

Being able to super speed around and collect the orbs, then "hidding" inside the boss hitbox to burst him down essentially ignoring the majority of mechanics is NOT a well designed fight.

3 hours ago, Tibuss.4527 said:

The "bug abuse" doesn't really feel that exploity to me, the champions having over 6 million health each and the adds spawning at an insanely high rate don't make it feel as if killing them and keeping the adds in check is a real possibility. On top of that, it still requires someone to bring proper skills and manage the gluttony orbs during the boss fight, it's not such a freebie as some people make it seem.

That's the point: the intended way of completing this fight is so over-designed that groups use bugs to overcome it.

Yes, those 6 million hp adds are far to spongie. Yes, if this was a simple split mechanic with "do 2 and later 3 5 second things at different spot" would be better.

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I can totally understand your argument about this, when there is a rift everyone thinks "oh I have done this a million times, kill the things and then press f", so did I at the start (obviously). But actually having to do the rifts "normally" would take out a lot of momentum of the fractal in my opinion, while gluttony-killing is so much more fast-paced, which would fit the play-style of fractals a lot more. Also I completely agree on there not being any indicator about the gluttony orbs. It was fun trying to figure it out and bashing our heads against it on release day, but they should definitely add some better communication about the gluttony mechanic, maybe change up its description to make its effects clear. I still would like for them to embrace it and make it "seem" more intended.

Having to do rifts normally would have been fine IF it were along the lines of previous CM fight intermissions (which I mentioned in the other thread) and it would have been congruent with game deign so far.

- The intermission phases are just one of the elements which are an issue.

- Ignoring most boss attacks while stacking inside him is another.

- Making orbs this out of sync with each other is a third (envy is literally the only orb of consequence and it makes the boss goes from trivial to a major nuisance - that's NOT good design if the fight has 6 orbs which it is designed around).

Yes, if you skip all the rng nature of his attacks (which is an issue of its self) via stacking inside him, are able to abuse the gluttony orbs to circumvent the intermission phases and thus treat the boss as a glorified damage golem, it's a good fight. All that says is: if you basically manage to ignore almost EVERY design element of the fight, it's a good fight. That doesn't make sense.

and let's not even get started on other bugs. Is Regret still only a thing on T1? Makes total sense to have an entire orb mechanic miss in later fractal levels....

TL;DR:

I'm not telling you not to like the fight. You are free to enjoy it obviously. It simply not a well designed (or rather implemented, the basic ideas behind most mechanics are fine) fight and it would be a lot better if some of its issues were adjusted and fixed to make it a fun AND well designed fight.

Edited June 16 by Cyninja.2954

[Krzysztof.5973]

Meanwhile your kp.me says you have not completed 100cm even once, not even mentioning the title. Next time at least try making your lies more elaborate 😌

[Tibuss.4527]

39 minutes ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

Meanwhile your kp.me says you have not completed 100cm even once, not even mentioning the title. Next time at least try making your lies more elaborate 😌

https://i.imgur.com/CD9bLij.jpeg

i have no idea why it doesn't show in kp.me

Edited June 16 by Tibuss.4527

[Tibuss.4527]

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Being able to super speed around and collect the orbs, then "hidding" inside the boss hitbox to burst him down essentially ignoring the majority of mechanics is NOT a well designed fight.

The only thing you really can ignore while standing in the boss is the arrows. The shockwave has to be dodged, the cracks have to be evaded, the pull hurts bad enough, the purple attack where you get circles underneath also has to be outrun. I don't see just standing in the boss being that easy of a strat.

 

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

- Making orbs this out of sync with each other is a third (envy is literally the only orb of consequence and it makes the boss goes from trivial to a major nuisance - that's NOT good design if the fight has 6 orbs which it is designed around).

The strategy involves it making impossible for the boss to suck up envy orbs, that's why you have the collectors stack red/blue on themselves. That's how there should never even be any envy stacks around to either get tether-absorbed by the boss or sucked up by him.

 

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I'm not telling you not to like the fight. You are free to enjoy it obviously. It simply not a well designed (or rather implemented, the basic ideas behind most mechanics are fine) fight and it would be a lot better if some of its issues were adjusted and fixed to make it a fun AND well designed fight.

This is 100% fair. I'm not trying to tell you to like the fight either. I'm just trying to explain why I like it and trying to figure out why others apparently don't. Neither does the envy mechanic seem to be at the mercy of RNG for me, it is always manageable, nor do I think just standing inside the boss is a viable strategy, especially when you accumulate enough rage on the boss over time, after 35% he usually has his 20 stacks and attacks start to hurt a lot more, just standing in all the damage just doesn't work through it all.

[Kitty.4806]

The fight has a really cool concept, but TERRIBLE execution. He can spawn orbs right before activating his absorb phase, and he will gain whatever orbs WERE on the ground when he starts it. Doesn't matter if you pick them up before he actually absorbs them, it will just duplicate the max orbs in play.

Very buggy, trashy designed fight.

[Cyninja.2954]

3 hours ago, Tibuss.4527 said:

The only thing you really can ignore while standing in the boss is the arrows. The shockwave has to be dodged, the cracks have to be evaded, the pull hurts bad enough, the purple attack where you get circles underneath also has to be outrun. I don't see just standing in the boss being that easy of a strat.

The pull can be ignored if he has no envy stacks (if running a healer comp). The shockwaves are dodged easily if they always come at the same distance/angle (which is the case if you always stand inside the boss). The cracks are irrelevant if you simply stack on the boss not on a crack, another mechanics made easier by just standing inside the boss.

It's a terribly easy strat compared to what this fight "could" demand of players. Even 99cm has more movement now than 100cm.

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The strategy involves it making impossible for the boss to suck up envy orbs, that's why you have the collectors stack red/blue on themselves. That's how there should never even be any envy stacks around to either get tether-absorbed by the boss or sucked up by him.

and that's all this fight boils down to. That's not a well designed system because if collecting 1 type of orb was the goal, that could have been implemented a lot clearer/better.

In reality it's just another poorly designed aspect which is not properly utilized.

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This is 100% fair. I'm not trying to tell you to like the fight either. I'm just trying to explain why I like it and trying to figure out why others apparently don't. Neither does the envy mechanic seem to be at the mercy of RNG for me, it is always manageable, nor do I think just standing inside the boss is a viable strategy, especially when you accumulate enough rage on the boss over time, after 35% he usually has his 20 stacks and attacks start to hurt a lot more, just standing in all the damage just doesn't work through it all.

When I am talking about stacking on the boss, I am referring to the 4 players which stack on the boss while 1 player does all the collecting (and 1 more for gluttony). That's what this boils down to atm.

Edited June 16 by Cyninja.2954

[Tibuss.4527]

21 hours ago, Kitty.4806 said:

The fight has a really cool concept, but TERRIBLE execution. He can spawn orbs right before activating his absorb phase, and he will gain whatever orbs WERE on the ground when he starts it. Doesn't matter if you pick them up before he actually absorbs them, it will just duplicate the max orbs in play.

I thought that in the beginning, and I am not sure if his exact transition from normal attacks into pull factors in how much orbs are already on the ground, but since collecting everything we've never had the quick transition that made it impossible to collect orbs before the cc happens, and it has been around 7 kills.

Blinking on the orbs and spamming "f" to collect them is way faster than just walking through them.

[Tibuss.4527]

20 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The pull can be ignored if he has no envy stacks (if running a healer comp). The shockwaves are dodged easily if they always come at the same distance/angle (which is the case if you always stand inside the boss). The cracks are irrelevant if you simply stack on the boss not on a crack, another mechanics made easier by just standing inside the boss.

The pull can be ignored early on, but once the boss gets some rage stacks (which is the way lesser evil than gambling on him not sucking up envy orbs) it starts to hurt a bunch more, you can't just stand inside him anymore then.

20 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

and that's all this fight boils down to. That's not a well designed system because if collecting 1 type of orb was the goal, that could have been implemented a lot clearer/better.

In reality it's just another poorly designed aspect which is not properly utilized.

I think this makes it a good design. The orbs have different impact on the boss, worst is envy, second worst is malice, you really don't want either. It's then up to the players to decide on what orbs to actually give to the boss and which ones to not give him. The goal is not collecting 1 type of orb, the goal is to not let the boss get that type of orb. Generally all orbs on the ground should get collected, it's mostly managing what stacks and emotions remain on the players.

20 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

When I am talking about stacking on the boss, I am referring to the 4 players which stack on the boss while 1 player does all the collecting (and 1 more for gluttony). That's what this boils down to atm.

With this exact strategy the fight boils down to RNG, because one person collecting all does not guarantee that they will end up with 0 stacks after collecting all the envies. Neither does it work with the gluttony orbs, which need to be stacked on someone else completely. Splitting up orb duty and assigning 1 attack to each player provides a lot of fluidity and security as to not let the boss get envy.

[Smol.7985]

So why is that most groups skip even the normal version of the fractal ?

[Tibuss.4527]

1 hour ago, Smol.7985 said:

So why is that most groups skip even the normal version of the fractal ?

That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out. At this point, I believe a big part in it is vocal people hating the fractal so publicly, so everyone will be less open to the idea to try a proper strategy for it. On top of that, its always the "new fractal" experience, pretty much every time something new releases the LFG is overrun with "-100" runs, so to some degree this is nothing new.

[Daggoth.3102]

because this fractal sucks

[TexZero.7910]

10 hours ago, Tibuss.4527 said:

That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out. At this point, I believe a big part in it is vocal people hating the fractal so publicly, so everyone will be less open to the idea to try a proper strategy for it. On top of that, its always the "new fractal" experience, pretty much every time something new releases the LFG is overrun with "-100" runs, so to some degree this is nothing new.

Yeah it's almost like people are adverse to buggy content or something and would rather wait the 6 months it takes anet to collect data and fix it....
 

[Tibuss.4527]

28 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

Yeah it's almost like people are adverse to buggy content or something and would rather wait the 6 months it takes anet to collect data and fix it....

After fixing the stalling issue when dying during the 65% and 35% split-phases, what exactly is buggy about 100cm?
I'm obviously not counting the gluttony rift thing because I believe it's intended, but even if you think it wasn't, it doesn't make the fractal experience any worse or less playable.

[Vekaiel.8493]

For one you can't use vindicator dodge during deimos and cerus fight because some force pull you toward the middle of the room and interrupt your dodge.
Another one is the reward (empowered eparch weapons) after clearing 25 times the cm are not even unlockable skins, it is just normal exotics so I spent 500 ecto, 100 integrated matrices, 2 fractal journals and 1000 ufe for a piece of junk atm. Still keeping it in case they decide it is a priority to fix that.
You can also make the enemies disappear during the "console" minigame but considering how annoying/waste of time that part of the fractal is I consider it more a feature.
If eparch's orbs spawn near you, you cannot pick them up by walking on them sometime.

It is just few proof they push content without too much care for the quality of it
I mean just the other day doing Silent Surf I got stuck into one of the pylon because the hook gun sent me inside the obstacle and that is a fractal that is out for quite a long time.

[Tibuss.4527]

28 minutes ago, Vekaiel.8493 said:

If eparch's orbs spawn near you, you cannot pick them up by walking on them sometime.

That's just how it works so you don't accidentally collect orbs when you are not supposed to. You can still collect the ones spawning on you by pressing "f".

The rest are bugs that are in the fractal for sure, but none of them actually impact the fight at the end, which is the only thing that really matters. I still want them to remove all the pre-events and mini-bosses before Eparch.

[Vekaiel.8493]

Then what is the point of making him spawn a ton of orbs of the same kind instead of 1 you can interact with. I am rushing to the direction the orbs are going to land to pick them up quickly and the game thinks I don't want to pick them up. If we are to be expected to collect 6 orbs after each attack there should be a larger delay before he start to consume.

Even if there is no bug, the fight is still not enjoyable because of small little design choices.

[harry.4267]

i like it, in a good group its a fairly quick fractal, which is better than the last 2

[Tibuss.4527]

11 hours ago, Vekaiel.8493 said:

Then what is the point of making him spawn a ton of orbs of the same kind instead of 1 you can interact with. I am rushing to the direction the orbs are going to land to pick them up quickly and the game thinks I don't want to pick them up. If we are to be expected to collect 6 orbs after each attack there should be a larger delay before he start to consume.

Making him spawn 6 orbs instead of one provides more opportunity for the player to mess up without it automatically being a reset. Just getting 5 orbs and letting the boss get 1 on himself is not necessarily a reset. It once again gives the players more freedom in deciding when to continue and when not to.
The consume-cc that the boss does can have a quick transition, but I've not run into the issue where it was impossible to collect orbs before they get pulled in, the very few times it did happen players (including myself) were just too slow with blinking to the orbs.

[Vekaiel.8493]

Which is a bad design choice because only few professions can blink. The mechanics should not require a certain profession or set of utility skills to complete. It should only make it easier if you have access to them. You lose diversity and fun for the sake of "difficulty". These days some professions are going rather extinct in group content.

I really much prefer freedom of what to play then freedom to decide how to deal with a bad mechanic.

Edited June 19 by Vekaiel.8493
rephrasing

[TexZero.7910]

18 hours ago, Tibuss.4527 said:

After fixing the stalling issue when dying during the 65% and 35% split-phases, what exactly is buggy about 100cm?
I'm obviously not counting the gluttony rift thing because I believe it's intended, but even if you think it wasn't, it doesn't make the fractal experience any worse or less playable.

What's buggy about this super not bugged instance ?

Proceedes immeadiately to deny existence of said bug....
Okay cheif.

Everything is technically playable until the servers of offline. Just because you can play it, doesn't make it good or free of bugs or otherwise a lackluster experience.

[Tibuss.4527]

2 hours ago, Vekaiel.8493 said:

Which is a bad design choice because only few professions can blink. The mechanics should not require a certain profession or set of utility skills to complete. It should only make it easier if you have access to them. You lose diversity and fun for the sake of "difficulty". These days some professions are going rather extinct in group content.

A blink is accessible to mesmers, thieves, elementalists, scourges and mechanists. Not everyone can do everything, because that would be quite boring class design, but there are multiple choices to choose from. One will always be the best, but that doesnt mean the other options aren't viable at all.